CentreStack transforms traditional file servers into cloud file servers

Gladinet Cloud Enterprise is a private file sync and share solution for enterprise.  As an administrator for the Gladinet Cloud Enterprise solution, you may be responsible for setting up home directories for users in the solution. PowerShell is very convenient for this kind of task. Today’s example is using PowerShell to setup a home directory version folder after the user has been created. For demonstration purpose, we will use the PowerShell ISE. Since the ISE has the help panel, it is very easy to see each PowerShell commands. In this example, The GCE server is at 192.168.2.11, the administrator is joe@gladinet.com and the password is dddddddd. PowerShell ISE

We kicked off a series of OpenStack EFSS video demo and blog articles. Yesterday we started with a general overview of the EFSS (Enterprise Sync and Share) solution based on OpenStack Swift. Today’s session will focus more on the web browser interface. This video starts from the multi-tenant interface and going into creating a new tenant, and assign an OpenStack swift container to the tenant. After that, it covers the multi-user web browser interface about how each user access the files and folders. (Single Tenant Enterprise Edition is a special case of the Multi-Tenant edition) In the middle of the session, it reviews the team folder concept and how multiple users in the same company can share and collaboration on the team folder. At the end of the session, it also covers the peer-to-peer or point-to-point share. The peer to peer share can share files with guest users or users from other companies.

When Service Provider partners select Gladinet Cloud Enterprise to provide a cloud sync and share solution to their existing customers, most of the time they already provide other services to the customers, such as file server, web server and email servers.  They will need to have a way to integrate a new service to their existing service portfolio and have a need to do deep integration. Gladinet Cloud User Manager API is for this purpose. To further support the integration work, the PowerShell Module is provided as one of the ways to leverage the API integration. With the PowerShell module, many tasks such as create user, create tenants can be scripted. Below is a video session for the PowerShell module. It is a quick look into how the powershell module works. For more detail, contact Gladinet support for the API documentation and the PowerShell documentation.

There are two ways to upgrade Gladinet Cloud Enterprise. First one is by using the same installer and the installer will detect the existing installation and do an upgrade. This method is very easy and straight forward because it is about clicking one upgrade button and the rest of the upgrade work is done. There is also another script method of upgrading. While the installer way is good for small setup, the script way may be good for big deployment. The following 5-minute video documents the installer upgrade.

We are seeing more and more Enterprises deploying OpenStack Swift as an enterprise wide object storage platform. After that, they are looking for a sync and share solution that they can self-host and self-deploy, side by side with their OpenStack Swift solution. This article documents a quick and easy setup of Gladinet Cloud Enterprise as the enterprise sync and share solution on top of OpenStack Swift. Step 1: OpenStack Swift as the Storage Layer First the enterprise need to have a storage layer. Most likely they will use OpenStack Swift. It can start with a simple 4-nodes or 6-nodes setup and scale to bigger size later on. The OpenStack Swift can have either private API access or public API access. Either one is fine. Step 2: Install Gladinet Cloud Enterprise The second step will be install Gladinet Cloud Enterprise, where the Gladinet Cloud Enterprise servers can access the OpenStack Swift via API access.   For more information, please visit the Gladinet OpenStack Swift...

Gladinet Cloud Enterprise is a self-hosted version of the Gladinet Cloud. You can install it on a server and you will have a self-hosted file sync, share and collaboration solution.  The solution is built on top of Microsoft Web Platform, including IIS, ASP.NET and etc. In the past, we ask users to install the prerequisites before installing the Gladinet Cloud Enterprise. Now with the new Gladinet Cloud Enterprise all-in-one installer,  you can install everything from begin to end. Here is a video.

