CentreStack transforms traditional file servers into cloud file servers

It is 2 days to Christmas 2011. Wish every Gladinet user happy Christmas and a happy new year 2012. As usual, it is time to take a look back at the year 2011, review the Gladinet milestones and look forward to year 2012. The most significant milestone in 2011 was the mark of over 1 million Gladinet software downloads, with important milestones reached in other aspects of the business too. Product Development In February, Gladinet Cloud Desktop 3.0 was released, followed by Gladinet Cloud Backup 3.0 in March and Gladinet Cloud AFS 3.0 (Cloud Server) in June. This is a complete suite of access products that help users access cloud storage from desktops and file servers. Gladinet continues to strengthen the core competency of  on-ramp solutions to cloud storage, bridging the gap between local storage and cloud storage. If you have Microsoft Cloud Storage, Google Cloud Storage , Amazon S3 , Rackspace Cloud Files and so on, Gladinet is the most downloaded solution to help accessing ...

We have been running a ‘ Why You Use Cloud Storage ’ survey on Gladinet blog for several months. From the survey, we can get a glimpse into the solutions people are looking for when they use cloud storage. In the survey, there are 5 categories to choose from – Backup, Access, Sync, Integrate, Connect and Share. These 5 categories also represent what Gladinet Cloud software covers with its product suite – Gladinet Cloud Desktop, Gladinet Cloud Backup, Gladinet Cloud Server and Gladinet Cloud for Teams.

Traditionally, FTP ( F ile T ransfer P rotocol) has been the standard for transferring and sharing files. However, it is not without its problems. These include concerns about security, cost, efficiency, reliability and simplicity. For these and other reasons, many businesses are looking to replace FTP with a cloud storage solution. Amazon S3 is a very good cloud storage option. However, it is more of a building block than solution. This article talks about a solution that is built on top of Amazon S3.  Gladinet Cloud for Teams offers a great FTP replacement. The service allows you to attach a local folder to the cloud , which immediately makes any of its files accessible anywhere, and synchronizes access to the folder by maintaining version control of files that are written simultaneously. Under the hood, the local folder is migrated to Amazon S3 by default, while allowing you to plug-in your own external cloud storage accounts.  Once the local folder is attached to the cl...

You own a small business and have several important folders on your desktop. You also have several people working for you that you need to share your desktop folders with. You may also be out of the office from time to time and your team are working from different places. So you are searching for a desktop folder sharing solution for your small business that allows people to work from different places.  You need a solution that is easier than email files back and forth.  Sounds interesting, read on … This is a very typical use case that keeps coming up when we talk to Gladinet customers. This  is easily solved by the Gladinet Cloud for Teams. Gladinet Cloud built on top of Amazon S3 . In addition, you can plug-in your existing Amazon S3 account.  Several articles in the past month discussed the first default option. This article will discuss the second option. So you have heard of Amazon S3 and are already using it but you need a more completed end-to-end solutio...

Google has been providing cloud storage under the name of Google Storage for Developers for over two years. Recently it was renamed to Google Cloud Storage and graduated from the Google Code Lab. There are many ways you can use the Google Cloud Storage. For example, you can use it to backup your files; use it as an external drive so you can drag and drop files to it. This article will go over these two use cases with Google Cloud Storage. We will use Gladinet Cloud Desktop for the demo purpose. The same use cases are covered by Gladinet Cloud Server and Gladinet Cloud for Teams too. Step 1 – Activate Google Cloud Storage If you have never used Google Cloud Storage before, the first step is to activate it for your Google Apps account or your GMail account. goto http://code.google.com/apis/storage/ , and click on the Activate Google Cloud Storage button.

This is the last video demo of a 3-piece series about the Gladinet Cloud use case. In the previous two blog posts, we covered ‘Anywhere Access with a Cloud Drive’ and ‘Share Files with the Gladinet Cloud’. This demo is about a set-it-and-forget-it off-site backup feature in the Gladinet Cloud. Same as the previous two YouTube videos, it is best to view the following video with 720p HD option and with full screen.

