CentreStack transforms traditional file servers into cloud file servers

When you log into Gladinet Cloud web portal, you will see your files and folders immediately, in a Windows Explorer-like interface. Once you tried all the Gladinet Cloud features, you may find different folder icons such a  list of icons below. You may be wondering what kind of folders each icon represent and what kind of features are available for each. Not All Folders Are Created Equal

As a continued discussion from previous blog – Migrate your file server to the cloud , this article discuss how to migrate active directory users to the cloud as well. When you have an existing file server that you are migrating to cloud storage, in a hybrid access mode, you would like to keep the active directory users too. Hybrid mode means the local file server and cloud storage are in sync, allowing you to both accessing the local file server the old way, while accessing the same file server content from the cloud in the new way. When you are accessing the file server the old way, the user identity is validated by active directory. When you are accessing the file server from the cloud, you would prefer the same active directory user allowed to access. This is the background context of the article. Basic Setup The basic setup is a Gladinet Cloud Team account and a Gladinet Cloud Server installed. Gladinet Cloud Server is part of the Team account. As long as you have a team acco...

When you have a file server and you want to consider moving to the cloud with cloud storage, it is not as simple as moving a house from point A to point B. You need business continuity because the file server is the collaboration point that needs to continue to run. You don’t want a full two-way sync solution between your file server and cloud storage either, because the volume on the file server is usually bigger than the data on a consumer PC. So when a two-way sync solution is popular for consumer, it may not be as good for a file server in small business because of bandwidth consumption. You need a hybrid solution. In Gladinet’s term, you will install Gladinet Cloud Server on your file server and attach folders to the cloud. If you are familiar with two-way sync solutions, you can think of attaching folder to the cloud as an optimized two-way sync solution for file server, with on-demand random access and background sync. Now let’s get started.

The previous two articles discussed different access methods to your IBM SmartCloud Object Storage and Team Folder collaboration features. This article introduces the Folder and File Sharing feature with your IBM SmartCloud Storage. Functionality wise, Folder and file sharing is similar to team folder collaboration. There are 3 major differences. (1) Team folder is managed by administrator for the team; while Folder sharing is managed by each team member. (2) Team folder can only be published to known team users; while folder sharing can be shared to external user on a read-only basis, in addition to sharing with internal team users. (3) Team folder is always collaboration on a folder level; while folder and file sharing can share on a single file level.

Last article discussed several access methods you can have with IBM SmartCloud Object Storage. This article discusses how to have a team folder in the IBM SmartCloud Object Storage so everyone can share. Assuming you already have an IBM SmartCloud Object Storage account and a Gladinet Team account and you are already checking out the different access clients, such as web portal, desktop drive, file server volume and mobile app. Next step is to check out the team folder and its related features. User Management For team folder related features, first you need to have a team, which means users. There are several ways to create team users. You can create manually or you can import active directory users from your existing infrastructure. You can click “Manage My Cloud” and then “Manage User” to invoke the user manager. For manual creation, you can do it any time you are ready. For import active directory users, you will need to first install “Gladinet Cloud Server” into one of the f...

IBM SmartCloud Object Storage is targeted for Enterprise Cloud Storage. Most of the time, it is used for disaster and recovery or as an alternative media storage option. This series of articles discuss other common use cases – team collaboration and file server replacement. The use case will allow you to roam around freely and yet always have access to your files and folders in the IBM SmartCloud, whether the access is direct web browser access; desktop client access; file server access or mobile device access. First you will need an IBM SmartCloud Object Storage account and a Gladinet Team Edition account. Got www.gladinet.com , select Team Edition. In the next page, select “Plugin my own cloud storage account” first, then select “IBM SmartCloud Object Storage”. In the next page, you will enter your IBM SmartCloud Object Storage account information.  

Gladinet Solutions has been integrated with Nirvanix Cloud Storage since 2009. It started 3 years ago with simple desktop integration between Gladinet Cloud Desktop and Nirvanix Cloud Storage so you can use a mapped network drive to connect to your Nirvanix Cloud Storage account. As Gladinet solutions evolve from a single desktop client to a comprehensive set of online storage solutions including web interface, desktop client, file server volume and mobile app, it also brings all these value-add services to Nirvanix.

