Gladinet Cloud Storage Blog

Getting Started with AT&T Synaptic Storage Video

2012-01-30T11:13:00.001-05:00

Here is a YouTube HD video for getting started with AT&T Synaptic Storage and Gladinet Cloud Server. It shows how to connect from a Windows 2008 Server to Synaptic Storage and share the Synaptic Storage as a network share to a group of users. (Best viewed with 1280x720 HD option)

Getting Started with AT&T Synaptic Storage

2012-01-29T13:00:00.001-05:00

This article shows how Gladinet Cloud Server makes it easy to access AT&T Synaptic Storage. Before you begin, we recommend that you have your credentials for AT&T Synaptic Storage. This will be done in four steps:
1.    Download and Install Gladinet Cloud Server.
2.    Create a Gladinet Account.
3.    Attach AT&T Synaptic Storage to Gladinet Cloud Server.
4.    Publish the attached storage for use on your network.

Download and Install Gladinet Cloud Server

Click here to start the download: http://gcloud.gladinet.com/p/download_cloud_server.htm .

Select the 32-bit or 64-bit download based on your system and after the download completes, select “Run”.

Step through the installation wizard by clicking next.

Reboot the system after the installation is complete.

Create a Gladinet Account

After the installation, start the Gladinet Cloud Server management console. Usually, it will be launched automatically for you. You will then be prompted for a Gladinet username and password. Click the link below to create a new account.

You will be asked to select a user plan, create a username and password and provide payment information. Complete the Cloud Server installation by entering the username and password for the Gladinet account. You will be prompted to change the default cache location. Accept the defaults.

Attach AT&T Cloud to Gladinet Cloud Server

Open the start menu, navigate to the Gladinet folder and launch the Management Console. Click “Attach Cloud Storage” to launch the mounting wizard.

Select AT&T Synaptic Storage from the dropdown list.

Enter the subtenant ID, UID and shared secret to complete the publishing process

Next, we will publish the attached folder to make it accessible. Click on “Publish Folder”.

Select a name for the published folder. This is the name that users will see when they connect to the network share.

In the next step, define which users will have access to the published share. Click on the “Add New User” link.

Note that the standard windows UI is launched where you can add users from Active Directory or your local domain.

Once this has been done, any assigned user can access AT&T Synaptic Storage as if it were a file share on their network. For example, they can right click on “Computer” from the start menu, select “Map Network Drive” and connect the AT&T file share created above to their desktop.

This will allow them to drag and drop data into AT&T Synaptic Storage since it is now a folder on their desktop.

Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

HTML 5 Multi-File Upload to Gladinet Cloud

2012-01-18T10:51:00.001-05:00

In the New Features for the New Year article, we mentioned the new HTML 5 and Flash based Multiple-File upload. This article will cover the new feature in more detail.

In the Gladinet Cloud for Teams product, There are 4 different ways to connect and use the cloud storage, from the desktop; from a file server; from web browser or from a mobile phone.

Web-Based File Explorer may be the most convenient way to access files, however, compared to the native clients on desktop, file server or iPhones, it may have more limits imposed by the web browser, since web browser was designed to sand-box things running inside the browser so it only have controlled access to the local files.

HTML 5 makes it easy to do drag and drop upload from local files to web browser and then upload to cloud storage. Currently Firefox and Chrome support drag and drop upload. For all other browsers, they will use Flash-Based multiple file upload.

1. HTML 5 Multiple Upload

When you logged into Gladinet Cloud (from gladinet website, follow the login button on top navigation bar), at any empty folder, you will see a Drop Files Here hint box, which will not show if the browser doesn’t support drag and drop file upload.

2. Multiple-Select Files from Local PC

You can multi-select files and drop them into the web based file explorer. You can not select a folder to do folder upload. To upload folder, the best is still to use the native clients.

3. Drop the Files into the Browser File List View

Once the drop is done, a progress dialog will show to report the upload progress.

4. Advanced Multi-File Upload (non-HTML 5)

If your web browser is not Firefox or Chrome, you can use the advanced upload button.

The advanced upload button will invoke the file selection dialog.

5. Multi-Select Files in the Advanced Upload

After you select the files, the same progress dialog will appear and report the upload status.

6. Use Native Client

The native client has much more functionalities, such as drag and drop folders with error-retry and other reliability features, which provides the best upload/download experience.

Gladinet Cloud for Teams – What’s New?

Gladinet Cloud for Teams Video–Share Folder and Files

2012-01-11T15:26:00.001-05:00

As part of the new features for the new year series, here is a 5 min HD video documenting the Gladinet share folder and share file features.

Share Files with Anyone Using Gladinet Cloud

2012-01-11T11:04:00.001-05:00

Sometime ago, we covered how an admin can create a team folder for the team members to share and collaborate. The concept there was more like a file server kind of sharing, where everyone on the team sees the same folder.

In the new features for the new year article, we mentioned there is new sharing feature, which allows you to share files and folders on-demand.

This article covers on-demand sharing. When you have an urge to attach big files and big folders to an email and send to someone else, you can use Gladinet Cloud for that (without the email attachment part). Especially for the sharing of folders, it is so much easier than zip everything up and send to someone in email.

Step 1 – Login to Gladinet Cloud and Share

On the www.gladinet.com website, you can click the LOGIN link to login. After that, you can browse to a folder that you want to share and click the Share folder … menu.

After that, you will see a edit share dialog. You can put in the email addresses for the person you want to share the folder with. The person may have a Gladinet Cloud account or may not. They will see the shares differently, which will be covered next.

Step 2 – Share Receiver got Email Notification

For the person that doesn’t have a Gladinet Cloud account, he will get an email notification. In the email, there is a link to click on.

Step 3 – Confirm You are the Receiver

Once the person receiving the share clicks on the link, a confirmation page will show up. The receiver will just need to click the Open button.

Step 4 – Sharing Done!

Now the receiver has a web based file browser to browse the shared folder. Isn’t it much easier than zip the full folder up and send through email?

Step 2 Rewind – For Gladinet Cloud User

For a Gladinet Cloud account holder, if he receives a shared folder, he can login to his account and view it.

There is a Files Shared with me folder under the root, he can click open it.

Since he is an authenticated user, he can have full control to the shared folder if the sender granted full control. (as compared to the previous step 2-4, a email user only gets read-only access)

The share file interface is very much like the share folder interface. The file is hosted by Gladinet Cloud, so you don’t need to send and attach it in email any more.

Gladinet Cloud for Teams – What’s New?

Gladinet Cloud for Teams Video – New Features for New Year

Gladinet Cloud iOS App for Team Edition

2012-01-05T20:36:00.001-05:00

Today the Gladinet Cloud iPhone & iPad application shows up in the Apple iOS App Store. It is an important feature addition to the Gladinet Cloud for Teams. The native iOS application allows Team Edition users easily browse and view their files and folders in the Gladinet Cloud. In addition to the cross-browser web client, the PC desktop client, the file server virtual file system client, now there is Gladinet iOS client.

After you download and install the iOS client, the first screen is the login screen.

After you login, you will see the files and folders in your Gladinet Cloud Drive.

The current version 1.0 only supports Gladinet Cloud. Over time, you will see feature parity between the Gladinet iOS client and the Gladinet Cloud Desktop client.

Gladinet Cloud for Teams New Features for New Year 2012

Gladinet Cloud for Teams New Feature

Gladinet Cloud for Teams Video–New Features for New Year

2012-01-02T16:05:00.001-05:00

As a prelude to a series of articles of the new Gladinet Cloud for Teams features, here is a quick 5 min HD video summarizing the features.

Gladinet Cloud for Teams - What’s New?

Gladinet Cloud for Teams–What’s New?

2012-01-02T11:17:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year 2012!

Over the weekend, a new version of Gladinet Cloud for Teams was released to the web, including the web service itself and the desktop client. There will be a series of articles following up to document each and every major new feature. This article will summarize what is new in the Gladinet Cloud for Teams.

File and Folder Sharing

In the old version, there is already some folder sharing concept such as the Team Folder. With the team folder, the team administrator can publish a folder to the team to share. The use case here is more for a team inside the same company to collaborate.

In the new version, now you can share files and folders to anyone has an e-mail address. The use case here is more for you to share something with someone outside the company.

You can start sharing by click on the Sharing button inside the web based file explorer. If you have the desktop client installed, you can do it from your Windows Explorer too.

HTML 5 Multiple File Upload

For new web browsers such as FireFox and Google Chrome and Internet Explorer 10 (currently only available in Windows 8 Preview), they support HTML 5 File Upload so you can multi-select files from Windows Explorer and drop them into the browser window directly to upload.

Flash-based Multiple File Upload

For Internet Explorer 9 and others that doesn’t support HTML5 file upload, there is a flash based multiple file upload too. You can find it in the Upload->Advanced Upload.

More Polished UI

There are many small UI polishes here and there to make the web-based file explorer more like your regular Windows Explorer experience. To give you a few examples, the path control now on its own row to show you where you are in the directory tree. When you hover over a file or folder, the action menu icons are shown on the same row to facilitate quicker actions.

Check it out here and sign up for the 30-day free trial.

Anywhere Access with a Cloud Drive

Gladinet 2011 Review

2011-12-23T23:09:00.001-05:00

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 these cloud storage from the comfort of user’s desktop and the comfort of a drive letter.

In September, Gladinet Cloud was released. It is the first time Gladinet has its own brand of cloud storage. For the first time Gladinet has a complete end-to-end solution from the cloud to user’s desktop. The Gladinet storage is built on top of the market leading Amazon S3 service and also Gladinet’s own Access Suite. Users can still use Gladinet software to access partner’s cloud storage services. If they don’t have cloud storage account, they can use Gladinet’s out of the box. They will find Gladinet’s access solutions work best with Gladinet’s cloud storage simply because it is much easier to add functionalities such as 2-way sync and quota service, when both side of the technology are talking to each other.

Marketing Message

Back in 2009, Gladinet’s marketing message was “when the cloud meets the ground, a new horizon of cloud computing appears”. The old message focused on bridging the gap between the cloud in the sky and the PCs on the ground.

in 2011, The marketing message was further refined to become “Gladinet solves the BASIC cloud storage need”. BASIC refers to Backup, Access, Sync, Identity and Control. It is a continuation of bridging the gap of cloud storage and local storage. It is more specific to customer’s current need. They need to backup local storage to the cloud. They need to access it with a drive letter and a web browser. They need to sync cloud storage from PC to PC. They need to have identity in the cloud and have control sharing and collaboration over the cloud storage.

Partner Development

In 2011, Gladinet and Nuance formed partnership to OEM Gladinet Cloud Desktop as Nuance Cloud Connector. Nuance Cloud Connector is currently shipped with Nuance OmniPage and PaperPort.

There are other important partnerships developed too.

Customer Development

The 1 million download is an important milestone reached. Cloud Storage is becoming main stream. With the developing of cloud storage and cloud computing, Gladinet software and services are becoming more popular.

What is New in 2012?

You will see better functionalities coming for Gladinet Cloud. Better way to share files and folders with peers; Better web based file explorer with HTML 5 upload and multiple file upload capability; iPhone App is coming and Mac App is coming too. It will be exciting in 2012.

Why People Use Cloud Storage

2011-12-14T12:11:00.001-05:00

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.

Backup & Access

From the 193 people that has contributed to the survey, Backup Local Files Off-site and Anywhere Access as a Drive are among the most common use cases. About 2 out of 3 people select the backup and the same percentage of people select access too.

Sync

About 1 in 2 people select Sync Folders on 2+ PCs. Most people have access to computers at home and at work. Even at home, people have multiple PCs among the family members. It is popular to share files and folders on these PCs.

About 1 in 3 people select the connect & share with multiple people. It is also a common use case to be able to share files and folders beyond the traditional email attachment kind of send and share.

Others

Only 1 in 6 people select integrate with existing applications. So it looks like people are pretty complacent with the locally installed applications. As long as there is a way to backup the files produced by these applications and share the files, it is good.

Gladinet Cloud can serve all these use cases in one product. There are several demo videos on Gladinet homepage. Check it out!

YouTube HD Video Demo: Share Files with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Access Files Anywhere with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Solutions

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

FTP Replacement with Gladinet Cloud

2011-12-05T09:07:00.001-05:00

Traditionally, FTP (File Transfer Protocol) has been the standard for transferring and sharing files. However, it is not without its problems. These include concerns about security, cost, efficiency, reliability and simplicity. For these and other reasons, many businesses are looking to replace FTP with a cloud storage solution. Amazon S3 is a very good cloud storage option. However, it is more of a building block than solution. This article talks about a solution that is built on top of Amazon S3.

Gladinet Cloud for Teams offers a great FTP replacement. The service allows you to attach a local folder to the cloud, which immediately makes any of its files accessible anywhere, and synchronizes access to the folder by maintaining version control of files that are written simultaneously. Under the hood, the local folder is migrated to Amazon S3 by default, while allowing you to plug-in your own external cloud storage accounts. Once the local folder is attached to the cloud, it can be exposed to other team members using access controls provided in the service’s management interface. So you end up with several members of your team sharing access to the same set of files in a centrally controlled environment. Essentially, this may be what you want to achieve with the old FTP technology.

The instant accessibility of attached folders deserves some emphasis as it mitigates one of the pain points of cloud migration. That pain is usually experienced when a large data set needs to be moved to the cloud over a relatively slow connection. For example, even a reasonable 10Mbps upstream connection can’t upload more than 5GB in an hour, Just imagine how long it would take to upload 10TB of data! Fortunately, with attached folders, the time it takes to complete the initial upload will not determine how long the cloud migration will take. Instead, everything is immediately accessible even as the data in the attached folder is synchronized with the cloud in the background.