This is the second part of a 3-part video demo series about the Gladinet Cloud use cases. In this article, we discuss having a cloud drive, where you can have native drive letter access on the desktop or have web browser access through the web. Compares to the ‘Share Files with Gladinet Cloud’ in the first series, cloud drive focuses on the flexibility of how to quickly upload random files to the cloud drive and make it available to yourself or your team, while the ‘Share File’ series focus on how to quickly systematically share big folders from your desktop to the web. This following video describes the ‘Cloud Drive’ feature and how you can have a drive, both on your PC’s desktop and on the web. The video is in YouTube 1280x720 HD format so it is best to view with the 720p option and with full screen.

We will start a 3-part mini video demo series about the Gladinet Cloud and the 3 typical use cases it will serve. In this series, we discuss sharing files among a small team. User Todd is a real estate business owner. He has arranged client files into client-per-folder under a root folder such as ‘Client Files’ on his desktop. He will need to share that with his partner in business, Mary. We saw this use case repeated in the law business. Gary is a law business owner. He has arranged client files into several categories in his PC, such as “Category A”, “Category B”, “Category C”. All these folders are on the desktop.  He needs to share these 3 big folders on his desktop with his partner in the business, John. This following video describes how you can use Gladinet Cloud to instantly share multiple desktop folders with Co-workers, thus your team.  The video is in YouTube 1280x720 HD format so it is best to view with the 720p option and Full Screen. There are basically two ...

This morning Gladinet Cloud for Teams 1.0 was released. (as compared to Beta release 6 weeks ago). Why Do You Need Gladinet Cloud for Teams? Out of the box, Gladinet Cloud was designed to handle the following use cases. If you find a fit for the following use cases, Gladinet Cloud is for you. Use Case 1 – Share Your Local Folder through the Cloud You have several folders on your desktop, with your PC or Laptop. You want to instantly share the folder with your team members. On one hand, the folders will show up inside Gladinet Cloud web browser for your own access. On the other hand, you can publish these folders to your team members for shared access.  Both you and your team member can use Gladinet Cloud Desktop client to access the shared folder through a drive letter in your Windows Explorer. Visit Attach Local Folder to the Cloud for step by step instruction Use Case 2 – Instant, Secure, Anywhere Access with a Cloud Drive You want to move some of your folders to the...

If you had a team and also a storage drive to share with the team, what are the desired features you need with the drive? You may be thinking about a hard-drive or NAS drive that you can share in the office. Now thinking in terms of a cloud drive based on cloud storage, what are the desired features come to your mind? First you may wish the drive can have different folders assigned to each team member so each team member has a private home directory in the cloud drive. Second you may wish the drive has some shared folders that everyone in the team can share. Third, you may wish there is an easy way for you to put stuff like your local folder on your PC’s desktop in the cloud drive so you can access it everywhere. If you so desire, you can also share that local folder with your team over the cloud . Forth, you may wish the drive comes out of the box with some backup software so you can easily backup some local folders into your private home directory in the cloud drive. If the ...

Today we had an online meeting session with a law firm. The use case is very common and typical. The owner has a desktop PC that has several folders on the desktop that he wants to move to the cloud. He has several goals in mind. Goal A : Share those folders with team members directly from desktop or from cloud. Goal B : Easier access to those folders, such as web access, anytime access and drive letter/local drive kind of access. Goal C : off-site backup of those folders.   Goal D : Team members have easy access to those folders, preferably with web access. This is a very common use case for a team environment, when everyone is roaming around, not necessarily in the same office. The team doesn’t want to maintain file server in the office, nor do they want any VPN kind of remote access solution. Welcome to the cloud computing era, when these goals are so naturally achieved by the cloud. With Gladinet Cloud for Teams, it is a feature called ‘ Attach Local Folder to the C...

