CentreStack transforms traditional file servers into cloud file servers

After the Gladinet Cloud Desktop 1.4.232 release, it is fairly easy to manage Azure Blob Storage from your Windows Explorer directly. Feature Highlights: (1) Map a Network Drive Letter to the Azure Blob Storage You can map multiple Azure Blob Storage Account as side-by-side virtual folders in the same network drive. You can do drag-and-drop between local drive and the Azure drive.

This week, Gladinet Cloud Desktop reached version 1.4.2 (build 232). Windows Azure Blob Storage has been officially added to the list of supported Cloud Storage Providers (S3, AT&T, Google …). This means you can map a network drive to the Windows Azure Blob Storage and start using it from Windows Explorer ( See this link for detailed How-To information ).

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4.232 includes the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their documents to Microsoft Windows Azure Storage . As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Documents” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu.

 Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4.2 includes the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their music to Microsoft Windows Azure Storage. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Music” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu. After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types. The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set. Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select Mi...

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 includes the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their pictures to Microsoft Windows Azure. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Pictures” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu. After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types. The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set. Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select Microsoft Win...

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their videos to EMC Atmos. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Videos” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu. After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types. The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set. Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select EMC Atmos or one of its subfolders ...

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their videos to EMC Atmos. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Videos” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu. After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types. The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set. Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select EMC Atmos or one of its subfolders ...

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their pictures to AT&T Synaptic Storage. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Pictures” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their pictures to EMC Atmos. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Pictures” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu. After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types. The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set. Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select EMC Atmos or one of its subfold...

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their music to AT&T Synaptic Storage. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Music” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their music to EMC Atmos. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Music” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu. After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types. The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set. Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select EMC Atmos or one of its subfolders as...

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their documents to Google Docs. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Documents” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu. After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types. The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set. Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select Google Docs or one of its s...

Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their documents to EMC Atmos. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use. First, select “Backup My Documents” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu. After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types. The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set. Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select EMC Atmos or one of its su...

Gladinet Cloud Desktop has always provided advanced backup capabilities including incremental backups and dynamic backup sets. However, these features have always been folder centric. So, after a user selects a folder or a set of folders to be backed up, Cloud Desktop’s backup manager monitors those folders for changes and uploads the changes incrementally. The Gladinet solution also allowed the backup set to be changed as new files or folders are added to folders which already exist in the backup set. With the release of 1.4, Gladinet has added the capability to define file type based backup sets. This enables users to simply specify the kinds of files that they would like to include in a backup set. For example, if a user wanted to backup all music on the system, they would simply select “Backup My Music” from the systray menu. The next step is to specify the file types to be included in the backup set: Once this has been done, Gladinet Cloud Desktop uses an intelligent algorithm...

Cloud Gateway Support - Central Access Point to External Clouds AT&T Synaptic Storage Support -Map Synaptic Storage As Network Drive Better Windows 7 Support New Settings Manager New Context Menu to Clear Cache and Refresh File Online Service (Beta) - Share configuration information across your computers Related Press Release: Gladinet Releases Cloud Desktop 1.3 with Support for AT&T Synaptic Storage Gladinet Launches Cloud Gateway, Updates Cloud Desktop

As the IT director for a small and medium sized company, Joe is thinking about moving some company data to cloud storage. He wants to setup several tiers, some reports go to S3, some go to AT&T Synaptic Storage (2 copies, one site) and some go to Synaptic with 3 copies across two sites. He wants his end users to have a seamless experience when he is moving. Sounds interesting to you? Read on ... With the release of Version 1.3 Cloud Desktop, Gladinet introduced Cloud Gateway. Cloud Gateway is a file server, backed by different cloud storage providers. From the IT administrator's perspective, they can set it up on a central server and publish folders to users. From an end user's perspective, they just see extra folders on their desktop, when they drop files into the folder, files are going to the Cloud Gateway and onto different cloud storage services later on. Here is a picture about the difference between connecting directly to the cloud storage or using a gateway. ...

Online backup is interesting with the addition of the AT&T Synaptic Storage. The two copies one site or 3 copies in two sites policy differentiates itself from the other cloud storage service providers. With the Gladinet Cloud Desktop 1.3 , you can now do a set-it-and-forget-it backup to AT&T Synaptic Storage and take advantage of this offer. Step 1: You will need to register for an AT&T Synaptic Storage account and mount the storage as a virtual folder. Here is a tutorial for this step .

Today Gladinet Cloud Desktop reached version 1.3, build 206. AT&T Synaptic Storage has been added to the supported list of Cloud Storage Providers. This means you can map a virtual drive to the AT&T Synaptic Storage and start using it from Windows Explorer ( See this link for detailed HowTo information ). I have been itching to see how AT&T Synaptic Storage compares to Amazon S3 . Since Gladinet Cloud Desktop can map both in as virtual folders in a virtual drive, a quick drag-and-drop upload/download experiment should be easy.