There are several advantages of using the cloud to share files. For instance, FTP servers require that an additional communication channel (port 21) be opened through your firewall, increasing your attack surface. Cloud communication, on the other hand requires no additional channels since it uses http on port 80 which is already allowed through most firewalls. Security is further enhanced since we use a secure version of http called https on port 443.

In addition to being more secure, a cloud FTP solution tends to be more cost effective, efficient and reliable. There is no need to maintain FTP servers onsite and there are efficiencies of scale that can be leveraged when the infrastructure required for reliability is centralized and managed by cloud storage service providers.

What’s more, Gladinet Cloud can be configured to use Amazon S3, or any of these providers (Google Cloud Storage, Open Stack, Rackspace, and any S3 compatible service) as its internal storage, yielding a file sharing solution that is completely under your control while leveraging the benefits of cloud storage to provide a secure, easily managed file sharing solution that should prove a welcome FTP replacement for many small and medium sized organizations.

To see an example, please take a look at this file sharing video.

For more information about our solutions, please visit our website.

Share Files with Gladinet Cloud

Amazon S3 Based Share File Solution

2011-12-01T16:33:00.001-05:00

You own a small business and have several important folders on your desktop. You also have several people working for you that you need to share your desktop folders with. You may also be out of the office from time to time and your team are working from different places.

So you are searching for a desktop folder sharing solution for your small business that allows people to work from different places. You need a solution that is easier than email files back and forth. Sounds interesting, read on …

This is a very typical use case that keeps coming up when we talk to Gladinet customers. This is easily solved by the Gladinet Cloud for Teams.

Gladinet Cloud built on top of Amazon S3. In addition, you can plug-in your existing Amazon S3 account. Several articles in the past month discussed the first default option. This article will discuss the second option.

So you have heard of Amazon S3 and are already using it but you need a more completed end-to-end solution on top of it that is :

easier to use
easier to move files and folders back and forth between your local PC and the online cloud storage
easier to backup files
easier to access
easier to sync and share and you prefer to have a desktop client in addition to the web browser access.

Step 1 – Sign up for Gladinet Cloud & Plug in Your Amazon S3 Account

You can go to www.gladinet.com and sign up for a Gladinet Cloud for Teams account. During the plan selection page, you can pick Amazon S3 and plug in your Amazon S3 account into your Gladinet Cloud for Teams account.

Step 2 – Download Gladinet Cloud Desktop Team Edition

Since we are going to share a desktop folder, we will need to download and install the desktop client.

Step 3 – Attach Local Folder to Cloud

The purpose of attach local folder to the cloud is to publish it to the team. The immediate result of attaching local folder to the cloud is to make it immediately accessible from web browser. After that, you can publish it to the team.

You can now pick a local folder and attach it.

Step 4 – Publish the Folder to the Team

You can do it from the web browser. Go to www.gladinet.com and login. At the dashboard, you can pick publish folder.

That is it. You can now add users to your team and they can sign in with their own credentials and share this folder with you. All the modifications will go all the way back to your original desktop folder.

Here is a quick 3:30 YouTube HD demo video. (Best viewed with 1280x720)

YouTube HD Video Demo: Share Files with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Access Files Anywhere with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Solutions

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

Google Cloud Storage for Backup and Access

2011-11-22T10:51:00.001-05:00

Google has been providing cloud storage under the name of Google Storage for Developers for over two years. Recently it was renamed to Google Cloud Storage and graduated from the Google Code Lab.

There are many ways you can use the Google Cloud Storage. For example, you can use it to backup your files; use it as an external drive so you can drag and drop files to it.

This article will go over these two use cases with Google Cloud Storage.

We will use Gladinet Cloud Desktop for the demo purpose. The same use cases are covered by Gladinet Cloud Server and Gladinet Cloud for Teams too.

Step 1 – Activate Google Cloud Storage

If you have never used Google Cloud Storage before, the first step is to activate it for your Google Apps account or your GMail account.

goto http://code.google.com/apis/storage/, and click on the Activate Google Cloud Storage button.

You will follow the instructions and activate your Google Cloud Storage account. You will also activate the interoperability access as shown below.

You will also need to activate billing and get the Google Storage 5GB free plan.

Step 2 – Install Gladinet Cloud Desktop

You can go to www.gladinet.com and download the Gladinet Cloud Desktop.

After download is completed, install the software.

Step 3 – Mount Google Cloud Storage

You will use the Google Storage for Developers entry.

For the bucket name, you can give it a meaningful name if you haven’t created the bucket. The rest of the information you can get it from the Google web page.

The Google web page that shows the credential information.

This is the result after filling in the information.

If you see message like this, that means the bucket name is not unique. It is like a DNS name. If someone else is already using the name, you will need to pick a different name.

If this happens, you can go to the Google Cloud Storage Manager to create the bucket first. (Use the New Bucket button below)

Step 4 – Drive Access

Now you have a Google Cloud Storage folder under a mapped drive. You can drag and drop files into your Google Cloud Storage folder now.

Step 5 – Automatic Backup

You can open the management console and start doing backup there.

Desktop Backup to Google Storage

Google Storage on Your Desktop

Off-Site Backup with the Gladinet Cloud

2011-11-11T23:06:00.001-05:00

This is the last video demo of a 3-piece series about the Gladinet Cloud use case. In the previous two blog posts, we covered ‘Anywhere Access with a Cloud Drive’ and ‘Share Files with the Gladinet Cloud’. This demo is about a set-it-and-forget-it off-site backup feature in the Gladinet Cloud.

Same as the previous two YouTube videos, it is best to view the following video with 720p HD option and with full screen.

As shown in the video, backup is fairly straight forward. First you will open the Gladinet Management Console from the Sys-Tray menu. The following is a picture of the Gladinet Sys-Tray menu.

Now the Management Console is open.

From the Management Console, press the button that says ‘Cloud Drive’ and pick the ‘Mirrored Backups’ option.

Next you can select the ‘Backup By Folder’ and follow the dialog wizard to complete the setup.

Select the Source Folder first.

Select the Destination Folder next.

Select the Backup Schedule.

Confirm and That is it!

Visit the Gladinet Cloud page and signup for a free trial!

YouTube HD Video Demo: Share Files with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Access Files Anywhere with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Solutions

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

Anywhere Access with a Cloud Drive

2011-11-11T09:25:00.001-05:00

This is the second part of a 3-part video demo series about the Gladinet Cloud use cases.

In this article, we discuss having a cloud drive, where you can have native drive letter access on the desktop or have web browser access through the web.

Compares to the ‘Share Files with Gladinet Cloud’ in the first series, cloud drive focuses on the flexibility of how to quickly upload random files to the cloud drive and make it available to yourself or your team, while the ‘Share File’ series focus on how to quickly systematically share big folders from your desktop to the web.

This following video describes the ‘Cloud Drive’ feature and how you can have a drive, both on your PC’s desktop and on the web. The video is in YouTube 1280x720 HD format so it is best to view with the 720p option and with full screen.

As a quick review of the video. You can drag and drop files to and from the Gladinet Cloud Drive from your Windows Explorer. You can also attach your local folders to your Gladinet Cloud. Either way, you files will end up in Gladinet Cloud, allowing you anywhere access to the files.

That is it!

YouTube HD Video Demo : Backup with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Share Files with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Solutions

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

Share Files with Gladinet Cloud

2011-11-10T22:03:00.001-05:00

We will start a 3-part mini video demo series about the Gladinet Cloud and the 3 typical use cases it will serve.

In this series, we discuss sharing files among a small team. User Todd is a real estate business owner. He has arranged client files into client-per-folder under a root folder such as ‘Client Files’ on his desktop. He will need to share that with his partner in business, Mary.

We saw this use case repeated in the law business. Gary is a law business owner. He has arranged client files into several categories in his PC, such as “Category A”, “Category B”, “Category C”. All these folders are on the desktop. He needs to share these 3 big folders on his desktop with his partner in the business, John.

This following video describes how you can use Gladinet Cloud to instantly share multiple desktop folders with Co-workers, thus your team. The video is in YouTube 1280x720 HD format so it is best to view with the 720p option and Full Screen.

There are basically two steps to share files with co-workers.

Step 1 – Attach Local Folder to the Cloud

After a local folder is attached to the cloud, it is instantly available to you in the cloud, when you can visit the folder from a web browser.

This article went over the details of attaching local folder to the Cloud.

Step 2 – Publish the Folder to Team Members

You can do this step from the web browser, after you login to www.gladinet.com

The basic concept is that you can publish any folders that you can visit inside your Gladinet Cloud to any of your team members with read and write permissions.

This article has detailed information about how to publish folder to team.

That is it!

YouTube HD Video Demo : Backup with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Access Files Anywhere with Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Solutions

YouTube HD Video Demo: Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

What can Gladinet Cloud do for You?

2011-11-08T12:09:00.001-05:00

This morning Gladinet Cloud for Teams 1.0 was released. (as compared to Beta release 6 weeks ago).

Why Do You Need Gladinet Cloud for Teams?

Out of the box, Gladinet Cloud was designed to handle the following use cases. If you find a fit for the following use cases, Gladinet Cloud is for you.

Use Case 1 – Share Your Local Folder through the Cloud

You have several folders on your desktop, with your PC or Laptop. You want to instantly share the folder with your team members. On one hand, the folders will show up inside Gladinet Cloud web browser for your own access. On the other hand, you can publish these folders to your team members for shared access. Both you and your team member can use Gladinet Cloud Desktop client to access the shared folder through a drive letter in your Windows Explorer.

Visit Attach Local Folder to the Cloud for step by step instruction

Use Case 2 – Instant, Secure, Anywhere Access with a Cloud Drive

You want to move some of your folders to the cloud for easier access from multiple locations with a browser or native client. With the native desktop client, Gladinet Cloud Desktop, you can quickly push big folders from your local PC to the cloud by a simple drag and drop to the Gladinet Cloud Drive inside your Windows Explorer. Once the file reaches the cloud, you can access it with a web browser. You can also access it from a different PC that has Gladinet Desktop client installed. So now you have a private home drive in the cloud. And you can share files with your team from this cloud drive.

Use Case 3 – Backup Your Local Folder to the Cloud

You have some important folders on your desktop or server that you want to backup to the cloud. You want Gladinet software to continuously monitor these folders and backup changes to the cloud. Occasionally you will check on the web browser portal to see the contents there in the cloud. In the case of you replace your PC or file server, you can quickly restore the files to your new machine.

What Else is New?

As the default, Gladinet Cloud will provision cloud storage for you based from Amazon S3.

With the new release, you can now plug in your own cloud storage account from Google Cloud Storage, Rackspace Cloud Files, any OpenStack based cloud storage account ad also your own Amazon S3 account if you like to.

Visit Gladinet Cloud for Teams page and sign up for a free trial!

Cloud Drive for Teams

2011-11-07T22:06:00.001-05:00

If you had a team and also a storage drive to share with the team, what are the desired features you need with the drive? You may be thinking about a hard-drive or NAS drive that you can share in the office. Now thinking in terms of a cloud drive based on cloud storage, what are the desired features come to your mind?

First you may wish the drive can have different folders assigned to each team member so each team member has a private home directory in the cloud drive.

Second you may wish the drive has some shared folders that everyone in the team can share.

Third, you may wish there is an easy way for you to put stuff like your local folder on your PC’s desktop in the cloud drive so you can access it everywhere. If you so desire, you can also share that local folder with your team over the cloud.

Forth, you may wish the drive comes out of the box with some backup software so you can easily backup some local folders into your private home directory in the cloud drive.

If the above four features meet your requirement, keep reading… You have found the product and service you need – The Gladinet Cloud for Teams.

Basic Concepts

The Gladinet Cloud is basically a cloud drive application. As shown in the following picture, John logs into his Gladinet Cloud web portal. He sees two different kinds of folders.

represents a team folder that the administrator has created for the team. These folders typically will have (Team Folder) text next to the folder.

represents a cloud folder that is in John’s home directory.

John can also see a third kind of folder like this one:

represents a local folder from John’s PC that is attached to the cloud drive. Once it is attached, the folder is accessible from the cloud and also the folder’s content is migrating to the cloud in the background. These folders have (PC-Name) text next to the folder name to indicate the original folder that is attached to the cloud.

Access Methods

Since it is a cloud drive application, it shall have drive letter for easy integration with Windows Explorer. As shown in the following picture, the cloud drive is integrated with Windows Explorer with a drive letter M:, which drive letter is configurable.

You can also access it from the web browser. As shown in the following picture, there are quite many local folders attached to the cloud, in addition to some cloud folders in the user’s home directory.

Where to Start?

The place to start is www.gladinet.com and look for Gladinet Cloud for Teams.

Once you signed up for an account and download the native client software. you have many places to get started.

You can get started from the System Tray. As shown in the following picture. The two most frequently used feature – Open Gladinet Drive and Attach Local Folder to Gladinet Cloud are easily accessible from the System Tray.

You can also launch the Management Console. The Management Console is shown below. It shows the place to get started with backup functionalities.

Visit www.gladinet.com to sign up.

Here is a YouTube HD demo video going over the features.

The New Gladinet Cloud – Explained

Attach Local Folder to the Cloud

2011-11-04T21:02:00.001-04:00

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 Cloud’. The basic concept is you attach one or many of your local folders to the cloud. These folders will be accessible right away, while cloud migration happens in the back-ground.

Step 1 – Install Cloud Desktop or Cloud Server

To attach a local folder to the cloud, you will need to install the desktop client or server software. For the desktop client, it is the Gladinet Cloud Desktop. For the server software, it is the Gladinet Cloud Server.