Gladinet has been providing Cloud Storage Access Solutions for over 3 years now. In the past, we saw Gladinet Cloud Desktop , Gladinet CloudAFS server , Gladinet Cloud Backup and Gladinet Cloud Space hit the market at different times. Existing Products Each of the Gladinet products serves a different use case. For example, Gladinet Cloud Desktop serves the use case from user’s desktop PC to connect cloud storage services from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Rackspace or EMC to their desktop PC or laptops. Gladinet CloudAFS serves the use case that companies may want to attach cloud storage services to their file servers. Gladinet Cloud Backup serves the backup purpose, such as taking snapshots of SQL Servers or folders. Gladinet Cloud Space serve the use case of using iPad to remote visit files sitting on a Windows PC. As you noticed from these previous generation of products, they all integrate Cloud Storage Services at the client side. In the Cloud Desktop case, the cloud stora...

In a team environment, what are some of the basic requirements when it comes to cloud storage use cases? As we look below, the requirements are very similar to the old Windows File Server requirements, with some new Cloud Storage twists. Requirement A – User Home Directory Every team member needs a private space that he or she can store work related folders and files.  Many companies used active directory to map a drive to user’s home directory on a Windows File Server.  User can roam from PC to PC inside the company and always connected to his/her own home directory. This is the same requirement for cloud storage for teams. Each user needs to have a home directory. This requirement is served by the new Gladinet Cloud for Teams . Each user will have his own home directory. With the cloud storage, the new requirement is that the user home directory needs to be accessible anywhere user goes, from company office to home to on the road. Requirement B – Shared Team Folder F...

We talked about cloud storage use case can be summarized as BASIC (Backup, Access, Sync & Share, Identity & Control). This article discuss how the BASIC cloud storage use case is served by Gladinet Cloud. First there is a quick introduction video that may present it better than the writing here. Quick Intro Video (The video is 1280x720 HD)

What would be the best way to migrate local storage to cloud storage? The answer shall be that you are using it (cloud) as if there is no migration, no interruption, no down time and no wait time.  It shall be as easy as you attach your local storage on-to the cloud and you can start using it from the cloud, regardless whether the whole transfer has finished or not. With the new Gladinet Cloud, this is a reality. Your familiar local storage can be attached to Gladinet Cloud. It will be immediately available to your other devices, from the web, from a virtual network drive, from your desktop and your file server,  while the background migration is completing. First, you will need to sign up for a Gladinet Cloud account. Once you are done, you can use the account from your Gladinet Cloud Desktop (Team Edition) and Gladinet Cloud Server.

Gladinet Cloud Server is Gladinet CloudAFS combined with Gladinet Cloud for Teams . On one hand, it is a file server that allows you to mount different cloud storage services such as Amazon S3 , Windows Azure , Google Storage , EMC Atmos into a Windows File Server. On the other hand, it allows you to have default Gladinet Cloud so it works out of the box (instead of waiting for you to mount any cloud storage services before it is fully functional). This is a step forward to have a complete cloud access solution for customers. Gladinet Cloud is based on Amazon S3. By delivering it as default storage to customers, Gladinet makes it simpler for users to use the cloud. Installation Gladinet Cloud Server installs through a standard Windows MSI package.

Last week, Amazon Web Services Blog reported that there were 566 Billion Objects in Amazon S3. We have been following Amazon S3’s growth closely and here is a picture we plotted with Excel. You can see the growth fits well with the red exponential curve.

Last week, the Gladinet Cloud for Teams and Businesses were released. It is a cloud storage service in general. This article discusses several unique features of the Gladinet Cloud and answer the Why Gladinet Cloud questions. 1. Merge the Cloud Storage and On-Premise Local Storage Talking to Gladinet’s customers, quite many are facing the pain of cloud migration, especially the time it takes to sync data up to the cloud. Businesses can’t afford to have a 2-week gap just to sync local data to cloud before they can use it. They prefer the sync happens in the background, while the data continues to be available to other sites, like virtually in the cloud. This is a unique feature of Gladinet Cloud – Attach Local Folder to Cloud. Once the folder is attached, it is virtually available, while cloud migration happens in the background.

