CentreStack transforms traditional file servers into cloud file servers

CentreStack is a managed file sync and share solution, specialized in connecting file servers to cloud to extend the collaboration from local area network to wide area network, aka, Cloud. Talking about file servers that managed by managed service providers, many file servers are in customer’s site, such as in their office, in their building, away from a data center. One deployment scenario is installing a CentreStack server directly next to the file server. This is one way of doing it, which we covered in the previous blog. This article cover the case when the CentreStack server is in the data center, and customer’s file server is in their office, away from the data center. In this case, CentreStack can leverage the included server agent software to connect remote file server to cloud and thus turn local network share into cloud facing team folders. Here is the demo video.

If you are an IT admin working for a construction company, the title probably immediately grab your attention. Quite frequently, you have users working on various construction sites around the country and can be there for a while before moving to the next site.  Most of the time the users are in the middle of nowhere and rely on mobile 3G hotspot to access company file servers. Pain Point The user need to access various documents, such as construction drawings and Excel spreadsheets from the company file server. However, accessing it with  3G over VPN from the remote location, to ISP , then to the company file server is such a slow process that makes it very unpleasant to access those files. Why it is Slow? There are several factors that contributing to the slowness. First is the CIFS/SMB protocol used for shared network drive is a very chatty protocol, involving requests/acknowledgement many times over the transfer of a single file. With slow network and long latency, thi...

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.

“I want to build a file server in EC2, storage use Amazon S3, user management integrated with Active Directory, and publish network shares with CIFS”. As Amazon VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) getting more and more popular and becoming the default for EC2 servers, we are seeing more and more requests like this for Amazon S3. As we will show you in this article, it is not hard to implement this with Gladinet Cloud solutions. There are two hurdles for you to overcome, which Gladinet Cloud does it for you. Problems to Solve (a) Amazon S3 is not  CIFS (Microsoft Network Share) protocol, so you will need an Amazon S3 to CIFS protocol converter. Otherwise, you can’t map a drive directly to Amazon S3. (b) CIFS protocol is a LAN protocol, suitable for local area network. Performance wise, it wasn’t designed for wide area network (AKA Internet). The CIFS protocol is too chatty, involving too much requests and acknowledgements. It is slow to stream files over the Internet from Amazon data c...

Here is a pretty common use case. You have an existing file server like windows 2003 or windows 2008 in the local office. Everyone in the local office is using a network share from the file server. There are some users from the branch office that may need to access the file server share from outside through VPN as well. There are multiple pain points that concern you at this moment. First is you are concerned about the life of the file sever and if the server stops functioning, you need to have a quick way to continue the work. Second, the remote users are complaining about the speed of access to the file server since they need to go through VPN. It is cumbersome and slow. Recently you heard the cloud storage and related technology and the possibility to cure all the pain points without disrupting your current work. That brings you to look for a cloud storage solution. Now you are looking at how the solution will help, read on … The Requirement You need a solution that will meet...

A new lead came in and it read as follows: We have a Windows 2008 file sever and want to share information with mobile users with laptops and smart phones. Can you replicate the file server folders to the cloud? Can users view the file server shares as a shared disk? What product would you recommend that will satisfy this need? This is a very common use case for Gladinet product, commonly referred to as File Server Content in the Cloud . Typically, you would set up a seamless link between file server local folders (most of the time, existing network share) and the cloud storage. While the folders are seamlessly migrated to the cloud storage, you can use it from remote locations. On one hand, it fulfilled the need to access, on the other hand, it fulfill the need to migrate. You would need the Gladinet Cloud Team Edition or Business Edition so you have a cloud storage account to start with. After that, on the Windows 2008 file server, you would install the Gladinet Cloud Team Serv...

Most businesses have heard of cloud storage but haven’t started taking any action towards cloud storage migration. Many CIOs, on one hand are following closely the cloud computing development, on the other hand, are complacent about the existing IT infrastructure and try to avoid disruption to daily operation. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. The Disruption Here is a story about how the cloud storage migration happens. Joe is the CIO of a real estate company. A couple weeks ago, the company tape backup was broken. It was quoted around $1800 to get it fixed. So a disrupted event happened. Joe was following cloud storage solutions closely. Since he needs to do something about the backup, why not switch to a cloud storage based solution for backup. As Joe went further down the path of finding a solution, he found out that most of the cloud storage solutions have sharing and team collaboration features. Since cloud storage solution offers that, and Joe has two company sites to taken ca...

Mobile trend and the cloud computing trend are somehow connected. On one hand, we are seeing companies seeking cloud as a way to provide new access and backup methods. On the other hand, they are also looking for ways to enable mobile device access to their enterprise file server. This article focuses on the mobile access side, while documenting an implementation that does both mobile access and seamless cloud migration for your file server. The basic idea is that you attach your file server folders to your Gladinet team account. Once it is attached, it is like a distributed file system over the cloud. After that you can use your iOS device, Android device or Playbook device to access your file server through your Gladinet team account. Also in the background, the file server folder content is migrated to your Gladinet team account. Now let’s get started.

Many clients want to use Amazon S3 directly, and yet want to make it transparent to the users. As far as the administrator or the CTO is concerned, he wants to have direct control of the Amazon S3 account that his company is using. At the same time, he wants the employees in the company using the company Amazon S3 account transparently without any additional learning curve. This article documents many ways you can use Gladinet solutions to get it done. We will divide the use case into big, medium, small. Three use cases. Each use case may have a different matching solution. Big Use Case You have multi-site file structure and you have a need to setup team folder, version folder, web-based access, mobile device access,  in addition to mounting file share to your amazon s3 account. In this case, the best fit is Gladinet Cloud Team Edition, with your Amazon S3 account plugged in as the root folder of your company cloud drive. At www.gladinet.com , you can select Team Edition, then...

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 ...

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

Cloud Storage Services 2010 could be the year of cloud storage and cloud services. Consider the recent developments: Amazon’s expansion of the Asia Pacific Region (along with the US and EU regions) for S3; Google’s addition of support for any file type in January; the official release of Windows Azure Storage in February; the strengthening of the strategic partnership between EMC Atmos Online and AT&T Synaptic Storage; the important new partnership between Nirvanix and Commvault ; and Mezeo has signed up several new hosting partners . Clearly, there’s lots of cloud buzz. As shown in the following Google Trend graph about "cloud storage", Cloud Storage search volume tripled in less than a year. Fig 1: Google Trend of Cloud Storage Desktop Access To the Cloud A common theme of cloud storage services is that they all provide some API (Application Programming Interface) over HTTP. For Cloud Storage to be as popular today as FTP for the past decade, it needs ...

  It was fairly easy to understand the concept of a Cloud Desktop, with cloud services such as Google Storage, Windows Azure/Live, Amazon S3, EMC Atmos Online, AT&T Synaptics Storage, Nirvanix, Box and Mezeo all mapped through a network drive to your desktop. It should be pretty easy to understand the concept of a Cloud A ttached F ile S erver too, with the same Google, Microsoft, Amazon, EMC. AT&T services attached to your file server as a Tier 2 storage.  Introducing CloudAFS ™ … When the Gladinet Cloud Desktop introduces cloud services to your client OS such as Windows XP/Vista/7 as a mapped drive, the Gladinet CloudAFS is a server product that enhances your file server with cloud storage services published as CIFS/NFS shares. CloudAFS replaces the Gladinet Cloud Gateway (beta) that was launched 6 months ago ( PR for Cloud Gateway ). You may still consider CloudAFS as a cloud storage gateway. However, cloud gateway is only a subset of the functionalities ...