Step 2 – Attach Local Folder to the Cloud

Since this is the primary use case for Gladinet Cloud, there are multiple places that you can attach local folder to the cloud.

The easiest place to find is the System Tray menu. The Attach Local Folder to Gladinet Cloud is right there.

You can also do it from Management Console.

The next step is as easy as select a folder and give it a name.

Step 3 – The Folder is Available from the Web Browser

You can go to http://www.gladinet.com now and login with your Gladinet Cloud account.

As shown in the following picture, in the root folder, there are two types of folders, identified by two different kinds of folder icons.

Folder Icon identifies Attached Local Folder.

These folder also has the PC’s name in parenthesis, as an indicator of where the folder originally comes from.

Folder Icon identifies Home Directory in the Cloud

Besides attached local folder, you can also have home directories in the cloud. You will see normal folder icon representing these folders.

Step 4 – Publish Folders to Team Members.

Once the folders showing up inside the web browser, you can publish the folder to team members.

Step 5- Team Members has Access to the Team Folder

Now a team member can login and have access to the team folder. As shown in the following picture, team members seeing team folders in their web browser.

Folder Icons identifies Team Folder

You can see the team folder has the team folder text inside parenthesis to identify them as team folders.

Backup, Access, Sync and Share with Gladinet Cloud

Seamless Migration to the Cloud Storage

Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

The New Gladinet Cloud–Explained

2011-11-02T16:16:00.001-04:00

Gladinet has been providing Cloud Storage Access Solutions for over 3 years now. In the past, we saw Gladinet Cloud Desktop, Gladinet CloudAFS server, Gladinet Cloud Backup and Gladinet Cloud Space hit the market at different times.

Existing Products

Each of the Gladinet products serves a different use case. For example, Gladinet Cloud Desktop serves the use case from user’s desktop PC to connect cloud storage services from Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Rackspace or EMC to their desktop PC or laptops.

Gladinet CloudAFS serves the use case that companies may want to attach cloud storage services to their file servers.

Gladinet Cloud Backup serves the backup purpose, such as taking snapshots of SQL Servers or folders.

Gladinet Cloud Space serve the use case of using iPad to remote visit files sitting on a Windows PC.

As you noticed from these previous generation of products, they all integrate Cloud Storage Services at the client side. In the Cloud Desktop case, the cloud storage is integrated directly from desktop. In the Cloud Server case, the cloud storage is integrated from server file system. Since the integration point is directly at the client devices such as the desktop or file server, it has to conform to the least common sub-set of cloud storage interfaces, such as read file, write file, read directories and etc.

These products are also loosely coupled, instead of strongly connected. For example, you can have Gladinet Cloud Desktop and Gladinet Cloud Server work together by pointing to the same Amazon S3 account. However, you can’t do file synchronization between the two yet.

New Gladinet Cloud Service

All these products are looking for a strong thread to bind them together, which is the new Gladinet Cloud. It is like a spine connecting and directing the limbs.

The integration point can be moved from the client side to the Gladinet service side. Gladinet Cloud Service can provide value-add services on top of the cloud storage services such as providing quota service, sync service, instant migration service and team service.

This greatly simplified the client side functionality and provided better usability. For example, Gladinet Cloud comes with a web based file explorer, in addition to the native clients. Gladinet Cloud comes with PC-2-Web 2 way sync, as compared to PC-2-PC sync before. Now you can copy files and folders to the root of the My Gladinet Drive. The improvements goes on and on.

Here is a slide explaining the new Gladinet Cloud service.

The backend by default is provided by Amazon web services. In the upcoming release, Gladinet Cloud will allow users to plug in their existing OpenStack accounts and Google Cloud Storage accounts.

Resources about the new Gladinet Cloud

YouTube HD Demo – Gladinet Cloud for Teams

YouTube HD Demo – Gladinet Cloud Server

YouTube HD Demo – Gladinet Cloud Desktop (Team Edition) Quick Start Guide

YouTube HD Demo – Introducing Gladinet Cloud for Teams

Cloud Storage for Teams

2011-11-02T15:16:00.001-04:00

In a team environment, what are some of the basic requirements when it comes to cloud storage use cases? As we look below, the requirements are very similar to the old Windows File Server requirements, with some new Cloud Storage twists.

Requirement A – User Home Directory

Every team member needs a private space that he or she can store work related folders and files. Many companies used active directory to map a drive to user’s home directory on a Windows File Server. User can roam from PC to PC inside the company and always connected to his/her own home directory.

This is the same requirement for cloud storage for teams. Each user needs to have a home directory. This requirement is served by the new Gladinet Cloud for Teams. Each user will have his own home directory.

With the cloud storage, the new requirement is that the user home directory needs to be accessible anywhere user goes, from company office to home to on the road.

Requirement B – Shared Team Folder

For easy collaboration purpose, there are places that all the team users or groups of team users have access to. These are shared team folders. In the windows world, administrator can right click a folder sitting on a Windows File Server and share the folder. After that, each user can do a drive mapping to the shared team folder.

This is one of the primary use case for cloud storage – making it easy for users to share data.

In Gladinet Cloud for Teams, administrator can take any of his/her directory and turn it into a shared team folder.

Requirement C – Easy Central Administration

In Windows, administrator has access to the Windows File Server and the Active Directory behind it. That is the central place for admin to setup the user’s home directories and the shared team folders.

In the Cloud Storage world, the central place is just the web services that power the admin portal inside web browser. All the administration can be done from web browser.

In Gladinet Cloud, the central admin is done from web browser too.

Requirement D – Easy Share of Local Folder

This requirement is new to cloud storage. For small and medium sized businesses, they may not have a file server. They may already move email service to Google Apps, moved sales automation to SalesForce.com. All that they have locally could be just laptops. In a sense, the laptops and the files on them need to be shared on demand.

In Gladinet Cloud, there is an easy way to attach local folders to the Gladinet Cloud and making them instantly accessible to the admin himself. Also the folder can be published as shared team folder.

Requirement E – Web Based File Explorer Access

This requirement is also new to the cloud computing era, as compared to the old Windows Server world. The latest AJAX/CSS technology is making web browser more and more powerful to do traditional Windows Explorer tasks.

Requirement F – Native Desktop Client

It is nice to have a web based file explorer client. It will be nicer to have a native desktop client. The local applications such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop can only modify files locally on the hard drive or on a mapped network drive. It is important to have a native desktop client that makes it easy to interoperate with locally installed applications.

Gladinet Cloud has a native desktop client such as Gladinet Cloud Desktop for Teams. it present users with a mapped network drive, allowing them to use cloud storage as a network drive.

Requirement G – Native File Server Volume Integration

It will be nice to have cloud storage integrated as a file server volume. For the companies that still heavily depend on Windows File Server and Active Directory, the easiest way to work with folders and files are still through File Server. The ability to present cloud storage as a file system volume is key for these customers.

Gladinet Cloud has Gladinet Cloud Server that integrate Gladinet Cloud with a File Server such as Windows Server 2008.

Requirement H – Mobile Device Support

iPhone and iPad are making mobile platform more and more popular. A growing portion of the work force is going mobile with the iPad or Android tablet devices. Having mobile device support will help these users well.

Gladinet Cloud will have mobile support by the end of 2011.

Backup, Access, Sync and Share with Gladinet Cloud

Seamless Migration to the Cloud Storage

Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

YouTube HD Demo – Gladinet Cloud Server

YouTube HD Demo – Gladinet Cloud for Teams

Backup, Access, Sync and Share with Gladinet Cloud

2011-10-27T15:38:00.001-04:00

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)

Backup

With Gladinet Cloud, you can backup you local folders and files to Gladinet Cloud. Once it is backed up, you can access the files from web browser based file explorer from Gladinet Cloud.

Access

With Gladinet Cloud, access means web based access from web browser; means drive letter access with a mapped drive; and it means access it as a file server volume from a file server.

Sync and Share

In Gladinet Cloud, you can attach a local folder to the cloud. Once a local folder is attached, you can access the folder immediately. At the same time, the folder content is moving bi-directional between the cloud and the local folder. If you make a change to the local folder, the change will be accessible from the web browser interface. If you make a change from another desktop client, the changes will come back to the original local folder.

You can also create sub user accounts in your Gladinet Cloud. Once the users are created, you can share some specific folders with the user.

Identity

Gladinet Cloud will be good for a team environment. From an accounting perspective, the users in the account only need to know their user name and password. They can have access to their home directories with quota. They can also access shared folders with controlled access.

Control

Admin can control who can access what folder, with what kind of permission. This ties it back to the Sync and Share section.

As a summary, the BASIC (Backup, Access, Sync & Share, Identity & Control) use cases are the primary use cases for Gladinet cloud storage access solutions.

Seamless Migration to the Cloud Storage

Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

Some Unique Features of Gladinet Cloud

Seamless Migration to the Cloud Storage

2011-10-19T16:23:00.001-04:00

What would be the best way to migrate local storage to cloud storage? The answer shall be that you are using it (cloud) as if there is no migration, no interruption, no down time and no wait time.

It shall be as easy as you attach your local storage on-to the cloud and you can start using it from the cloud, regardless whether the whole transfer has finished or not.

With the new Gladinet Cloud, this is a reality. Your familiar local storage can be attached to Gladinet Cloud. It will be immediately available to your other devices, from the web, from a virtual network drive, from your desktop and your file server, while the background migration is completing.

First, you will need to sign up for a Gladinet Cloud account. Once you are done, you can use the account from your Gladinet Cloud Desktop (Team Edition) and Gladinet Cloud Server.

After you sign in to the Gladinet Cloud account, you can start attach Local Folders to Gladinet Cloud.

After that, you can view your attached Local Folder from web browser interface.

When the folder shows up inside web browser, it means it is available from the cloud.

You can now go to a different PC with Gladinet Cloud Desktop (Team Edition) or a different Gladinet Cloud Server and see the same view.

Introducing Gladinet Cloud Server

2011-10-11T14:57:00.001-04:00

Gladinet Cloud Server is Gladinet CloudAFS combined with Gladinet Cloud for Teams. On one hand, it is a file server that allows you to mount different cloud storage services such as Amazon S3, Windows Azure, Google Storage, EMC Atmos into a Windows File Server. On the other hand, it allows you to have default Gladinet Cloud so it works out of the box (instead of waiting for you to mount any cloud storage services before it is fully functional). This is a step forward to have a complete cloud access solution for customers. Gladinet Cloud is based on Amazon S3. By delivering it as default storage to customers, Gladinet makes it simpler for users to use the cloud.

Installation

Gladinet Cloud Server installs through a standard Windows MSI package.

Next Step you will connect to Gladinet Cloud.

Management Console

After you connect to your Gladinet Cloud account, you will see the contents from your Gladinet Cloud in the Storage Access Manager.

Attach Cloud Storage to File Server

Like before, you can attach cloud storage service, such as Amazon S3 to the Cloud Server.

Publish Shares

After the cloud storage service is mounted, you can publish network shares out of it.

Map Drive to the Attached Cloud Storage Folder

From a client machine, you can map a network drive to the Cloud Server.

Video Demo

Here is a 9 min YouTube Video for the new Gladinet Cloud Server

Gladinet CloudAFS 3

What is New in Gladinet CloudAFS 2

Deliver Cloud Storage to Your File Server

Gladinet Cloud Solutions for Amazon S3

2011-10-09T13:02:00.001-04:00

Last week, Amazon Web Services Blog reported that there were 566 Billion Objects in Amazon S3. We have been following Amazon S3’s growth closely and here is a picture we plotted with Excel. You can see the growth fits well with the red exponential curve.

Gladinet Cloud for Teams

When Gladinet introduces a new product/service, it usually starts with support for Amazon S3. Bu default, Gladinet Cloud is built on top of Amazon S3. It is a solution that help team users to easily share the same account and collaboration from both web client and desktop clients. This blog talks more in details about Gladinet Cloud. Pretty soon, it will have features that allow you to bring your own cloud storage service account to Gladinet Cloud.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop

Gladinet Cloud Desktop makes cloud storage services such as Amazon S3 appear as a network drive on people’s desktop. The functionalities provided by the Cloud Desktop can be summarized as BASIC (Backup, Access, Sync, Integration and Connect) cloud storage use cases. If you are looking for an Amazon S3 solution from the convenience of your desktop, pick Gladinet Cloud Desktop

Gladinet Cloud Server

If you are looking for a solution that satisfy the same BASIC needs, such as backup from a file server, access as a network share from a file server, sync multiple file servers through cloud storage, Gladinet Cloud Server will be the one to take a look.

Introducing Gladinet Cloud for Teams and Businesses

Amazon S3 as a Network Drive

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Some Unique Features of Gladinet Cloud

2011-10-02T11:23:00.001-04:00

Last week, the Gladinet Cloud for Teams and Businesses were released. It is a cloud storage service in general. This article discusses several unique features of the Gladinet Cloud and answer the Why Gladinet Cloud questions.

1. Merge the Cloud Storage and On-Premise Local Storage

Talking to Gladinet’s customers, quite many are facing the pain of cloud migration, especially the time it takes to sync data up to the cloud. Businesses can’t afford to have a 2-week gap just to sync local data to cloud before they can use it. They prefer the sync happens in the background, while the data continues to be available to other sites, like virtually in the cloud. This is a unique feature of Gladinet Cloud – Attach Local Folder to Cloud. Once the folder is attached, it is virtually available, while cloud migration happens in the background.

2. Virtual File System Access To the Cloud

Gladinet started in 2007 doing drive mapping for SkyDrive, Google Docs , Amazon S3 and a bunch of other cloud services. The drive mapping technology started with Windows XP/Vista/7, and later extended to Windows 2003/2008. The technology has been tested in the market by more than 1 million downloads.