Gladinet is introducing Gladinet Cloud for Teams, a service which provides unified, managed access to cloud and on-premise storage. Bridging the Gap between Local and Cloud With over 1 million download user-base, many customers told us that they will still use local storage during the cloud storage migration. In fact, many will continue to use local storage after the migration is complete. Unification is therefore a key feature that allows some data to be kept on-premise for compliance, control, or security reasons, while moving the rest to the cloud for maximum efficiency. Furthermore, the access and management models remain the same, regardless of storage location. The unified approach also eases the practical pains of migration with immediate, cloud-based access to all data, without having to wait for the completion of lengthy uploads. Businesses face the problem of migrating large data sets to the cloud with limited bandwidth. With Gladinet Cloud, their data can be accessed im...

Google has many different storage options. For example, you have Gmail storage, Google Picasa storage, Google Docs storage and etc. This article talks about yet another one, Google Storage for Developers, a new storage option, which is also a pure REST (Representational state transfer) API (application programming interface) based storage service. Search for “Google Storage” in Google, you will land at the Google Storage for Developers home page , where you will start.

If you are thinking about the cloud storage, as the CIO or owner of a small and medium sized business, you are probably thinking about how to best leverage the cloud, while making a seamless integration with your existing IT infrastructure and local storage. As an observation from the market and from the Gladinet user base, there are several use cases that stand out as good ways to leverage cloud storage. 1. Backup & Restore There are many online storage services, such as Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Docs, Amazon S3 and so on. People are looking for ways to quickly backup local folders and files to online storage. Also for those that are already using cloud storage, a reverse backup from cloud to local is also important since local storage is bigger and cheaper at the current cloud computing evolution. This use case can be used to replace tape backup or used as a compliment to the existing on-premise backup solutions.

Before cloud storage, it is not easy for service providers to provide an online backup solution. There were several technology barriers. First it is not easy to maintain a cheap storage solution in the service providers’ data center. Second, it is not easy to develop a protocol to talk between customer’s PC and the storage in the service provider’s data center. Third, it is not easy to develop a backup agent software that runs on the customers’ PC.  That is why most of them choose to OEM or resell solutions from Carbonite,  Mozy or Amazon S3 based backup solution if the customers want online backup from the service provider. With the progress of the cloud storage technology in recent years, the landscape is changing. First, OpenStack storage is a mature cloud storage solution that allows the service providers to create a scalable storage solution based on cheap commodity hardware and also based on open source software. Second, OpenStack protocol is compatible with Rackspace ...

You may have several important folders on the windows server that you want to protect online. Also as part of the cloud adoption strategy, you need the near term protection turned into a long term cloud migration. With these goals, it makes sense to mirror these important folders into a cloud storage service such as Windows Azure Storage or Amazon S3. In the near term, it fulfills the off-site backup purpose. In the long run, you can migrate your storage to these cloud storage services since your data is there over time. This tutorial focuses on Windows Azure Storage and how to set it up so your folders are protected by Windows Azure. The steps are similar if you want to replace Windows Azure with Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files . The product that can get it done is Gladinet Cloud Backup . Gladinet Cloud Backup is packaged into two different products – the stand alone Cloud Backup or as an add-on to Gladinet Cloud Desktop. Cloud Backup is a Windows background service so it can m...

Amazon S3 was designed with developers as its audience. Developers create applications around the Amazon S3 and those applications are used by the end user. Seeing the amazing growth from Amazon S3, we are also seeing more and more people from real estates, dental office and many other small and medium sized businesses started to use Amazon S3 directly since the aws.amazon.com web-front provides many basic functionalities. Gladinet supports Amazon S3 from day one with functionalities like map a network drive to Amazon S3; backup to Amazon S3; leverage Amazon S3 as a PC-2-PC sync bridge and conduit. As long as you have your master Amazon S3 account credentials, you can use Gladinet software with Amazon S3. Now, Amazon introduced IAM (identity and account management) in its aws.amazon.com web interface. This introduced new user identities in one single master account. So now, not only it is possible to have a set of master account credentials, normal S3 admins can also create sub-use...