For cloud storage solutions, there are two big camps, one is the synchronization based solution, for example Google Drive, Sky Drive, Dropbox and SugarSync; and the other is drive letter based solution, such as Gladinet. With synchronization based solution, basically every single file is replicated and synchronized to all the devices as local folders for the devices that require access. With drive letter based solution, the cloud storage is presented to the user as an external drive , with a drive letter inside Windows Explorer or Mac Finder.  Only the folder structure and small amount of data such as file size, date and time are downloaded. The real file is not downloaded until it is used (for example, the user double click on a file to generate editing request).  There may be a third variation that combines the drive and sync together. For example, the drive letter is the main access method, and also allow local folders to be synchronized to the cloud. So when you need a...

Many schools have certain regulations about where the files can be stored. Most of the time, it can only be stored inside school-owned facility and most likely, stored on-premise. Faculties and students are also having their home directories in a traditional Windows File Server way, meaning that they log on to a campus computer and there is a v: drive or a drive letter that is pointing to the user’s home directory, typically stored as a property inside the Active Directory. In the meanwhile, you are also seeing Dropbox, Google Drive and SkyDrive, bringing the sync & share use cases to students. As the CIO of the school, you are looking for a similar sync and share solution that can work directly with on-premise storage and active directory. The goal is simple, you want to give users the convenience of a sync and share solution, and also, meeting school regulations. Gladinet Cloud Enterprise and Gladinet Cloud Enterprise for Service Provider are the two products that can help.

When it comes to cloud storage, many users are familiar with dropbox and box. Many companies wish they had a similar solution that is installable, deployable and under the company’s own control. For example, there are companies using Amazon GovCloud,  wish to have a file sync & share and team collaboration solution inside GovCloud. Another example, there are companies that have sensitive client data that is under NDA,  which has to be maintained on-site, without leaving the company premise. They wish to have an internal sharing solution, which is good for the company intranet. It could also be that some companies need to be HIPPA compliant and have built a HIPPA-compliant storage service. They need a corresponding sync & share solution to work with their own storage. All these use cases need a self-installable solution that can be deployed at a flexible place, such as on an EC2 machine, connecting to S3 , but inside the GovCloud; or be deployed in a data center tha...

You are familiar with managed and hosted service since your company in one way or the other may be using a managed service such as MS Exchange, MS Lync, MS CRM, file storage and disk space. If you are a service provider yourself, you are even more familiar with these since you are managing hosted solutions for your customers. You may have MS Exchange server, MS Lync, CRM server and MS Windows 2008 server in your data center where you manage and service your customers. Now, have you heard of managed file sync & share service? Where you can install a server or a group of servers in your data center; you then manage this service either yourself or for your customers? If you are looking for a solution like this, you found one in Gladinet Cloud Enterprise . To make sure it is the right solution for you, just use the following quick cheat sheet, which contains a list of features you need. If you find a feature that meet your requirement, you check it off. If you find you are checking ...

Recently, another potential customer request came in. The customer has 3 offices located in different regions, all in the US. They have a need to share Microsoft Office files such as Word, Excel, Power Point files from each office into a central location to store all the master files. They need to be able to lock files so people from different offices don’t overwrite into each other’s change. They need to have version history of the files in case files are accidentally deleted.  They also need to integrate the solution with a mapped network drive in Windows Explorer. The good news is Gladinet Cloud for Teams has all those required features. We have seen this repeating theme keeps coming up, which also helped shape the current version of the Gladinet Cloud for Teams. Gladinet cloud for teams is made exactly for this purpose – file sync and share among your distributed offices. To start, first you will need to acquire a Gladinet Cloud for team account from www.gladint.com . After ...

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?

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.

With the 4.0 release of Gladinet Cloud Desktop, we now support a 2-way sync between storage services like Google Docs and a local folder. With Google Docs, the synchronization happens in real time so that your local folder is always exactly the same as your cloud folder.   How to Setup 2-Way Sync The first step is the same as in version 3.0, you will need to install Gladinet Cloud Desktop and mount Google Docs into your Windows Explorer. You can mount virtual directory from Gladinet Management Console.

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.

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...

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)