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Showing posts from June, 2009

Internal Cloud & EMC Atmos

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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

Amazon S3 vs EMC Atmos

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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

Version 1.1 Released, What is new?

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!

Google Docs for Google Apps

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 Windows Client

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,