You have a file server for your team to share. You have heard of cloud storage and the leading service such as Amazon S3. Now you are considering how to extend your file server with cloud storage services. Objectives There are several objectives to combine a file server with cloud storage service. First, you want your team to continue to have the same user experience with the file server since they are already familiar with the file server. Second, you will like to extend the file server’s capacity with cloud storage so you don’t need to buy internal hard drives. Third, possibly backing up some existing folders on the file server so in case anything happen to the file server, you can quickly replace it and restore the files and folders.

Earlier this month, Nuance released PaperPort 14. PaperPort 14 is a successful software program helping users organize digital documents and files on computers. With the new release, PaperPort extends the capability to organize digital documents in the cloud. One of the key component is Nuance Cloud Connector, which is also powered by Gladinet Cloud Desktop . As shown in the following picture, the Nuance Cloud Drive (N:) shows up inside PaperPort. You can mount many different kinds of cloud storage services such as Google Docs, Box.net, Amazon S3, OpenStack, RackSpace, Windows Azure and so on into the drive and organize digital documents from these services as if they were local on the computer.

There are many options for cloud storage services. For example, you can put your documents and folders in Google Docs, Windows SkyDrive, Box.net, Amazon S3, Windows Azure and so on. The one cloud storage service you started using may not be the one you will end up sticking to for long term. Problem arises when you want to move your data from one cloud storage vendor to another. This article discuss how to use Gladinet Cloud Desktop to migrate your files and folders from one cloud storage service to another.  The idea is simple. If the cloud storage services you are using can be mounted into Windows Explorer as side by side virtual folders, you can initiate a drag and drop from one to the other. The drag and drop will trigger Gladinet Cloud Desktop to schedule tasks to copy files over. The following steps assume the Gladinet Cloud Desktop is installed already.

Yesterday, Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Suite ( Gladinet Cloud Desktop , Gladinet Cloud Backup , Gladinet CloudAFS ) registered over a Million downloads. It is an important milestone, validating the market of bridging On-Premise storage and cloud storage. There are several observations we have made from the growing Gladinet user base. 1. Cloud Storage needs Local Access Point Cloud storage is in the Internet. However, people need easy and practical access from local IT infrastructure. In general, people call this the gateway or the on-ramp to cloud storage. The cloud gateway can be generalized  to include desktop client, special backup agent or a central access point like a file server replacement. In Gladinet’s product suites, the desktop client is Gladinet Cloud Desktop; the special backup agent is Gladinet Cloud Backup; the file server replacement is Gladinet CloudAFS. The three products have similar look-and-feel as they fit into a single platform for cloud storage access...

In Windows, we have enjoyed easy access to different kind of drives from one single name space and portal – Windows Explorer.  For such a long time, we take for granted the convenience of storage portal feature in Windows. Whether it is a CD-ROM drive, a Floppy drive, several hard drives or different network drives, they are all easily accessible from My Computers in Windows. What if we could do the same to cloud storage services? Before we talk about cloud storage portal, let’s first bring up the different cloud storage technology families. Of all the cloud storage services you can use out there, there are basically 8 different technologies out there:

Rackspace Cloud Files include Rackspace Cloud Files US and Rackspace Cloud Files UK. It is an excellent choice for online backup purpose, especially when you are already using other Rackspace services. This article covers steps to backup local files and folders to Rackspace Cloud Files First you will need to acquire a Rackspace Cloud Files account. If you need a US account, you will sign up at  Rackspace Cloud Files US . If you need a UK account, you will sign up at Rackspace Cloud Files UK . After that, you can install Gladinet Cloud Desktop as a Desktop application to connect to your Rackspace Cloud Files account.  The connected Rackspace Cloud Files account will show up like a locally attached network drive, allowing you to do drag-n-drop copying files from Windows Explorer. Gladinet Cloud Desktop also includes scheduled backup features. As shown in the following mount virtual directory wizard, you can pick either Rackspace Cloud Files (default US) or Rackspace Cloud F...