Now the virtual file system is available to the Gladinet Cloud. This means native Windows Explorer integration for Gladinet Cloud, from desktop to file server.

3. Support Any Cloud Storage Services

Natively, the Gladinet Cloud is built on Amazon S3. However, just like all other Gladinet products, the architecture was ready for all other cloud storage services to plug right in, such as EMC Atmos, Windows Azure, Amazon Compatible Services and etc. This feature makes it attractive to service providers that need a white-label solution.

As quoted in a recent IDC report, IDC believes Gladinet is one of the only, if not the only, cloud storage gateway companies with OEM deals in place.

Here is a quick 4 min YouTube demo video of the Gladinet Cloud Team Edition Desktop Client.

Simplify Your Business and Lower IT Costs in 4 Steps

Introducing Gladinet Cloud for Teams and Businesses

2011-09-30T11:14:00.001-04:00

Gladinet is introducing Gladinet Cloud for Teams, a service which provides unified, managed access to cloud and on-premise storage.

Bridging the Gap between Local and Cloud

With over 1 million download user-base, many customers told us that they will still use local storage during the cloud storage migration. In fact, many will continue to use local storage after the migration is complete. Unification is therefore a key feature that allows some data to be kept on-premise for compliance, control, or security reasons, while moving the rest to the cloud for maximum efficiency. Furthermore, the access and management models remain the same, regardless of storage location. The unified approach also eases the practical pains of migration with immediate, cloud-based access to all data, without having to wait for the completion of lengthy uploads. Businesses face the problem of migrating large data sets to the cloud with limited bandwidth. With Gladinet Cloud, their data can be accessed immediately, while cloud migration and cloud backup are completed in the background.

Team & Business Focus

The new service is optimized for teams. Primary features include central management of cloud and on-premise storage, shared workspace creation with access controls, and the ability to access cloud and on-premise storage from any location or device. Gladinet Cloud is tightly integrated with Gladinet's existing cloud storage access platform to produce a complete, mature solution.

After signing up for a Gladinet Cloud account for their organization, administrators will centrally manage their users, cloud and on-premise storage, team folders and access controls from a web browser interface. Operation is a simple matter of adding users and storage and then creating team folders for collaboration. Each added user will then be given native access to a local drive with their private cloud storage and team folder, allowing them to work collaboratively from any location.

Re-Branding and Storage Integration

Besides the direct customer benefits mentioned above, Gladinet Cloud can be re-branded for Gladinet's partners, with partner’s storage platform plugged in, making it easy for them to sell their own storage as part of a branded solution. The company expects this to drive partner business with this set of end-to-end solutions.

With the Gladinet Cloud, Gladinet customers seem to get what they have been asking for: a centrally managed cloud storage solution for Backup, Access, and Synchronization, with Identity-based access controls and Collaboration (BASIC Cloud Storage use case).

Here is a quick 7 minute YouTube Video.

Here is a link to the PR Newswire release.

For more information: check out the Gladinet Cloud page.

To login to Gladinet Cloud: Login Link

Gladinet Cloud Desktop 3.0 Released

Gladinet Cloud Backup 3.0 Released

Gladinet CloudAFS 3

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Many Different Ways of Using Google Storage

2011-09-21T10:59:00.001-04:00

Google has many different storage options. For example, you have Gmail storage, Google Picasa storage, Google Docs storage and etc.

This article talks about yet another one, Google Storage for Developers, a new storage option, which is also a pure REST (Representational state transfer) API (application programming interface) based storage service.

Search for “Google Storage” in Google, you will land at the Google Storage for Developers home page, where you will start.

1. Using it from Web Browser

Google Storage has a built-in browser-based file explorer. Look for Google Storage Manager in the home page and you will get to the file explorer.

The web browser based file explorer provides basic functionalities such as create folder, upload/download files. If you need a quick way to share files, you can upload files to Google Storage and they will be available inside web browser anywhere you go.

2. Using it from Windows Network Drive

If you need the ability to upload/download folders, which contains many files, you can use 3rd party tools such as the Gladinet Cloud Desktop. It will allow you to map a network drive to Google Storage. It will be as easy as a drag-drop to upload/download from Google Storage.

3. Using it from Windows File Server

If you have a Windows File Server, you can actually extend the storage capacity with Google Storage. You will need a server product such as Gladinet CloudAFS. CloudAFS stands for Cloud Attached File Server. It is capable of attach Google Storage as a volume and publish the volume as a network share.

4. Special Use Cases

One of the common use case is backup. For example, you may want to mirror certain folders from local PC to Google Storage.

The other common use case is PC-2-PC sync, leveraging Google Storage as the repository and conduit for the sync.

Another common use case is version control. It is a special form of backup that allows you to version the changes and revert back to a certain change for files.

All these use case can be satisfied by Gladinet Cloud Desktop and Cloud Backup.

5. Team Collaboration & Share

There will be more product and services coming from Gladinet to help team users collaborate and share with cloud storage services.

Desktop Backup to Google Storage

Attach Google Storage to a File Server or Desktop

Google Storage for Developer – How to Use?

Google Storage on Your Desktop

Cloud Storage Use Cases

2011-09-07T13:13:00.001-04:00

If you are thinking about the cloud storage, as the CIO or owner of a small and medium sized business, you are probably thinking about how to best leverage the cloud, while making a seamless integration with your existing IT infrastructure and local storage.

As an observation from the market and from the Gladinet user base, there are several use cases that stand out as good ways to leverage cloud storage.

1. Backup & Restore

There are many online storage services, such as Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Docs, Amazon S3 and so on. People are looking for ways to quickly backup local folders and files to online storage.

Also for those that are already using cloud storage, a reverse backup from cloud to local is also important since local storage is bigger and cheaper at the current cloud computing evolution.

This use case can be used to replace tape backup or used as a compliment to the existing on-premise backup solutions.

2. Anywhere Access

Many of the existing online storage services have web browser based access. Many have API (Application Programming Interface) access. Only a few has direct desktop access. This year we are celebrating the 30th Anniversary of the PC. People saw DOS with floppy drive; Windows with hard drive and USB drive; Windows Server with distributed file system and network drive. People are used to access storage with a drive letter.

Internet in the office and at home are fast with DSL and Cable. Accessing cloud storage with a network drive is a good use case. This provide random and explorer based file editing and viewing capabilities with cloud storage.

The use case can replace VPN (virtual private network)-based access solution.

3. Sync & Replicate

Sync is good for offline access. Cloud storage can be used to connect PCs from different locations such as from office and from home. Sync can also be used to connect PCs from different users. Sync can also used to connect two different file servers.

4. Virtual Office

With Windows File Server, people can collaborate and share with network drives mapped to the file server, with Active Directory identities. Cloud storage helps people collaborate even when they are not all in the same location. People can work from home and still share same company identity and controlled access.

5. Integration with Work Flow

Real estates companies may need to put pictures of properties online for customers to see. Dental offices may need to scan medical records and store them electronically. Cloud storage can be integrated into these work flows that are specific to each business.

More and more software will be providing cloud connectors too to facilitate the integration. For example, Nuance cloud connector can be used with OmniPage and PaperPort to help people organized digital contents in the cloud.

Summary

These use cases can be remembered as BASIC (Backup, Access, Sync & Share, Identity & Integration, Control & Collaborate)

Cloud Storage Strategy Series I – Disaster Recovery

Cloud Storage Strategy Series II – Content Delivery

Cloud Storage Strategy How-Tos

Cloud Access Solutions for OpenStack

OpenStack Based Cloud Backup Solution

2011-08-29T11:51:00.001-04:00

Before cloud storage, it is not easy for service providers to provide an online backup solution. There were several technology barriers. First it is not easy to maintain a cheap storage solution in the service providers’ data center. Second, it is not easy to develop a protocol to talk between customer’s PC and the storage in the service provider’s data center. Third, it is not easy to develop a backup agent software that runs on the customers’ PC. That is why most of them choose to OEM or resell solutions from Carbonite, Mozy or Amazon S3 based backup solution if the customers want online backup from the service provider.

With the progress of the cloud storage technology in recent years, the landscape is changing. First, OpenStack storage is a mature cloud storage solution that allows the service providers to create a scalable storage solution based on cheap commodity hardware and also based on open source software. Second, OpenStack protocol is compatible with Rackspace Cloud Files protocol so it is battle tested too. Third, with OpenStack’s open platform and well documented API, it is fairly easy to find a backup agent software that supports OpenStack storage.

This article discuss Gladinet Cloud Backup’s capability with OpenStack Storage. Gladinet supports several OpenStack based cloud storage services, such as Rackspace Cloud Files (US/UK), Internap XIPCloud, Korean Telecom uCloud. More important, Gladinet supports free-form OpenStack based access endpoint. This means as long as you have an OpenStack access point, you can use Gladinet Cloud Backup for online backup purpose, with your OpenStack based cloud storage solution.

Install Cloud Backup

During the initial setup wizard, it will ask about Cloud Backup Destination. Now you can mount your OpenStack based storage here.

If your OpenStack storage support has been integrated to Gladinet Cloud Backup, you can see it in the drop down list. For example, you will see Rackspace Cloud Files, Rackspace Cloud Files UK, Internap XIPCloud, Korean Telecom uCloud.

If not, you can use the generic free-form one to type in your OpenStack Auth Access Point, together with your account information.

Start Backing up to OpenStack Storage

After you have setup and mounted your OpenStack Storage account in Gladinet Cloud Backup, the Management Console will show up.

Mirrored Backup

This is a simple backup mode. You can select a set of local folders and these folders will be mirrored to OpenStack storage account.

Snapshot Backup

This is an advanced mode of backup. It is capable of creating snapshots on a daily basis and allow you to revert to a particular snapshot.

Backup Solutions for OpenStack Cloud Storage

A File Sync Solution for OpenStack Object Storage

OpenStack Windows Client

Cloud Access Solutions for OpenStack

How to Mirror Server Folders to Windows Azure

2011-08-27T10:58:00.001-04:00

You may have several important folders on the windows server that you want to protect online. Also as part of the cloud adoption strategy, you need the near term protection turned into a long term cloud migration. With these goals, it makes sense to mirror these important folders into a cloud storage service such as Windows Azure Storage or Amazon S3. In the near term, it fulfills the off-site backup purpose. In the long run, you can migrate your storage to these cloud storage services since your data is there over time.

This tutorial focuses on Windows Azure Storage and how to set it up so your folders are protected by Windows Azure. The steps are similar if you want to replace Windows Azure with Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files.

The product that can get it done is Gladinet Cloud Backup. Gladinet Cloud Backup is packaged into two different products – the stand alone Cloud Backup or as an add-on to Gladinet Cloud Desktop. Cloud Backup is a Windows background service so it can monitor the folder and mirror the changes to Cloud Storage service. Cloud Desktop is more a Windows front-end application that help you *see* the contents in the Cloud Storage service, such as through a mapped drive.

This article shows the Gladinet Cloud Desktop with Gladinet Cloud Backup add-on. This way you get the best of both worlds, a background service monitoring the folder and do the backup; also a mapped drive to see what has been backed up to Cloud Storage service and what is available there.

Install Gladinet Cloud Desktop and Mount Windows Azure account.

You can use the Mount Virtual Directory wizard to mount Windows Azure account.

In the next step, you can get the account credentials from windows.azure.com

The account name (endpoint) can be the short-hand Name. It can also be the full Blob URL. If you need https support, it can also be the full URL started with https such as https://hello345.blob.core.windows.net

Setup Mirror Backup to Windows Azure Storage

To setup the mirror backup, you can open the ‘Gladinet Management Console’ and select the ‘Cloud Backup’ entry.

After you selected ‘Cloud Backup’, you can select the ‘Backup by Folder’ option.

Mirror Backup Wizard

The rest is pretty straight forward. The mirror backup wizard will pop-up. You will need to follow the wizard to pick a set of source folders; pick a destination folder in Windows Azure; and setup the backup schedule. That will do it.

Wizard step 1 – Source Folder

Wizard Step 2 – Destination

Wizard Step 3 – Schedule

Wizard – Done

Snapshot Backup to Windows Azure Storage

Map Drive and Backup to Windows Azure Storage

Leverage Azure Blob Storage for File Sync

Cloud Access Solutions for OpenStack

Amazon S3 as a Network Drive

Amazon S3 User Identity Explained

2011-08-23T11:41:00.001-04:00

Amazon S3 was designed with developers as its audience. Developers create applications around the Amazon S3 and those applications are used by the end user.

Seeing the amazing growth from Amazon S3, we are also seeing more and more people from real estates, dental office and many other small and medium sized businesses started to use Amazon S3 directly since the aws.amazon.com web-front provides many basic functionalities.

Gladinet supports Amazon S3 from day one with functionalities like map a network drive to Amazon S3; backup to Amazon S3; leverage Amazon S3 as a PC-2-PC sync bridge and conduit. As long as you have your master Amazon S3 account credentials, you can use Gladinet software with Amazon S3.

Now, Amazon introduced IAM (identity and account management) in its aws.amazon.com web interface. This introduced new user identities in one single master account. So now, not only it is possible to have a set of master account credentials, normal S3 admins can also create sub-users for his/her team. It is very good in that it can support a group of users with one single Amazon S3 account and one single billing. However, it also introduced complexity because the sub-accounts have different permissions from the master-account.

All Powerful Master Account Identity

By default, the Amazon S3 master account has all the permissions as the default owner of the account. You can retrieve the master account credentials from the aws.amazon.com site by clicking the Account link

Once you are in the account page, click on the Security Credentials link.