Today we released the .Net SDK beta. It opens the doors for developers to write storage plugins. One of the most common feature requests was adding more and more storage plugin, such as Flickr, CloudFile and etc. Now the SDK enables more developers to do so and do it with ease in .NET language. We wanted the Gladinet Cloud Desktop to be a platform and now the SDK enables it even more. Inside the SDK, you will find a storage plugin example for Windows Azure Storage Service. As you see the full source code for the Azure plugin, you know we are also going down the path of open source too. The Windows Azure Storage plugin will find its way into the open source site (such as SourceForge, CodePlex and etc). The Azure Storage plugin will also be fully supported here in a couple of months as a commercial quality plugin with version 1.3. Check it out at http://www.gladinet.com/p/developer.htm

With the recent introduction of Gladinet Cloud Desktop version 1.2, Gladinet has introduced the ability to create an automatic backup of your Google Docs files to a redundant array of cloud storage. This feature allows you to specify a Google Docs source account, a cloud storage target, and a monitoring interval. You can also specify whether you want to use a designated folder or backup all files. If you choose to use a drop box, any files moved to it will automatically get backed up to Amazon S3, EMC Atmos, Box.net, or whichever service you select. Otherwise, all files in the specified Google Docs account will be backed up by the monitoring thread at the specified interval. In either case, the backups are incremental and will just copy the changes. Version 1.2 also introduces support for the Windows 7 platform along with the following features and enhancements: • A New Virtual Directory Manager • A Simplified Systray Menu • An Improved Task Manager • The ability to pause or resume all...

Google Docs offers a hosted storage service for storing files in the cloud. Gladinet , a software vendor, has released a freeware solution called Gladinet Cloud Desktop that makes it easy to sync to Google Docs from Windows Explorer. In fact, Gladinet Cloud Desktop turns Windows Explorer into a cloud storage portal that can easily sync to Google Docs from other storage services or upload files from your desktop to any storage service you choose. Gladinet achieves this through a complete Google Doc integration with your file system. What is Google Doc File System Integration? Gladinet Cloud Desktop allows you to mount Google Docs storage as a local folder that looks and behaves the same as any other folder you would access from Windows Explorer.  One neat thing about this support is that you can mix and match storage services, so if you run out of storage from one free provider you can add storage from another free provider. Or, if you need to move files between providers, its as...

Thinking about how big corporations and cloud computing fit together, I came across the word "Internal Cloud" when reading more on the EMC Atmos. While big corporations may not want to move to external cloud for the sake of control, there is a middle ground where they can still take advantage of an internal cloud. A cloud service comes with a virtualization layer for the distributed computing resources beneath. First, every object has a URL. Second, every object has meta data. Third, every access to the objects is using HTTP/SSL. This layer simplifies many management tasks. For example, Gladinet can insert another virtualization layer, aggregating different cloud services together for the presentation. For those of you haven't seen EMC Atmos Online, here is a picture of the admin console. You can create multiple users within the same account, as compared to Amazon S3's one S3 per account. Out of the box, Atmos supports a group of users and is ...

I was looking on the Internet for performance data comparing Amazon S3 and EMC Atmos. Didn't find any so I decide to do a simple test on my own. Since Gladinet can mount both S3 and Atmos as virtual folders in Windows Explorer, I created a Test Folder on my desktop of 6 zip files, each around 20M for a total of 112M. then drop them into S3 and Atmos sequentially and time it with a stop watch. My upload speed is around 2.24 Mbits/s. So if the bandwidth is the bottleneck, the upload should be done around 112M*8Bits/2.24 = 400 s ~ 7 Minutes. Test Results: EMC Atmos: 13 Minutes Amazon S3: 15 Minutes I am delighted to see that my bandwidth is not the bottleneck. It is interesting to see Atmos is faster in my setup. At least it tells me EMC is here for the Cloud Storage game and a little bit of competition is healthy for everyone. Now people can store online data in two different cloud providers. It is good for S3 since it gets more customers that are concerned about single vendor. Vise...

Build 1.1.133.3813: Mount EMC Atmos Online as a virtual folder, so you can use it as a Windows client for Atmos. Mount Google Docs for Google Apps account, so you can backup your cloud documents back to local PC. Mount Box.net as a virtual folder, so you have more places to put your files and have one more client tool to access Box.net. Mount FTP Server, so you can do in place editing. Mount WebDav folders, so you don't have to remember the long URL everytime. Support S3 European Buckets. Support multi sessions in Terminal Server/Citrix Server environment. New Click-2-Mount Wizard, easier to use. Bug fixes. Give it a try ( http://www.gladinet.com/p/download_starter.htm )and let us know your comments!

Gladinet is running on Google Apps and we like Google Apps. Recently, we added Google Docs support for the Google Apps in our version 1.1 offering. Now you can mount Google Docs as a virtual folder and do drag-drop to backup your important documents both ways between Google Apps and local PC. This is a significant step toward business use of the Gladinet Cloud Desktop, combined with the additions of EMC Atmos Online, Box.net, FTP and WebDav supports in version 1.1. The grand vision stays the same, allowing users to access documents and files from anywhere with the Gladinet platform, such as from Amazon S3, EMC Atmos or Google Cloud Services; or FTP, WebDav and other existing places. Looking forward to version 1.2, we are releasing a Gladinet SDK in C#, which will enable even more integrations into the Gladinet platform. Shortly after, I will document the new features in the version 1.1. Now, for you, Google Apps users, start using Gladinet and enjoy your Google Apps even more.