There are many, many Amazon S3 based online storage services. What is the difference, you may ask? What is Gladinet’s niche? What is the market segment to fill? The most popular online storage use case nowadays is the combination of web interface, desktop clients from PC and Mac, mobile clients, together with team folders support and peer-to-peer file sharing. Many online storage services do this.  The market niche is how to provide the functionality, while giving customers full control of the whole infrastructure stack from the bottom to the top.

Gladinet Cloud was designed from scratch for team account, with many team users. As such, more and more team-oriented features are moving into the Gladinet Cloud as teams grow bigger and bigger within Gladinet Cloud. Delegate Administrator In the past, there are two types of users, the administrator and the normal team user. Now there is a delegate administrator that can help administrator to setup team folder, manage users in the team and all these administrative works.

When it comes to team collaboration, most people will say SharePoint. However SharePoint was based on local area network. Some will say Box, but it doesn’t have open backend to plugin your own storage account. So if you have a SoftLayer Object Storage account and you need a team collaboration solution, what can you do? Gladinet Team Edition filled this niche by providing a web based team collaboration solution with comprehensive access clients, based on SoftLayer Object Storage. It is easy to sign up, go to www.gladinet.com and select Team Edition. At the next page select “Plugin my own cloud storage account” and select “Open Stack” since SoftLayer Object Storage is based on OpenStack.

Access cloud storage from a local file server is different from accessing it from a desktop machine. First the software on the file server needs to run as a background Windows server, while the software on the desktop can be a desktop application running inside user’s logon session. Second the software needs to mount the cloud storage as  a virtual file system volume, while on the desktop, there are many more ways to map a network drive. This is the third article in the SoftLayer Object Storage series, covering how to access SoftLayer Object Storage from a local Windows Server. In the previous two articles, we covered how to connect to the cloud storage from desktop, with a network drive and with backup functionalities. This article is similar to the previous two in that it covers the stand-alone case so SoftLayer Object Storage is connected directly from the file server. Later articles will go in to more advanced team edition features , such as how data can flow from Desktop ...

This is the second part of the SoftLayer series of articles, documenting features from Gladinet products and services that allow you, as an end user to more easily use SoftLayer Object Storage , without the need to do any programming. Before we get into the more advanced Team Edition that includes PC client, Mac client, web browser interface, mobile client with file sharing and team collaboration features, this article stays with the stand-alone desktop client use case. In the last blog, it discussed drive mapping feature. When you have a network drive that is connected to SoftLayer Object Storage, you can do drag and drop and ad-hoc backup and data transfer.  Sometimes, you prefer to have a more organized way of backup local folders to the cloud, such as mirroring a local folder into SoftLayer Object Storage or have snapshots taken and store that into the cloud. As in the last blog, you will install the Gladinet Cloud Desktop as a stand-alone application. In the Gladinet Manag...

SoftLayer Object Storage was introduced earlier this year. Since it is based on OpenStack Swift Object Storage, Gladinet has a suite of solutions ready to use, ranging from a desktop client to web browser based file explorer to mobile clients. From a functionality perspective, there are features like backup, sync, peer sharing and team collaboration (Covered in the previous blog – Add a BASIC Layer on top of OpenStack Swift ) There will be a series of articles documenting the solutions that works with SoftLayer Object Storage. This first article will show the easiest way to get it going, connecting to SoftLayer Object Storage from your Desktop, with a mapped network drive. All that you need is the Gladinet Cloud Desktop Starter Edition, a free download. After you download and install it. It is all ready to go. You will also need your SoftLayer Object Storage account credentials ready. You can login to your web based SoftLayer management console You will see your account credent...

The BASIC layer, on one hand, refers to the basic end user needs when it comes to cloud storage. The BASIC layer, on the other hand, refers to the sum of B ackup, A ccess, S ync/ S hare, I dentity and C ontrolled C ollaboration. End user won’t use OpenStack Swift storage directly because the interface is too primitive (such as read/write/delete objects). With a BASIC layer stacked on top of the OpenStack Swift, the basic needs are met and now it is ready for end user to use. It means the BASIC layer helps to sell OpenStack Swift Object Storage. So What is in a BASIC Layer?