Now under the Access Keys section, it is your master account credentials. This set of credentials by default will have all the access to the Amazon S3 account.

You can use this set of account credentials with any of the Gladinet software during the mounting process and it will work by default.

Locked Down IAM User Identity

Compared to the all powerful master account, the sub-user you created inside IAM is by default locked down, meaning it doesn’t have any access to Amazon S3 objects when created.

The users created in the IAM web interface will not be able to mount Amazon S3 buckets inside Gladinet software. No worry, there is a S3 Resource Manager that you can assign IAM users to buckets. So user Joe can have access to bucket acme_joe, user Alice can have access to bucket acme_alice. Check out this article about setting it up with the S3 Resource Manager.

Summary

The concept is similar to Windows users, the administrators by default can access all the files in the C Drive. The users by default have much less permissions and privileges. Once you got the concept that the Amazon S3 master identity has all the access and the IAM user has none of the access upon creation, the rest is simple.

Amazon S3 as a Team Network Drive

Download S3 Manager and Gladinet Cloud Desktop

Amazon S3 as a Network Drive

Cloud Access Solutions for OpenStack

Setup File Server With Amazon S3

2011-08-21T15:39:00.001-04:00

You have a file server for your team to share. You have heard of cloud storage and the leading service such as Amazon S3. Now you are considering how to extend your file server with cloud storage services.

Objectives

There are several objectives to combine a file server with cloud storage service.

First, you want your team to continue to have the same user experience with the file server since they are already familiar with the file server.

Second, you will like to extend the file server’s capacity with cloud storage so you don’t need to buy internal hard drives.

Third, possibly backing up some existing folders on the file server so in case anything happen to the file server, you can quickly replace it and restore the files and folders.

Install Gladinet CloudAFS

Gladinet CloudAFS installs a virtual file system on Windows Server. on top of the virtual file system, you can attach Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files, Windows Azure and other cloud storage service. This article will use Amazon S3 as example.

There are two packages of Gladinet CloudAFS, the 32-bit msi and the 64-bit msi package. If you are installing on Windows 2003/2008 32-bit OS, you can use the 32-bit package. If you are installing on 64-bit OS, you can use the 64-bit package.

Management Console

After installation, you can open the Gladinet Management Console and start attaching cloud storage services to the file server.

Mount Cloud Storage

Click on the Mount Cloud Storage button will start the mounting process.

Publish Folders

After Amazon S3 is mounted, you can publish folders as network shares.

This will fulfill the objective of extending a file server with cloud storage from Amazon S3, while preserve the user’s experience with a file server.

Gladinet CloudAFS 3

CloudAFS in the Cloud Gateway Mode

Cloud Access Solution for OpenStack

Password Protect Amazon S3 Folder

Organize Digital Documents in the Cloud

2011-08-20T12:56:00.001-04:00

Earlier this month, Nuance released PaperPort 14. PaperPort 14 is a successful software program helping users organize digital documents and files on computers. With the new release, PaperPort extends the capability to organize digital documents in the cloud.

One of the key component is Nuance Cloud Connector, which is also powered by Gladinet Cloud Desktop. As shown in the following picture, the Nuance Cloud Drive (N:) shows up inside PaperPort. You can mount many different kinds of cloud storage services such as Google Docs, Box.net, Amazon S3, OpenStack, RackSpace, Windows Azure and so on into the drive and organize digital documents from these services as if they were local on the computer.

In the meanwhile, Nuance Cloud Connector sits in the system tray and is ready to help you connect your cloud services to a network drive.

In the Management Console, you can manage different cloud storage services; check upload/download status. If you are already familiar with Gladinet Cloud Desktop, you will find it very easy to navigate around in the Nuance Cloud Connector.

With PaperPort 14, it is very easy to manage and organize digital documents in the cloud.

It also showed that it is very straight forward to integrate cloud storage service support to a traditional desktop software with Gladinet Cloud Desktop.

Cloud Storage Integration Made Easy

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Cloud Storage Connector

Cloud Access Solutions for OpenStack

An Easy Way to Move Data Across Cloud Storage

2011-08-13T11:54:00.001-04:00

There are many options for cloud storage services. For example, you can put your documents and folders in Google Docs, Windows SkyDrive, Box.net, Amazon S3, Windows Azure and so on.

The one cloud storage service you started using may not be the one you will end up sticking to for long term. Problem arises when you want to move your data from one cloud storage vendor to another.

This article discuss how to use Gladinet Cloud Desktop to migrate your files and folders from one cloud storage service to another.

The idea is simple. If the cloud storage services you are using can be mounted into Windows Explorer as side by side virtual folders, you can initiate a drag and drop from one to the other. The drag and drop will trigger Gladinet Cloud Desktop to schedule tasks to copy files over.

The following steps assume the Gladinet Cloud Desktop is installed already.

Step 1 – Mount Virtual Directory

In the Gladinet Management Console, you can click on the Mount Virtual Directory button. As shown in the following picture, Google Storage, Amazon S3 bucket and a Rackspace Cloud Files account are all mounted side by side.

Step 2 – View the Virtual Folders in Windows Explorer

Once the cloud storage accounts are showing up inside Windows Explorer, it is very easy to migrate data. In the following example, all the folders are showing up inside the My Gladinet Drive – Y: drive.

You can drag and drop the files to local drive. Or you can drag and drop the files from one to the other.

Step 3 – Monitor the Migration Status

You can see the task status from the Management Console too.

Step 4 – Try Gladinet CloudAFS too!

CloudAFS is similar to Gladinet Cloud Desktop in that it can mount cloud storage services side by side. The only big difference is that CloudAFS is designed for file server such as Windows 2003/2008 Servers. This means you can do the cloud storage migration task on a file server too.

Check Out the Cloud Storage Choices

Mezeo Amazon S3 FTP WebDav AT&T Synaptic Storage Internap XIPCloud Storage Google Docs Google Storage EMC Atmos Online Box.net KT ucloud storage Open Stack Nirvanix Peer1 CloudOne Rackspace CloudFiles Windows Azure Windows Live SkyDrive CIFS/SMB Caringo CAStor

Backup Cloud Storage to Local PC

Cloud Storage Integration Made Easy

Cloud Access Solutions for Amazon S3

Cloud Access Solutions for OpenStack

Bridging On-Premise and Cloud Storage

2011-08-11T13:04:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Suite (Gladinet Cloud Desktop, Gladinet Cloud Backup, Gladinet CloudAFS) registered over a Million downloads. It is an important milestone, validating the market of bridging On-Premise storage and cloud storage.

There are several observations we have made from the growing Gladinet user base.

1. Cloud Storage needs Local Access Point

Cloud storage is in the Internet. However, people need easy and practical access from local IT infrastructure. In general, people call this the gateway or the on-ramp to cloud storage. The cloud gateway can be generalized to include desktop client, special backup agent or a central access point like a file server replacement.

In Gladinet’s product suites, the desktop client is Gladinet Cloud Desktop; the special backup agent is Gladinet Cloud Backup; the file server replacement is Gladinet CloudAFS. The three products have similar look-and-feel as they fit into a single platform for cloud storage access purpose.

2. Many Cloud Storage Services Co-exist

Since we are still in the early phase of cloud computing movement, there are many different vendors in the fields. There are many different technologies and many different cloud storage protocols too.

To name a few big ones in the field, there are Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud Files, Windows Azure Storage, Google Storage for Developers, OpenStack-based, EMC Atmos-based and many more.

The market is more diversified than we had seen from the OS (such as Windows/Mac/UNIX) or from the mobile industry (iOS/Andriod/Symbian/…). It could be that it is in early development and consolidation will happen later on.

From the ground up, Gladinet has a broad range of cloud storage connectors, provided from a single Gladinet Cloud Access platform. Gladinet supports Amazon, Rackspace, Windows, Google, OpenStack, EMC and many more cloud storage services.

3. Hosted Service Provider Entering Market

Cloud storage service is new and currently dominated by Amazon S3. However, cloud storage service is a subset of hosted service. Many hosted service providers around the world are entering into the market. we have seen companies like AT&T, Peer1, Internap, Korean Telecom started their own cloud storage services.

As it stands now, the Hosted Service Providers can buy technologies from EMC, Mezeo or Scality to build the cloud storage service. They can also build the in-house technology from OpenStack – Open Source implementation rooted from the Rackspace Cloud Files.

Gladinet partners with these companies and provides native support for EMC Atmos, OpenStack, Mezeo and Scality. This makes it easy for the hosted service providers to partner with Gladinet to provide an end-to-end solution to the customers, bridging customers’ on-premise IT infrastructure with the Hosted Service Provider’s cloud storage service.

4. Continued Cloud Storage Use Case Development

Earlier (several years ago), there is no cloud storage but there was online backup. Since then cloud storage use case continues to develop from backup to access to sync and more. As our observation, we summarized it as the BASIC (Backup, Access, Sync, Integration/Identity, Control) cloud storage use case.

Basic Cloud Storage Use Cases

Cloud Storage Global Expansion

Cloud Storage APIs & Universal Connectors

Gladinet Cloud Access Solutions for OpenStack

Cloud Storage Portal

2011-07-26T14:54:00.001-04:00

In Windows, we have enjoyed easy access to different kind of drives from one single name space and portal – Windows Explorer. For such a long time, we take for granted the convenience of storage portal feature in Windows. Whether it is a CD-ROM drive, a Floppy drive, several hard drives or different network drives, they are all easily accessible from My Computers in Windows.

What if we could do the same to cloud storage services?

Before we talk about cloud storage portal, let’s first bring up the different cloud storage technology families. Of all the cloud storage services you can use out there, there are basically 8 different technologies out there:

1. Amazon S3

Amazon S3 and its compatible clones. As the cloud storage service leader, the Amazon S3 API is widely used by different technologies. For example, earlier version of Google Storage has S3 compatible APIs. Mezeo and Scality have S3 compatible APIs too.

2. OpenStack Object Storage

OpenStack is celebrating its 1 year anniversary. Its open source nature quickly drives the adoption. From Rackspace Cloud Files, Internap XIPCloud to Korean Telecom and numerous other companies with internal deployments, we can see the increase in adoption month by month.

A key differentiator of OpenStack to Amazon S3 is open source. Open source allows different vendors to roll their own cloud storage offerings.

3. Windows Azure Storage

Windows Azure is Microsoft’s PaaS(Platform as a Service) offering. Windows Azure Storage is the storage part of the offering. Most people refers to Azure Storage as application storage instead of data storage. Azure is more focused on Windows based applications such as those based on .NET framework. Azure storage becomes the storage the application can use to persist permanent data. As compared to Amazon S3, Azure Storage is more application oriented in people’s mind than a generic storage service. However, Windows Azure Storage is very capable of being a generic data storage service.

It is similar to Amazon S3 in that it is serviced by a single vendor. In another word, you can create your own OpenStack based cloud service but you will always use Azure from Microsoft and use S3 from Amazon.

4. EMC Atmos

EMC Atmos is similar to OpenStack in a sense that it separates the technology provider from the service provider. For example, the Atmos technology provider is EMC and the service provider can be AT&T.

5. Google Storage

Google Storage for Developers version 1 is similar to Amazon S3. Started in version 2, Google Storage started to be different. For example, it adds OAuth 2.0 support.

6. Mezeo

Mezeo Cloud Storage Software has both native API and Amazon S3 compatible API. It is similar to OpenStack in that you can build your own cloud storage offering based on Mezeo software. One advantage is that Mezeo owns the Mezeo Cloud Storage Software technology so it will be able to provide complete service from initial buy to after-sale support to customization.

7. Scality

Scality RING is similar to OpenStack and Atmos too. You can build your own cloud storage offering based on Scality RING. It offers Amazon S3 compatible API.

8. Nirvanix

Nirvanix is similar to Amazon S3 or Azure in that the technology provider and the service provider are the same company. Nirvanix offers its own storage API.

Storage Portal in Windows Explorer

With Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Solutions, you can turn Windows Explorer into a storage portal, extending to include different kinds of cloud storage services from different cloud storage technology families.

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Cloud Storage Connector

Cloud Storage Integration Made Easy

Backup to Rackspace Cloud Files

2011-07-23T15:41:00.001-04:00

Rackspace Cloud Files include Rackspace Cloud Files US and Rackspace Cloud Files UK. It is an excellent choice for online backup purpose, especially when you are already using other Rackspace services.

This article covers steps to backup local files and folders to Rackspace Cloud Files

First you will need to acquire a Rackspace Cloud Files account. If you need a US account, you will sign up at Rackspace Cloud Files US. If you need a UK account, you will sign up at Rackspace Cloud Files UK.

After that, you can install Gladinet Cloud Desktop as a Desktop application to connect to your Rackspace Cloud Files account. The connected Rackspace Cloud Files account will show up like a locally attached network drive, allowing you to do drag-n-drop copying files from Windows Explorer. Gladinet Cloud Desktop also includes scheduled backup features.

As shown in the following mount virtual directory wizard, you can pick either Rackspace Cloud Files (default US) or Rackspace Cloud Files (UK). The concept here is that you will have a locally attached virtual network drive and you will mount Rackspace Cloud Files account as a virtual folder. If you have multiple accounts, you can mount multiple times.

In the next step, you will sign into the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel and get the API Access username and API Key. These two parameters will be needed to mount your Cloud Files account.

Inside your cloud files account, your files and folders are organized into containers. If this is the first time you use Cloud Files, you can name a brand new container during the mount process.

After the mount virtual directory is done, your Cloud Files container will show up inside Windows Explorer.