EMC Atmos Online is cool and it is different from Amazon S3. We are happy to announce the support of EMC Atmos Online side by side with Amazon S3, starting build 130 in the version 1.1 RC. This is an important step to bring a multi-storage backup solution to users. One of a common concern about using cloud storage is a single point of failure or locking into a single vendor. By supporting multiple cloud storage vendors from the groud up, the Gladinet Cloud Desktop software allows you to backup data into multiple storage vendors at the same time. You can use the Gladinet Backup Manager, select your local files, select both the EMC Atmos Online and the Amazon S3, then select the backup schedule. After that, it will be on auto-piloting to the cloud storage backup. We saw the news 3 weeks ago about EMC, AT&T partner on 'Atmos' Cloud Storage( http://tinyurl.com/laqyv9 ). This means version 1.1 will likely to support AT&T as well. Sign up for an EMC Atmos Online beta account,...

Version 1.0, build 121 is here and is available on download.com too. There are some new features in the v1.0 as compared to the RC build 109. You will find features like many-to-many backup to backup multiple local folders to multiple cloud storage services; better bandwidth control and better task manager. The focus of the v1.0 is on how to enhance the user experience of transferring data between local PC and remote cloud storage, with a mapped network drive. V1.0 is a pretty big milestone after the long beta march. We would like to thank our beta users first. We wouldn't have achieved version 1.0 without their feedback and bug reports. For those beta users that have reported issues to us, we would like to give a free v1.0 professional edition license in a couple of weeks. Starter Edition remains free as our contribution to the Internet community. V1.0 is also a starting point of a long journey to version 3.0, where most software reach a great balance between stability and fe...

Today we released build 109, reaching the release candidate milestone. In the past month, we focused primarily on stress testing. For example, I can now download my Google Picasa web albums (5600 pictures, 245 web albums) completely to my other PC overnight without glitch. I can also upload big folders to Amazon S3 as well. I can setup incremental backup of my documents to Google Docs. It is becoming more and more usable. This is what the Cloud Desktop needs to be. The bridge between the Cloud and the Desktop needs to be reliable. It is a goal that may not be easily achieved, we will need to continue to push the limit. There is always version 3.0. The most recent Google Docs service glitch also proved that if we can solve the backup problem (such as Google Docs has a local cache copy or an Amazon S3 backup), the service will be more usable. If there is a backup copy into Amazon S3 for Google Docs, there won't be a concern of business continuity when the Google Docs becomes part o...

We had a good show at the web 2.0 expo. Many people stopped by and saw the demo. Some summarized with their own words, such as "local access to my virtual asset" and "seamless integration of all my data into a virtual drive", which were all pretty accurate. One attendee even joked about - "so, it is not c:, it is Cloud:, why don't you change the name to cloud-colon?" It was interesting to see that it only takes 30 seconds to get the message crossed with the demo. As soon as people saw the click to mount icons in the virtual drive, they nodded and knew what it is. There are two competing trends going on. One is the local hard drive getting bigger and cheaper. The other is the cloud storage getting bigger and cheaper. As it is now, there is a rough 25:1 ratio between the two. For example, find a mid range laptop/desktop from BestBuy, it may come with a hard drive 250G ~ 640G. Find a free online storage, it may come with 10G-25G. This 25:1 ratio determine...

Developers, developers, developers! I still remember this Steve Ballmer video . Even companies as big as Microsoft need more developers. It is so easy to create a cloud storage nowadays. Sign up for an Amazon S3 account, download a .NET library or a PHP library, you are on your way to a weekend project to kick start your cloud storage offering. It is a crowded space. Many services are competing at the capacity level, such as 50G - 25G for free. Not many users still look at 2G free offering. This is a no win competition and will drive the margin thin. To win, it has to come down to the killer apps and the services on top of the storage. For example, if you have Gmail, you were locked into the service and the storage. Whoever offers the best apps stays. Whoever gets the most developers to write apps wins. We are one of the developers, delivering cloud services to user's desktop. We released the Gladinet Cloud Desktop , build 71 to the web today. It was not easy and we are mov...

Build 60 was released to the Gladinet download page today, which completed a two-part effort (build 48/build 60) of integrating the new SkyDrive into Windows Explorer for beta 1. SkyDrive is really cool, especially with 25G and features like publishing and sharing with friends. Currently there is no Windows Explorer integration from Microsoft so it is hard to migrate multi-gigabytes of content to SkyDrive. We like SkyDrive and we would like to help promoting the usage of it. We went ahead and did the value-add. With Gladinet Cloud Desktop, beta build 60, you can do these things: (1) Drag and drop multiple folders into SkyDrive. (2) Grab a link in IE or Firefox and drop it directly into SkyDrive's Favorite folder. You can grab a folder full of bookmarks into the Favorite folder too. (3) Go to a different PC, drag a folder out of SkyDrive and back it up to that PC. (4) Support both Private folders and Public folders. Build 60 is a SkyDrive/Amazon S3 focused release. ...