Google Docs has a nice versioning feature that allows you to keep a change list of what you have done to the files. It is a very convenient feature when you are collaborating on a file with colleagues. Gladinet Cloud Desktop has been supporting Google Docs since 2008. It allows users to upload and download Google Docs files from their Windows Explorer directly, just like using a local drive. It provides a greatly simplified migration path for users to move to Google Docs. So users can batch move files and folders from local drive and local NAS device to Google Docs. After user moves files to Google Docs, the next step naturally is to share and collaborate with colleagues. Now adding versioning support from Desktop is an important feature addition for users to collaborate directly from local applications such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop and etc. This article will describe the Google Docs versioning support from Gladinet Cloud Desktop . Step 1 – Mount Google Docs ...

There are more and more customers and potential partners that are installing OpenStack storage. We saw the questions coming from Gladinet forum and coming from support email ( support@gladinet.com ). Earlier the year, we saw Internap XIPCloud went live. This quarter, we saw KT ucloud storage too. There are also quite some customers setting up internal OpenStack storage and doing proof of concepts. These customers have contacted Gladinet for the cloud storage access solutions. You have OpenStack swift storage? We can help deliver to customer’s desktop and file servers. You have a channel to reach out to these potential cloud storage customers? We have the solution for them to use! The open source nature of the OpenStack project is fueling the adoption. Many of the customers contacted Gladinet with a very small OpenStack instance to start with. During a typical sales call with OpenStack storage, we cover these 5 basic cloud storage use cases. 1. Backup to OpenStack Cloud Storage

Amazon S3 is getting more and more popular with Small and Medium sized Businesses(SMBs). These SMBs typically have mobile workers and office workers. They are looking for a cloud drive solution for a team of users. The earlier solutions from Gladinet requires the Amazon S3 master account holder to share the account credentials with the team so each team member can mount the same Amazon S3 account and buckets, thus they can all use the same cloud drive. With the latest version from Gladinet , it is now possible to integrate and leverage the Amazon Identity and Account Management (IAM) feature so each team member can have a set of unique credentials and get assigned a special bucket to use, while the account master keeps the mater account secrets to himself.

Google Storage ( Google Storage for Developers ) has been on the market for a long time now. It functions very much like Amazon S3. It can be an excellent online backup storage. This article discuss how to setup Google Storage as an online backup target, allowing you to access files both locally and from Google Storage’s online Google Storage Manager. First you will need to sign up for Google Storage . If you have a Google account already, all that you need to do is to activate it. During the activation process, you will need to enable the Google Storage access and also setup billing information through Google Checkout.

Gladinet CloudAFS is reaching version 3, the same version level as the other two products (Cloud Desktop & Cloud Backup) in the same Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Suite. CloudAFS is an acronym for cloud attached file server . The basic functionality is to attach cloud storage services to a file server as a mountable volume. Thus expanding the file server with cloud storage capability. Its functionality includes Backup file server shares to cloud, Access cloud storage as a network share, Sync file servers over two different locations, Integrate existing applications such as Backup Exec with cloud storage and Connect a group of users over cloud storage. It services the same BASIC (Backup, Access, Sync, Integrate, Connect) use cases for cloud storage.

There are many ways to connect to cloud storage. The most popular one is to provide web interface inside a web browser. For example, Google Docs, SkyDrive all have their own web interface. The problem of this is that it can’t be interoperable with existing applications until the applications are re-written. Google has a Google Cloud Connector for this purpose to connect Microsoft Office applications to Google Docs. The other way is to connect directly from OS. For example, Chrome-OS is an Internet-based OS that has everything in the cloud. From within Chrome browser, you can do various browser-based access to different cloud storage services. The third way is to translate cloud storage service into mountable file system and to allow different local applications to interact with the cloud storage as a file system. This will be an important way for many of the local applications to connect to cloud storage. For example, Nuance has a Cloud Connector that connects OmniPage to the cloud. ...