Other than normal drag-n-drop file upload to Rackspace Cloud Files, you can also use the backup specific functionalities from Gladinet Cloud Desktop. You can open the Gladinet Management Console and pick the “Cloud Backup” section.

If you need more advanced backup features, such as integration with Volume Shadow Copy Service to backup SQL Servers and active in-lock files, you can enable Gladinet Cloud Backup (which is an add-on to Gladinet Cloud Desktop).

Easy File Server Access to Rackspace Cloud Files

How to Map a Network Drive to Rackspace Cloud Files

Use Rackspace Cloud Files as a File Server

Use Google Docs Versioning from Desktop

2011-07-14T11:45:00.001-04:00

Google Docs has a nice versioning feature that allows you to keep a change list of what you have done to the files. It is a very convenient feature when you are collaborating on a file with colleagues.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop has been supporting Google Docs since 2008. It allows users to upload and download Google Docs files from their Windows Explorer directly, just like using a local drive. It provides a greatly simplified migration path for users to move to Google Docs. So users can batch move files and folders from local drive and local NAS device to Google Docs.

After user moves files to Google Docs, the next step naturally is to share and collaborate with colleagues. Now adding versioning support from Desktop is an important feature addition for users to collaborate directly from local applications such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop and etc.

This article will describe the Google Docs versioning support from Gladinet Cloud Desktop.

Step 1 – Mount Google Docs as Network Drive

First make sure you have your Google Docs account mounted and it is showing up on Windows Explorer.

Now use your locally installed applications such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Photoshop as usual to create a new file and save it directly from the application to Google Docs.

Save directly to Google Docs.

Now you can make some modifications and save again.

Step 2 – View the Versioning Info from Google Docs

With the versioning support, it is much easier for you and your colleague to collaborate directly from desktop. You can make a modification here, he can make a modification there and all your changes will be versioned.

Versioning support requires Gladinet Cloud Desktop 3.2.704 and above.

Desktop Connection for Google Docs Business Users

How to Backup Google Docs to Local PC

Desktop Sync to GDrive (Google Docs) and SkyDrive All at Once

How to Migrate File Server to Google Docs

OpenStack Storage with an Access Solution

2011-07-08T00:06:00.001-04:00

There are more and more customers and potential partners that are installing OpenStack storage. We saw the questions coming from Gladinet forum and coming from support email (support@gladinet.com). Earlier the year, we saw Internap XIPCloud went live. This quarter, we saw KT ucloud storage too. There are also quite some customers setting up internal OpenStack storage and doing proof of concepts. These customers have contacted Gladinet for the cloud storage access solutions.

You have OpenStack swift storage? We can help deliver to customer’s desktop and file servers. You have a channel to reach out to these potential cloud storage customers? We have the solution for them to use!

The open source nature of the OpenStack project is fueling the adoption. Many of the customers contacted Gladinet with a very small OpenStack instance to start with.

During a typical sales call with OpenStack storage, we cover these 5 basic cloud storage use cases.

1. Backup to OpenStack Cloud Storage

Offsite backup is an important use case for cloud storage. Especially when you can bundle it together with your other service offerings such as email hosting, Outlook backup and etc.

2. Access to OpenStack Cloud Storage

Many customers want a simple access solution to cloud storage. They don’t want to learn a different UI so the best solution is no-extra User Interface. Using storage from Windows Explorer is a learned behavior for many business users. Mapping a drive to Windows Explorer allows the easiest integration with OpenStack Storage.

3. Synchronization PC-2-PC Over OpenStack Cloud Storage

Synchronization is a special form of backup. It is also a special form of access. The files and folders can be synchronized from PC to PC, with OpenStack storage as the conduit and repository.

4. Integrate OpenStack to On-Premise IT Infrastructure

Some bigger SMBs have existing On-Premise IT Infrastructure such as Windows 2008 File Server. They want to integrate Cloud Storage to their existing infrastructure in a seamless way.

5. Control and Share

Typical SMB wants to control who can access what on OpenStack Cloud Storage. Access Control and related features are highly sought after for Cloud Storage Use Case.

If you put the acronyms of Backup, Access, Synchronization, Integration, Control and Share together, they happen to be the BASICS of cloud storage use case.

Gladinet is promoting the BASIC cloud storage use case since many of the SMB users are looking for them. With OpenStack as the backend storage, the Gladinet solution can help customers fulfill these basic cloud storage use cases.

A File Sync Solution for OpenStack Object Storage

OpenStack Connectors from Windows Platforms

Integrate OpenStack Storage to File Server

OpenStack Windows Client

Backup Solutions for OpenStack Cloud Storage

Amazon S3 as a Team Network Drive

2011-07-07T23:17:00.001-04:00

Amazon S3 is getting more and more popular with Small and Medium sized Businesses(SMBs). These SMBs typically have mobile workers and office workers. They are looking for a cloud drive solution for a team of users.

The earlier solutions from Gladinet requires the Amazon S3 master account holder to share the account credentials with the team so each team member can mount the same Amazon S3 account and buckets, thus they can all use the same cloud drive.

With the latest version from Gladinet, it is now possible to integrate and leverage the Amazon Identity and Account Management (IAM) feature so each team member can have a set of unique credentials and get assigned a special bucket to use, while the account master keeps the mater account secrets to himself.

Step 1 – Create Amazon IAM Users

There are different ways to create Amazon IAM Users. One of the easiest way is to use the S3 Resource Manager – a tool from Gladinet too.

In the users section, you can right click and do New User and create credentials for the users too.

After the user is created, you can view the user in the right hand property grid.

By default, the user doesn’t have access key/secret key pair so you can right click a user and assign the credentials.

After creating the access key and secret for the user, you will see the information in a dialog. You can copy and paste the information and send it to the user.

Step 2 – Assign Users to Buckets

A user selection dialog will show up. You can select users to assign to the bucket.

You can review the policy document.

When you are familiar with the policy that is required to mount an Amazon S3 bucket as a network drive, you can actually use different tools (such as AWS web console) to set the policy document to a bucket.

Step 3 – Now Mount the Bucket with User’s Credential

Now it is all set, Alice or Bob has his own and her own Amazon S3 identity and access credentials. You have assigned individual bucket to each of them. They are ready to mount the bucket into Windows Explorer as a network drive respectively. They don’t know your master account’s credential and their access is limited to the bucket that is assigned to them. You can send the account credentials and bucket information to them in Email. They can mount the Amazon S3 bucket with Gladinet Cloud Desktop.

In the next screen, they will fill in the account credential you send to them and the bucket that is assigned to them.

That is it, now your team members will each have a network drive in your Amazon S3 master account, secured by their own Amazon Identity – Secure Amazon S3 Team Drive solution!

(For the S3 Resource Manager, you can get it from the download page or by contact support@gladinet.com)

Password Protect Amazon S3 Folders

Amazon S3 as a Network Drive

PC-2-PC File Sync Over Amazon S3

Desktop Backup to Google Storage

2011-07-04T17:51:00.001-04:00

Google Storage (Google Storage for Developers) has been on the market for a long time now. It functions very much like Amazon S3. It can be an excellent online backup storage.

This article discuss how to setup Google Storage as an online backup target, allowing you to access files both locally and from Google Storage’s online Google Storage Manager.

First you will need to sign up for Google Storage. If you have a Google account already, all that you need to do is to activate it.

During the activation process, you will need to enable the Google Storage access and also setup billing information through Google Checkout.

Step 1 – Install Gladinet Cloud Desktop and Mount Google Storage

After installing the Gladinet Cloud Desktop, you can mount Google Storage for Developer account.

You can get the account credentials from Google Storage web interface too.

After the bucket is mounted, you can access it from Windows Explorer directly.

If you need ad-hoc backup of files and folders, you can drag and drop files and folders to Google Storage now.

The next step will setup mirroring of specific folders to Google Storage.

Step 2 – Setup Mirror Backup

You can setup mirror backup from the Management Console.

Step 3 – View Backup Files with Google Storage Manager

The above steps will get you started. There are more advanced features in Gladinet Cloud Desktop, such as PC-2-PC sync over Google Storage, snapshot backup with version control, which you can explore all from within the Gladinet Management Console.

Attach Google Storage to a File Server or Desktop

Google Storage for Developer–How to Use

Many Different Kind of Google Storage

Gladinet Cloud Access Solutions for Google Storage

Gladinet CloudAFS 3

2011-06-29T09:50:00.001-04:00

Gladinet CloudAFS is reaching version 3, the same version level as the other two products (Cloud Desktop & Cloud Backup) in the same Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Suite.

CloudAFS is an acronym for cloud attached file server. The basic functionality is to attach cloud storage services to a file server as a mountable volume. Thus expanding the file server with cloud storage capability.

Its functionality includes Backup file server shares to cloud, Access cloud storage as a network share, Sync file servers over two different locations, Integrate existing applications such as Backup Exec with cloud storage and Connect a group of users over cloud storage. It services the same BASIC (Backup, Access, Sync, Integrate, Connect) use cases for cloud storage.

1. Enhanced User Interface

The CloudAFS user interface is updated to share the same look and feel with Gladinet Cloud Desktop and Cloud Backup. Once you are familiar with one of the product, you are pretty much familiar with all of the products.

2. Mount Cloud Storage Service

More and more cloud storage services are available to mount into the file server. For example, CloudAFS supports Amazon S3 (all regions), AT&T Synaptic Storage, EMC Atmos, Google Storage, Internap XIPCloud, KT ucloud, Mezeo, Nirvanix, OpenStack, Peer1, Rackspace Cloud Files, Windows Azure Storage. As more and more cloud storage services providers coming to the market, more and more are coming to Gladinet CloudAFS too.

3. Manage Local Directories

You can keep your local directories as your network shares and use cloud storage service to protect them.

4. Cloud Storage Advanced Mode

In the advanced mode, a cloud storage service can be mounted with cloud sync folder capability, thus allowing two CloudAFS servers to sync to each other.

CloudAFS in the Cloud Gateway Mode

What is New in Gladinet CloudAFS 2

Easy File Server Access to Rackspace Cloud Files

Deliver Cloud Storage To Your File Server

Cloud Storage Connector

2011-06-26T15:19:00.001-04:00

There are many ways to connect to cloud storage. The most popular one is to provide web interface inside a web browser. For example, Google Docs, SkyDrive all have their own web interface. The problem of this is that it can’t be interoperable with existing applications until the applications are re-written. Google has a Google Cloud Connector for this purpose to connect Microsoft Office applications to Google Docs.

The other way is to connect directly from OS. For example, Chrome-OS is an Internet-based OS that has everything in the cloud. From within Chrome browser, you can do various browser-based access to different cloud storage services.

The third way is to translate cloud storage service into mountable file system and to allow different local applications to interact with the cloud storage as a file system. This will be an important way for many of the local applications to connect to cloud storage. For example, Nuance has a Cloud Connector that connects OmniPage to the cloud.

This article documents the way of how various Gladinet cloud storage access solutions become the cloud storage connector for many local applications, such as the Nuance Cloud Connector.

At the center of the diagram is the core framework for many cloud connector base functionalities, such as WAN optimization, caching, reliability, performance, security and compression related code.

On the right side, the core framework is connected to many cloud storage service plugins, such as those for Amazon S3, Google Storage, Windows Azure, EMC Atmos, OpenStack, Mezeo and Scality.

On the left side, the core framework is connected to several core interface, such as the Windows Drive Mapping interface, Windows Installable File System interface, Windows Volume Shadow Copy service and many other customized interface that can be done by Gladinet consulting.

With this architecture, most of the cloud storage service can appear as part of Windows 7, part of Windows 2008 or part of your custom application.

Cloud Storage Global Expansion

Cloud Storage APIs & Universal Connectors

Amazon S3 Compatible Cloud Storage

How Early is the Cloud Storage Market

How to Mirror Local Directory to Amazon S3

2011-06-13T12:28:00.001-04:00

You may have several important directories that you want to protect online. It would be nice if you can mirror these folders into a online storage service such as Amazon S3.

This tutorial shows the steps to set it up so your folders get protected by Amazon S3.

You can use either Gladinet Cloud Desktop or Gladinet Cloud Backup. For the Gladinet Cloud Backup, not only you can protect your local directories, but also you can protect them with version control (snapshot) and the ability to roll back in time.

This tutorial will focus on Gladinet Cloud Desktop for the mirror backup feature. When you are ready to try the snapshot backup, you can use the integrated Cloud Backup add-on in Gladinet Cloud Desktop (or use the stand-alone Cloud Backup package).

Step 1 – Install Gladinet Cloud Desktop and Mount Amazon S3 account

There are 5 different mounting options you can use. Basically it is region based and you can mount anyone based on the description. If you have a storage account that is compatible with S3, you can use the “Amazon S3 Compatible Storage” entries.

Step 2 – Setup Mirror Backup to Amazon S3 Storage

You can use the Management Console and select the “Cloud Backup” entry.

After that, select the Backup by Folder option.

You will select the source, the destination, the backup schedule and that is it, it is all setup.

Destination:

If you have multiple S3 accounts, you can multiple-select them, meaning the source folder will be mirrored to all of them at the same time.

Backup Schedule:

Automatic Backup – meaning the changes will be captured shortly after they are done.

Daily Backup – you can pick a time to do backup daily.

Custom Backup Schedule – this is a subset of daily if you want to exclude some days

You can repeat this process for your other folders.

Now your important local directories are protected by Amazon S3.

Use Gladinet Cloud Solutions with Windows Azure Storage Emulator

2011-06-12T11:04:00.001-04:00

The Windows Azure storage emulator provides local instances of the Blob, Queue, and Table services that are available in the Windows Azure. If you are building an application that uses storage services, you can test locally by using the storage emulator.

