CentreStack transforms traditional file servers into cloud file servers

In a local area network, the Active Directory Home Folder setting is a very convenient feature from Windows. The domain admin can set your home folder and map it to a drive letter. After that, you can roam around in local area network. Wherever you login, the home directory always following you, showing up as the drive letter on your Windows Desktop or Laptops. Now, what if you want to extend that home folder feature to a more modernized way of accessing. For example, you want to access your home folder natively via a HTML5 web browser; what if you want to access your home folder from iOS and Android devices. You are familiar with online services such as dropbox and box and you wish to marry your online storage features with your Active Directory home folder. Gladinet Cloud Enterprise is the solution that can wrap the modernized online storage accessing methods around your Active Directory home folder and expose that to web browser access, Wide-Area-Network access and iOS/Android mob...

Gladinet Cloud Enterprise brings web browser access, mobile device access, online collaboration and file sharing capabilities to Windows Servers and the file server shares behind it. One of the most important feature is Active Directory integration. Not only does customers need Active Directory users integration so AD users can access the Gladinet Cloud Enterprise, they also want to access the file server shares natively with the AD permissions. Gladinet Cloud Enterprise provides this important Active Directory integration feature, as shown in the video below.

We are announcing the support of Windows Server 2012 for Gladinet Cloud Enterprise. In the past, the recommended server platform for Gladinet Cloud Enterprise is always Windows 2008 Service Pack 2 or R2. Windows Server 2012 support was experimental. Now it is fully supported. The two server platform are quite different. For example, Server 2012 includes .NET framework 4.5, which works with ASP.NET 4.5. While on Windows Server 2008, you need to install .NET framework 4 and it works wit ASP.NET 4. In a sense, Windows Server 2012 is a more complete Web Platform because the .net framework 4.5 comes with the server and ASP.NET 4.5 is just one step away from turning on inside the server manager. Below is a video showing Gladinet Cloud Enterprise running on Windows Server 2012.

Gladinet Cloud Windows Store App has been released for a while now. For those of you haven’t got a chance to try it out on a Windows Surface RT device or a Windows 8 Tablet device. Here is a video.

Today we released a new version of Gladinet Cloud. The most obvious change is the support of new Themes. Now you have Blue, Gray, Classic themes to choose from. Take a look at the following new video and compare to the legacy look and feel.   Now compare to the legacy look and feel. Both theme are available in the new release.  

Here is a very common use case, as we received a lead from a potential customer: “We are a small company and we want to evaluate moving out file server storage to the cloud. We are evaluating Amazon S3 as a solution and already have some storage configured.  Currently we have 3-4 file servers each with around 2-3TB data. I would like to keep the changes to the users as small as possible (i.e. keep Windows Explorer as main interface).” As we summarize this requirement: Customer wants to move local file server to cloud (Amazon S3)   Customer wants to keep the same user interface (Windows Explorer)   The Gladinet Cloud Team Edition and the included Gladinet Cloud File Server Agent is built for this use case. Requirement #1 – Amazon S3 connectivity Gladinet Cloud Team Edition is open for Cloud Storage Account integration. You can bring your own storage to plug-it-into your own Gladinet account.

Two weeks ago, we released the Windows Phone Store App for Windows Phone 8. Now we are pleased to announce the release of Gladinet Cloud Windows Store App, which works on Windows 8 Pro and Windows RT, serving devices like Microsoft Surface, Lenovo IdeaTab and other Windows 8 based tablet/desktop devices. You can get the app directly from Windows Store. Login Screen As usual, there is a login screen for the Windows Store App. If you are using the app to connect to your own Gladinet Cloud Enterprise instance, you can use the Access Point dialog to set it up. Cloud Files and Folders After sign in, you will see your files and folders from your Gladinet Cloud account. Detailed File and Folder View From the detailed view, you can share the file and folder, you can also put comments on the files and folders. Snapped View Support Compared to other mobile platform, Windows 8 is unique in that it supports “Snapped View” to run two apps side-by-side. Below the Gladinet Cloud App is sn...

When people talks about hybrid cloud storage solution, it typically means they want to keep using the existing file server. At the same time, they also want to replicate the file server data into cloud storage and make it available to the remote users. Basically, the local employees will keep using the local file server. The remote users will be using the cloud storage. The local file server and cloud storage will be in sync. If the file is changed locally, it is uploaded also to the cloud storage so remote user can use. If remote user changes the file, the change will also propagate back to the local file server. It serves many purposes. First the local file server and the cloud storage are like a backup system, backing up each other. Second, it is a VPN-replacement system, enabling remote users to access files without VPN. Third, it is an access system, it enables mobile users with iOS/Android and Windows Phone devices to access the files and folders. Backup Backup local files...