CentreStack transforms traditional file servers into cloud file servers

One of the basic problem cloud storage solves is how to access files and folders across the Internet, or the Wide Area Network (WAN). As an ubiquitous cloud storage client, the Gladinet Cloud Desktop solves the same problem – how to access files over WAN. The solution is protocol neutral. As it is now, Gladinet Cloud Desktop supports Amazon S3 protocol, OpenStack protocol, Windows Azure protocol, EMC Atmos protocol, FTP, WebDav, traditional CIFS/SMB protocol and many other protocols too. This article will focus on the use case of CIFS/SMB and target enterprises that are consolidating branch offices’ storage solution into a regional data center.

As Google Apps and Google Docs getting more popular, a common use case keeps coming up from Gladinet customers. On one hand, they will setup mirror backup from an aging file server to Google Docs. On the other hand, they will setup reverse backup from Google Docs to a local PC (not necessary a file server). The goal of mirror backup from local file server to Google Docs is to get ready to switch to Google Docs completely. The goal of reverse backup from Google Docs to a local PC is to prepare for Internet glitches and cloud service glitches. If you are a company of 5-10 people and thinking about getting rid of aging file server and move to the cloud (Google Apps/Google Docs), this document is a reference implementation of the migration. Existing Infrastructure In the existing infrastructure, everyone in the company is sharing folders and files through a file server inside the company. As company grows older, the file server is getting older too.

Last week, Nuance released OmniPage 18 , with a new Nuance Cloud Connector feature that allows OmniPage documents to be saved to a wide list of cloud storage services such as Amazon S3, Windows Azure, Rackspace Cloud Files, Google Docs, Box.net and etc. Powered by the Gladinet Cloud Desktop , the Nuance Cloud Connector quickly turns OmniPage, a desktop optical character recognition (OCR) application into a cloud storage connected application. The above is a picture of the Nuance Cloud Connector button interface inside OmniPage 18. Upon clicking on the button, you will see a welcome page asking you to mount cloud storage services.

OpenStack Storage (Swift) is one of the cloud storage technology that you can deploy on your own. There are many use cases around cloud storage such as Backup, Access, Sync, Integration and Connectivity and Share (BASICS). Today we will cover a special use case of backup – version control with OpenStack Storage. Let’s say you have a local folder that has important documents. You want every change to this folder put under version control so you can go back one change at a time if you need to. You also want to put the version control repository on OpenStack (Swift) storage so if you need to move to a different PC, you can get your folder back on a second PC if you sync to the head version. The tool to get this done is Gladinet Cloud Desktop . This article will use Internap XIPCloud as an example. Besides Internap XIPCloud that is based on OpenStack storage, there are also Rackspace Cloud Files, Rackspace UK, Korean Telecom and many others will come.

EMC Atmos is powering many cloud storage services. One of the use case that keeps coming up for cloud storage is backing up Microsoft SQL Server off-site to an online storage. EMC Atmos will be a good destination for SQL Server backups. Put cloud storage aside, there are two basic ways to backup SQL server. First one is SQL Server manager, you can use the SQL Server manager to manually backup SQL server to a local file. The second way is by using Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). SQL Server is a VSS producer so any application that is a VSS consumer can take the snapshot that SQL VSS writer produces and save it away. Now put the cloud storage in and in the context of EMC Atmos , there are two ways to backup SQL server to EMC Atmos too. If the existing backup mechanism is to produce local files, you can use Gladinet Cloud Backup to backup the local files to EMC Atmos. Gladinet Cloud Backup is also a Volume Shadow Copy Service consumer so it is capable of receiving what the SQL Server

Google Docs recently introduced a feature allowing you to upload folder to Google Docs . There is a limitation that it doesn’t support Internet Explorer, while supporting latest versions of Chrome, Firefox and Safari. As of today, Microsoft Internet Explorer has over 55% of browser market share so how to bring this feature to Internet Explorer users? Copying files from local to online is different from copying files from local to local. It is desirable to have robust copy (robocopy) kind of functionality for the Google Docs upload. When there is an Internet glitch or server 500 error, the upload shall continue and retry. This article discuss a way to upload folders from local desktop to Google Docs, with robust retry feature and with the option of setting up mirror backup of local files and folders to Google Docs. We use Gladinet Cloud Desktop to mount Google Docs as a virtual folder in Windows Explorer. After that, upload folders to Google Docs is as easy as a drag & drop.

After you have an Amazon S3 account, you can connect and access it at work. You can also connect and access it when you are on the road. It can now be used as a bridge to synchronize your files and folders between your office PC and your mobile laptop PC. This article discuss steps to setup PC-2-PC file synchronization among your PCs. First you need to activate your Amazon S3 account. If you are already an Amazon user, this step is fairly easy. You just need to visit http://aws.amazon.com and sign up for Amazon Web Services. After that, you can install Gladinet Cloud Desktop on your PCs. Step 1 – Planning In this step, you will see whether you want to have a brand new folder so you can drop files into it for sync purpose. Or if you already have multiple folders sitting locally that you want to sync. Based on what you want to do, you can create your Amazon S3 buckets first. For example, if you already have 3 separate local folders that you want to sync separately, you can crea