Gladinet has full support for Windows Azure Blob Storage. Now for those of you that develop Azure based application using local emulator, you can use Gladinet Cloud Desktop to connect to Azure Emulator and map it as a local drive too.

Step 1 – Setup Azure Storage Emulator

First you will need to download Azure SDK and install it. After installation, you will have it in the Start Menu.

Next you will follow the instruction from MSDN to initialize the local storage emulator. Basically you will use the Azure SDK Command Prompt and run the DSInit command.

The correct syntax is: DSInit /sqlInstance:SQLEXPRESS

(assuming SQLEXPRESS is the name of a local instance of SQL Express)

Once it is successfully initialized, a dialog like the one below will show up.

Step 2 – Run the Storage Emulator

To run the Azure Storage Emulator, you will need to run the Storage Emulator from the Azure SDK.

When the storage emulator is running, you will see it from the system tray.

Step 3 – Map a Drive to Azure Storage Emulator

In the next screen, always use http://127.0.0.1:10000 as the EndPoint.

For the Primary Access Key, use:

Eby8vdM02xNOcqFlqUwJPLlmEtlCDXJ1OUzFT50uSRZ6IFsuFq2UVErCz4I6tq/K1SZFPTOtr/KBHBeksoGMGw==

After that, the Azure local storage emulator will be mounted as a virtual drive.

You will need version 3.2.672 and above for the support of Azure Local Storage Emulator. The support starts with Gladinet Cloud Desktop and will be in CloudAFS and Cloud Backup too.

Map Drive and Backup to Windows Azure Storage in 3 Steps

Snapshot Backup to Windows Azure Storage

Leverage Azure Blob Storage for File Sync

Windows Azure Storage Desktop Integration

Gladinet Add Support for KT ucloud storage

2011-06-05T17:57:00.001-04:00

Gladinet supported Amazon S3 with a suite of cloud storage access products since 2006, when we first saw cloud storage service from US. Gladinet supported Dunkel/Scality since 2009, when we first saw cloud storage service from Europe.

Now Gladinet supports Korean Telecom ucloud storage, the second cloud storage service from Asia (after Amazon S3 Singapore Region).

This is also the third OpenStack (swift) based cloud storage service that Gladinet supports, after Rackspace Cloud Files (US/UK) and Internap XIPCloud.

With the Gladinet Cloud Desktop, Gladinet CloudAFS and Gladinet Cloud Backup, you will see a new option for KT ucloud storage in the drop down when you are mounting cloud storage service.

In the next screen, you will fill in your user name and credentials.

After that, the KT ucloud storage will be mounted as a folder inside the Gladinet Drive.

OpenStack Connectors from Windows Platforms

A File Sync Solution for OpenStack Object Storage

Integrate OpenStack Storage to File Server

OpenStack Windows Client

Amazon S3 as a Network Drive

2011-06-01T10:38:00.001-04:00

Amazon S3 is the leading and most mature cloud storage service in the market now. We have seen more and more customers started to use Amazon S3 for their storage need.

For these customers, the ability to map Amazon S3 as a Network Drive is critical. Drive mapping allows them to double click on a file and editing it in place. From a usability perspective, there is no more user interface to learn because hard drive, or USB drive and now a cloud based drive is a very familiar concept in Windows user interface.

This article will document the steps it takes to map Amazon S3 as a network drive with the latest Gladinet Cloud Desktop.

Step 1 – Getting Started

After downloading and installing Gladinet Cloud Desktop, there are two places you can mount your Amazon S3 bucket as a network drive. First you can do it from the Management Console.

The other place is from the Gladinet Cloud Desktop System-Tray icon. You can click on the My Gladinet Drive menu entry first. After that, you can click on the ‘Click to mount [cloud storage]’ entry to initiate the mounting process.

Step 2 – Mounting Wizard

There are several Amazon S3 related entries for you to mount Amazon S3. Mostly it is based on region, such as US-East (US), US-West, EU and Asia regions.

If you have Amazon S3 compatible storage, such as Dunkel, Scality or Eucalyptus/Walus based cloud storage services, you can use the Amazon S3 Compatible Storage entry.

Step 3 - Name Your Amazon S3 Folder (for Windows Explorer)

In this step, you would name the virtual directory that represent your Amazon S3 Bucket. A good practice is to name it the same as your Amazon S3 bucket.

Now you will need to put in the Amazon S3 credentials. You will need to login to your http://aws.amazon.com/account/ web portal to get your account information.

That is it! Now you have a network drive, with Amazon S3 Bucket showing up as a folder.

If you wish to both map the drive to amazon s3 and also share your drive with your colleagues as a Microsoft Network Share, you can use Gladinet CloudAFS product.

Password Protect Amazon S3 Folders

Cloud Storage Case Study with a Real Estate Company

How to Sync Folder over Amazon S3

Convenient SQL Server Backup to Amazon S3

Access Amazon S3 from Desktop and File Servers

Map Amazon S3 As a Virtual Drive (v2 UI)

CIFS/SMB Client for Wide Area Network

2011-05-26T12:06:00.001-04:00

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.

The Microsoft CIFS/SMB protocol is the standard file transfer protocol for a Local Area Network (LAN). It is very common for PC users to do a “map network drive” to a file server sitting in the same office. Now, what if the file server is in a regional data center, possibly hundreds of miles away, many assumption with the LAN will be off when it comes to WAN. In this case, a piece of software need to be inserted that can make the WAN more user friendly and be more LAN like, with caching, reliability and other acceleration features.

This is a fairly common deployment scenario, you are in a branch office, with a site-to-site VPN connection into a regional data center. There are file servers in the regional data center, you have access right within the virtual private network (VPN). However, you will find sloppy performance accessing files on the file server, because the file server is far away from you. Rest assured, there is a solution for this, because it is the same challenge when you try to access Amazon S3 or any other cloud storage service from home.

Gladinet Cloud Desktop is a cloud storage agent. It is a client piece that you can insert between the “map network drive” and the remote file server or any cloud storage service. It does so by making the remote file service look and feel like local file services.

With the mounting storage wizard, you can mount a network resource.

After that, the network resource will appear as a virtual folder in a network drive.

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

How to Migrate File Server to Google Docs

2011-05-25T10:50:00.001-04:00

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.

Migrating Phase

During the migrating phase, everyone is still using the file server for folder and file share. In addition, Gladinet Cloud Desktop is installed on one PC to mirror file server folders to Google Docs. This way every employee is still using the file server as they have used to it for so many years. In the meanwhile, they can also see the documents in the Google Docs web interface.

Final Migration

In the final phase of migration, all the folders and files are in Google Apps/Google Docs. The documents on the Google Docs are also backup to local PC for disaster recovery. In this final picture, the local PC can be cheap and is also replaceable. If a local PC crashes, you just need to bring in another local PC/laptop. The old single point of failure in the aging file server is removed and the related file server functionality is moved to Google Docs – in the cloud!

Gladinet software in the picture below fulfills the cloud storage connector role between user’s local desktop and the online Google Docs storage.

Final Migration 2

An optional deployment is to leverage Amazon S3 in addition to Google Docs. This way, in case one cloud storage service is down, the other one can continue to work.

Desktop Connection for Google Docs Business Users

Backup & Upload Folders to Google Docs from Desktop

How to Backup Google Docs to Local PC

Map GDrive (Google Docs) as a Local Drive

Cloud Storage Integration Made Easy

2011-05-22T17:05:00.001-04:00

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.

Click on the Add New Cloud Storage Account link, you will see the Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s virtual directory mounting dialog wizard.

You will also see Start Menu entry of Nuance Cloud Connector.

Clicking on the Nuance Cloud Connector menu, you will see the Management Console.

You can see all the interface has the Nuance Cloud Connector logo. You can check it out with the OmniPage Start Page too.

All the above steps show seamless integration between OmniPage, a partner application and Gladinet Cloud Desktop, a cloud storage connector application.

Cloud Storage Integration

Gladinet’s core value is to allow partners to quickly enter a fast growing cloud storage market, by providing a suite of cloud storage access solutions.

The Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Solution solves these common cloud storage access problems:

There are so many different cloud storage services. How to support all of them?
How to transfer files and folders up and down, with speed, reliability and with efficiency?
How to transfer files securely, with encryption?
How to support basic cloud storage use cases: Backup, Access, Sync, Integration and Connectivity?
How to support it from desktop PCs and File Servers?

These core value of the Gladinet Cloud Storage Access Solution, together with the help of Gladinet consulting, will empower partners to quickly cloud-enable their existing applications and turn their applications into cloud-friendly applications.

Cloud storage integration shall be very easy and straight forward for our partners, with Gladinet already done the hard work on the cloud storage connectors.

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Cloud Storage Infrastructure Overview

Cloud Storage APIs & Universal Connectors

Use OpenStack Storage for Version Control

2011-05-18T11:19:00.001-04:00

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.

Step 1 – Mount your OpenStack Account into Gladinet Cloud Desktop

The following picture shows a default access point for Internap XIPCloud. As long as you know your OpenStack storage access point and account credentials, you can mount using the OpenStack dropdown. If the OpenStack cloud storage is already integrated into Gladinet products, such as the Internap XIPCloud, Rackspace Cloud Files (including US/UK), you will see them in the dropdown right away.

Step 2 – Use Cloud Sync Folder

The idea of cloud sync folder is to help you sync a local folder to a different PC. Behind the scene, it is putting your files inside the folder under version control in a specific folder on OpenStack.

Click on the Add a Cloud Sync Folder link. Next step will be pointing to XIPCloud or your OpenStack account for version control repository. Also pick a local folder as the folder that you want to put under version control.

If anytime you forgot where you put the cloud sync folder, you can use the icon below to get to the folder.

Step 3 - See your version history of your files

Integrate OpenStack Storage to File Server

OpenStack Connectors from Windows Platforms

OpenStack Windows Client

Backup Solutions for OpenStack Cloud Storage

Backup SQL Server Online to EMC Atmos

2011-05-07T10:29:00.001-04:00

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 VSS writer produces and save it away to cloud storage. In this case, save to EMC Atmos over the Internet to your cloud storage service provider’s data center.

Since folder and file based cloud storage backup is very common, this article will focus on Volume Shadow Copy Service based cloud storage backup.

Brief Introduction to SQL Writer Service

The SQL Writer Service provides added functionality for backup and restore of SQL Server through the Volume Shadow Copy Service framework.

The VSS is a set of COM APIs that implements a framework to allow volume backups to be performed while applications on a system continue to write to the volumes. The VSS provides a consistent interface that allows coordination between user applications that update data on disk (writers) and those that back up applications (requestors).

The VSS captures and copies stable images for backup on running systems, particularly servers, without unduly degrading the performance and stability of the services they provide. For more information on the VSS, see your Windows documentation.

The SQL Writer Service is installed automatically. It must be running when the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) application requests a backup or restore.

Cloud Backup Integrates with Volume Shadow Copy

In Gladinet Cloud Backup, there is an option to backup by application. The application refers to those applications that are Volume Shadow Copy producers. Most of the Microsoft Server products are VSS producers, including SQL Server, Exchange Server and etc.

Backup SQL Server to EMC Atmos in Acton

First need to mount an EMC Atmos account. If you want to backup to multiple EMC Atmos destinations, you can use multiple accounts.

If you can’t find your cloud storage in the Gladinet mounting wizard dropdown, you can use the generic EMC Atmos Storage

In the next screen, you will provide the access point and account credentials.

If you can find your cloud storage service in the drop down, the access point will be hard-coded for you so it will be much easier.

After EMC Atmos storage is mounted, you can click on the Backup By Application link to start. It will first scan for applications that supports VSS service.

In the next step, it will show all the applications that support VSS Service.

You can select which SQL Server to backup.

And select the destination to be EMC Atmos Storage.

Select the schedule.

And that is it. You are now created a full/incremental backup of SQL Server. After clicking finish, it will start transferring the snapshots to EMC Atmos Storage.

EMC Atmos Desktop Integration

Use EMC Atmos for File Synchronization

How-To Access EMC Atmos Online via CIFS

Gladinet Cloud Access Solutions for EMC Atmos Online

Backup & Upload Folders to Google Docs from Desktop

2011-05-05T21:28:00.001-04:00

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.

Feature 1 – Robust Copy to Google Docs

In a regular Windows Explorer drag and drop, for example, drag a local folder into the Google Docs folder, a dialog will show up.

This dialog will ask you how you will do the upload of local folder to Google Docs. More importantly, it fulfills the goal of robust copy. This feature also allows Gladinet Cloud Desktop to control the upload process, knowing which file is uploaded successfully, which file fails and shall retry later.

Feature 2 – Concurrent Upload to Google Docs

After the upload started, you can see concurrent uploads to Google Docs. You can dismiss this dialog and use the Management Console to monitor the progress too.

Feature 3 – Convenient Report of the Upload Progress

You can see the progress of your uploads. The running tab will show you which files are currently being uploaded. The pending tab shows what are the files that are in the queue. The Pending Retry tab shows which files failed and will be pending a retry later on. The Trace tab will show audit trace of the whole upload process. In case you need to contact Gladinet support for upload issues, the audit trace will be a good source to look at.

Feature 4 – Mirror a Local Folder to Google Docs

Sometimes you just want to continue to work on a local folder and leave the software to take care of backing up the folder to Google Docs. In this case, you can use mirror backup to set it up.

