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Showing posts from May, 2012

When Google Drive needs Direct Random Access

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When it comes to cloud storage use case, everyone agrees that it needs to have web browser based access and mobile access, plus Desktop clients so the data can flow from desktop to web browser and to mobile devices. Google Drive seems to have everything, it has a web browser based access the same as we knew as Google Docs web interface. It has mobile app. It has Desktop client that has a local Google Drive folder that does two-way sync with the Google Drive Storage. A recent use case we saw is quite interesting. It shows that Google Drive needs a drive letter and direct random access to work well.

Access HP Cloud Storage from Mac OS X

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If you have an HP Cloud account, you may be familiar with the following screen, which is the HP web based storage browser for HP Cloud Object Storage . You can upload, download and browse the files and folders in your HP Cloud Object Storage. Besides the HP Cloud Storage Web Browser access, you may also want to access the cloud storage from PC, from Mac, from mobile devices or from file servers. This is when Gladinet Cloud can help.   This article documents how you can access HP Cloud Storage from your Mac.

Gladinet Cloud Mac Client Released

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Gladinet has been working on the Mac client project since the iPhone/iPad client release. It is a natural development extension to the iPhone/iPad project since they both require a Mac to develop and share a lot of the same Apple design patterns.  It also shares a lot with the Gladinet Cloud Desktop PC client. Now the Gladinet Cloud Mac Client was released. It adds a virtual drive to your Mac Finder under the DEVICES section. You can drag and drop files and folders to and from the virtual drive. You can also use local application to save and load files from the cloud directly. Log in to your Gladinet Cloud Premium or Team Edition account, under the “Desktop Client” section, you will see the Gladinet Cloud Desktop (Mac OS X) entry. You can click to download the installer package. The installer is a .dmg file. Double click on the file will show you the installer screen.

Cloud Storage Middleware

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As quoted from Wiki, Middleware is computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. We have seen the evolution of cloud computing and cloud storage. In terms of cloud storage service, Amazon S3 pretty much defines what cloud storage is. All the cloud storage services now are very similar to Amazon S3, whether it is Windows Azure Blob, EMC Atmos , Google Cloud Storage or OpenStack Swift Object Storage. These services have several things in common. First they are file (object) based. Second, they provide a set of very primitive API over HTTP, such as read file, write file, delete file and that is pretty much it. In a strict sense, cloud storage services referred to these services that provide the most primitive read/write functionality and  solved the most important problem of redundancy and scalability. It is the platform layer.

Gladinet Cloud Supports OpenStack KeyStone 2.0

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Gladinet has been supporting OpenStack since there was OpenStack. You can connect to an OpenStack swift (Object Storage) instance from Gladinet Cloud Desktop, Gladinet Cloud Server and also Gladinet Cloud Team Edition. OpenStack KeyStone is an identity service (or user login service). The benefit is that it can tie different OpenStack services together by providing a service catalog after user signs into OpenStack KeyStone. Within the service catalog, there will be end points and connection information for OpenStack Swift Object Storage. With the latest Gladinet release, you can find support for OpenStack KeyStone 2.0.

Access HP Cloud Storage from iPad

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Earlier this week, HP announced the public beta of its cloud services. Since then, we published a series of demo video about how to leverage HP Cloud Storage for different use case. For example, use HP Cloud Storage as a network drive for access and backup; use HP Cloud Storage from file server as a file server replacement; use HP Cloud Storage from web browser for share and collaboration. This video adds one more use case – access HP Cloud Storage files and folders from mobile device, an iPad. Related Posts Gladinet Supports HP Cloud Services

Anywhere Access, Share and Collaboration with HP Cloud Storage

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With HP Cloud Storage, you can access it from web browser or from Application Programming Interface (API). With Gladinet, it is much easier to access HP Cloud Storage from all major web browser with Windows Explorer like interface. It is also easy to share and collaborate with colleagues from web browser. This video demonstrates the value-add functionalities Gladinet brings to HP Cloud Storage. There are quite some significant enhancements: (1) Anywhere access: from desktop, from web browser and from mobile devices to HP Cloud Storage. (2) Team Folder for collaboration, with file locking and version control (3) Peer-2-Peer Sharing. It is very easy to share files and folders with people. Related Posts Gladinet Cloud for HP Cloud Storage Service Gladinet Announces Support for HP Cloud Services

Seamless Local Folder Migration to HP Cloud Storage

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HP Cloud Services has entered into public Beta, so anyone interested can try opening an account with HP Cloud Service. This video demonstrate how to seamlessly migration local folder to HP Cloud Storage. First we need to explain what seamless migration means. There are several ways. Some may say, it means drag and drop a folder from local to HP Cloud and then forever works there from the cloud. This is one of the way. As an analogy, you want to get on a one-way plane to the cloud, move data there and never come back. More realistically, you want to mirror everything local to the cloud, also maintain this two way sync structure, so everything changed local will continue to move to the cloud. Everything changed in the cloud will be mirrored back to local. This in Gladinet terminology, you attached a local folder to the cloud. Once you attached a local folder to the cloud, the content is migrate to the cloud in the background. Also because it is attached to the cloud, you can do random

Access HP Cloud Storage from a Local File Server

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Gladinet Cloud fully support HP Cloud Storage. This video demonstrates the support from the Gladinet Cloud Server. The use case is very simple. You have a file server that over a period of time you would like to migrate over to the cloud, and preferably HP Cloud Storage. You would like to connect the file server with the HP cloud storage so your local users can still use the file server through regular network shares, while the file server is in turn doing seamless migration to the HP Cloud Storage. In between migration, you will have web browser access, mobile device access to the same file server while the content is migrating to the cloud. Related Posts Access and Backup to HP Cloud Storage Gladinet Release Support for HP Cloud Storage

Google Drive and Google Cloud Storage

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Google offers several storage services. There is Google Drive, which is replacing the Google Docs. There is also Google Cloud Storage, which provide raw REST based cloud storage service. Some customer use cases may be best served by Google Drive and there are others that may be more suitable for Google Cloud Storage. For example, if you are a Google Apps customer looking for a file sharing or collaboration solution, Google Drive may be the obvious choice – especially if you’re already using Google Docs. On the other hand, if you want to migrate or backup file server data to the cloud, Google Cloud Storage is probably the better fit. Some will even compare Google Drive to Dropbox and Google Cloud Storage with Amazon S3. But the catch is that many customers do not fall squarely into one category or the other. Instead, they have overlapping needs and face the challenge of piecing together a solution that meets all these needs. Here comes a need to have a single piece of middleware that

Access and Backup to HP Cloud Storage

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Today HP moved its cloud services to public beta. Gladinet has been working closely with HP Cloud Service since private beta to provide product integration support. Gladinet is also announcing today the support of HP Cloud Storage service with the full Gladinet Suite of products. In the latest Gladinet Desktop Client, you will see the HP Cloud drop down, which allows you to attach your HP Cloud Storage account into Windows Explorer as a mapped network drive. At the next screen, you can enter the related HP Cloud account information.

Google Drive with a Mapped Drive Letter

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Google Drive is here and it is cool. It works like Google Docs with a drop-box. If you want to upload files, you can drop the files inside this specific “Google Drive” local folder and the files will sync up. Also the files you changed from other places can be synced down to this “Google Drive” folder too. As data grow, this automatically all-sync-up method may not be as desirable. Google Drive comes with this “Only Sync some folders” feature. It allows you to select which folder to sync and which folder not to sync. However, for the folder you don’t want to sync, you lose the ability of real-time access to the Google Drive file. Now comes Gladinet to help!