Desktop Connection for Google Docs Business Users

How to Backup Google Docs to Local PC

Map GDrive (Google Docs) as a Local Drive

PC-2-PC File Sync Over Amazon S3

2011-05-05T16:29:00.001-04:00

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 create 3 separate amazon S3 buckets for each one. For example, c:\FolderA sync with PC1, c:\FolderB sync with PC2, c:\FolderC sync with PC3, you can create 3 Amazon S3 buckets such as FolderA-PC1, FolderB-PC2, FolderC-PC3.

If you only need to have a brand new sync folder that you can start drag and drop files into for sync purpose, you can create just one Amazon S3 bucket for it. For example, if you still have 3 local folders that you want to sync but sync as one single unit, you can have one single bucket for this sync purpose.

For example, the following picture shows 3 buckets created inside the Amazon Web Service Management Console.

Step 2 – Mount the Buckets & Setup Sync

You can use the familiar Gladinet Cloud Desktop mounting wizard to mount the Amazon S3 buckets in, optionally you can setup the sync folder. (The following UI is for version 3.2)

As part of the mounting wizard, you can turn on the Cloud Sync Folder now. This will create a new cloud sync folder for you to drag and drop files into it for sync. If you have existing local folders to sync, you will need to uncheck the Enable Sync Folder now and enable it later with the option of picking a local folder.

Step 3 – Sync with Existing Local Folder

As discussed in the previous paragraph, if you have existing local folder to start file sync, you need to delay enable the Cloud Sync Folder.

Now you can associate your local folder with an Amazon S3 bucket and setup the cloud sync folder. the basic idea is that for each Amazon S3 bucket you mounted, you can pick and choose one of your local folder as the sync folder. Any existing files inside that local folder will be available to sync.

As compared to the way when you enable the cloud sync folder during the mounting wizard, it will create the cloud sync folder by default under your user profile if you enable it there. When you enable the cloud sync folder here, you have one more choice of choosing a local sync folder.

Now it is all set, whatever local directory you assigned and associated with your Amazon S3 bucket will be a cloud sync folder. Any files you put into this local folder will be able to sync to your other PCs that mounts the same Amazon S3 bucket.

How to Sync Folder over Amazon S3

Password Protect Amazon S3 Folders

On-Premise Gateway to Amazon S3

An Encrypted Network Drive to Amazon S3

Easy File Server Access to Rackspace Cloud Files

2011-04-30T22:38:00.001-04:00

If you are a real estate company, you may have many pictures of real estate properties that you want to host on a web server. If you are a car dealership, you may have many pictures of cars that you want to host on a web server.

Rackspace is a well trusted hosting company. With Rackspace Cloud Files, it is fairly straight forward to link your Cloud Files account with the CDN (Content Delivery Network) it supports. With CDN, your pictures of houses or cars can be pushed to edge points on the Internet around the country.

So if you are hosting a lot of media files on a web server and wish to push your media files out to a CDN network, Rackspace is a good choice.

This article discusses a customer case study that easily access the CDN network through the combination of Rackspace Cloud Files and Gladinet CloudAFS. Rackspace Cloud Files is a kind of cloud storage that can be linked to CDN. Gladinet CloudAFS is a file server solution that can mount cloud storage as a tier 2 storage to a windows file server.

In this case, customer has already developed a custom application that works directly with Cloud Files to refine the pictures and a web form that can take pictures and upload them to a Rackspace Cloud Files account. It works fine. However, the customer has other types of media files that may be modified by local Photoshop, which can then be uploaded directly to the Cloud Files account, bypassing the custom application or the web form upload.

Below is a reference implementation. Inside the company office, an instance of Gladinet CloudAFS is installed on a Windows 2008 server. The CloudAFS has a Rackspace Cloud File account mounted as a virtual directory, which is then published as \\fs\rackspace_share.

The users and graphical designers in the company are accessing the \\fs\rackspace_share through network drive mapping. This way, for the users that want to upload pictures directly, they will use the network share published by the CloudAFS instance. For the users that wants to use the custom application, they can do that too. This way, the CloudAFS and the custom application are interoperable.

We can even throw Gladinet Cloud Desktop in the same picture here for mobile workers. The Gladinet Cloud Desktop can be installed on the user’s laptop and the user can upload files directly to Rackspace Cloud Files.

Use Rackspace Cloud Files as a File Server

How to Map a Network Drive to Rackspace CloudFiles

How to connect to Rackspace Cloud Files UK

How Early is the Cloud Storage Market?

2011-04-30T15:47:00.001-04:00

Cloud storage and cloud computing are generating more and more interests now. By looking at the Google Trends graph of “cloud storage”, you can see the search volume is going up exponentially since 2008.

However, if plot the “cloud storage” and “FTP” together on the same graph, you can see the search volume of “FTP” is declining but is still much greater than that of “cloud storage”.

This makes sense, everyone knows FTP and it is widely used. However, the interests is declining. Cloud Storage is on the way up but it is still in a very early stage and the search volume is much smaller than that of FTP.

Now compare “cloud storage” with “online backup”. You can see recordable interests in “online backup” started 2004, leading cloud storage by 4 years.

This makes sense too. online backup companies such as Carbonite and Mozy started back in 2004~2005. Amazon S3 started 2006~2007 and getting noticed in 2008 as the “Cloud Storage” and stirred up the interests in cloud storage ever since.

What can you do with Cloud Storage?

Obviously, online backup is one of the primary cloud storage use case. However, cloud storage use case is much wider than just online backup.

Here at Gladinet, we promote 6 cloud storage use cases:

Backup, Access, Sync, Integration, Connect & Share, together the BASICS solutions of cloud storage.

These 6 cloud storage use cases are covered by 4 different products, Gladinet Cloud Desktop, Gladinet CloudAFS, Gladinet Cloud Backup and Gladinet Cloud Space.

In 2011, the backup market leads the demands of other markets. We are still in a very early stage of cloud storage market development. As time goes on, you will see a more complete picture of BASICS cloud storage use case over time.

Three Primary Cloud Storage Use Cases on Your Desktop

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Cloud Storage Infrastructure Overview

Cloud Storage Global Expansion

Password Protect Amazon S3 Folders

2011-04-28T12:40:00.001-04:00

When using Amazon S3 together with Gladinet Cloud Desktop, you can have a virtual drive and virtual folder mapped directly to your Amazon S3 account and bucket. It is very convenient for you to transfer files back and forth between your local PC and the remote online storage.

This article talks about a security feature that help you protect some folders inside the Amazon S3 with encryption.

First you will need to mount an Amazon S3 bucket into Gladinet. it will show up as a virtual folder inside Gladinet drive.

Inside the Amazon S3 bucket, you have two folders, one called Normal, and one called Sensitive. Let’s say you may be sharing Normal folder with some co-workers but you want to encrypt files that you put into Sensitive folder.

You can goto the Gladinet Management Console, under the cloud drive section, there is an Encrypted Folders tab. You can use the add-folder icon to add encrypted folders.

You can browse to the Sensitive folder and add it.

The first time you use the encryption feature, you will be prompted with a password. The encryption key will be derived from the password. Gladinet will not save this password so if you lose the password, you will lose the ability to decrypt the files and get the files back.

You will need to create a password and make sure you remember the password. If you want to share the encryption with other co-workers, they will be able to get the files back.

Now, this sensitive folder is a encrypt folder. For all the PCs that you have Gladinet Cloud Desktop and S3 bucket mounted, if you wish to get the encrypted folder back on those PCs, you will need to repeat these steps on all the PCs and use the same password.

Now you can upload a file to this sensitive folder. It looks and feels like a normal file inside the folder.

Under the hood, it is an encrypted file now. Without knowing the same password, the file will not be decrypted.

As of this writing, Amazon’s IAM (Identity and Account Management) is still in beta. Once that is available with Gladinet Cloud Desktop, you will be able to create multiple users and assign different users to different buckets and folders. It will be even more secure in a workgroup sharing environment, with native Amazon IAM support.

Amazon S3’s Amazing Growth

Amazon S3 Client for Windows

On-Premise Gateway to Amazon S3

Cloud Storage Global Expansion

2011-04-27T21:20:00.001-04:00

Two years ago, all the cloud storage companies we knew were all US companies. For example, Amazon S3 has 4 regions, US-East, US-West and EU. Rackspace was US only. Windows Azure was US only. These are all US companies.

Now we are seeing these companies expanded globally. For example Amazon S3 has Japan and Singapore region now. Rackspace has Rackspace UK. In addition, we are seeing more US companies started to offer Cloud Storage Services, such as Internap XIPCloud, AT&T Synaptic Storage, Peer1 CloudOne and etc.

More importantly we started to see non-US companies offering cloud storage services now. For example,

this week Tiscali from Italy announced it will start offering pay-per-use storage service.
Last month, Ninefold from Australia started public beta of its local cloud-based storage.
In February, OpenStack was busy in Korea with Korea Telecom.
Last year, Dunkel launched Germany’s first Amazon S3 compatible cloud storage.

It looks like the European cloud storage providers showed up about 3-4 years later than we first saw Amazon S3 in US in late 2006. If this is a trend, in a year or two, we shall see more Asia based cloud storage providers and more South America based cloud storage providers.

So far, it looks like the Cloud Storage abroad are all based on 4 different technologies.

EMC Atmos
Mezeo
Scality
OpenStack

These 4 technologies each allows a service provider to quickly enter the local cloud storage market by providing cloud storage infrastructures for those service providers.

Gladinet partners with all 4 companies by providing a complete cloud storage access solutions on top of EMC Atmos, Mezeo, Scality and OpenStack. This way, cloud storage becomes a plug-and-play solution all the way from user’s desktop to the cloud storage infrastructure in the data centers.

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Cloud Storage Infrastructure Overview

What to Prepare for Cloud Outage

2011-04-26T18:29:00.001-04:00

Cloud Computing is good. However, any outage like the one we saw from Amazon EC2 last week will be scary for any SMB that is 100% dependent on cloud computing.

Granted that we are at the early stage of cloud computing so it is more likely to see outages. As technology matures, it will be less likely to get outages like that. For example, how often do you get an electricity outage?

Well, we still live through the early stage of cloud computing, so what to prepare for a cloud outage?

1. Have a Backup Plan

If you are using cloud storage as the primary source of your work, you need to have a backup plan. For example, if you are using Google Docs, Box.net or Amazon S3 as the primary business document management system, you can create backups to local PCs. This article discuss how to use Gladinet Cloud Desktop to backup cloud storage to local PC. The same technique can also be used to backup files from one cloud service provider to another cloud service provider.

2. Using Multiple Cloud Storage Services

For consumers, there are many free cloud storage services around, such as Microsoft SkyDrive (25G), Google Docs(~7G), Amazon Cloud Drive(~5G), Google Picasa. It will be good to use all of them and backup family pictures and files to each other. Using Gladinet Cloud Desktop, you can mount all of them in as virtual folders and do drag and drop to transfer files from one to the other.

For business, users may prefer to use Amazon S3, Windows Azure Storage, Rackspace Cloud Files and etc. business class cloud storage services. There is a cost factor if using multiple cloud service providers. In this case, the most critical data can go to all the service providers.

3. Backup to Multiple Cloud Storage Services All-at-Once

Using Gladinet Cloud Desktop or Gladinet Cloud Backup, it is possible to backup to multiple cloud storage service providers at the same time. For business users, there shall be a balance between cost and redundancy. For example, mounting both Amazon S3 US-East bucket and Amazon S3 US-West bucket and backup to both is a good practice.

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Cloud Storage APIs & Universal Connectors

Backup Cloud Storage to Local PC

Three Primary Cloud Storage Use Cases on Your Desktop

Easy Desktop Access to Amazon Cloud Drive

2011-04-26T11:34:00.002-04:00

Amazon Cloud Drive is a new online storage application unveiled by Amazon
last month. It provides users with 5 gigabytes of storage space by default, with further storage space costing one dollar per gigabyte per year.
Compares to other online storage solutions such as Windows Live SkyDrive, Amazon Cloud Drive doesn’t have online office application integration. So far Amazon Cloud Drive is a pure storage solution, with focus on storing music files that you can later stream back to your PC and handheld devices.
Without online word or spread sheet applications to work on your files inside Amazon Cloud Drive? No problem, you can use locally installed Word or Excel and have easy desktop access to Amazon Cloud Drive.
Gladinet Cloud Desktop integrates Amazon Cloud Drive into Windows Desktop with following features, which greatly enhances the usability for people that use both local applications (Word/Excel and etc.) and online storage such as Amazon Cloud Drive.
(1) Map a network drive to Amazon Cloud Drive, so you can do drag and drop folders and files from local desktop to remote storage. In addition, you can also double click on an online file and edit with locally installed application.

(2) Reliable drag and drop with robocopy like functionality. The regular Windows drag and drop doesn’t have too much fail-retry logic in it because everything is local. However, with Gladinet software, the drag and drop is enhanced with reliable copy and default fail-retry logic.

(3) Backup local folders to Amazon Cloud Drive. You can have Gladinet Cloud Desktop monitor several local folders and any contents in those folders will be backup to Amazon Cloud Drive.

(4) Support multiple Amazon Cloud Drive side by side. Each mounting of Amazon Cloud Drive account shows up as a folder inside the Gladinet Virtual Drive. If you have multiple accounts, you can mount them one by one.

Amazon S3 and Amazon Cloud Drive Working Together
Amazon Cloud Drive Windows Integration

Backup to Peer1 CloudOne Cloud Storage

2011-04-25T21:07:00.001-04:00

Peer1 CloudOne is an EMC Atmos based cloud storage service. It has been on the market for quite some time now. If you have file servers hosted by Peer1, using CloudOne to backup the servers makes a lot of sense.

First you can signup with Peer1 CloudOne Cloud Storage at this link:

Let’s say you want to backup folders and SQL Server on the file server to Peer1 CloudOne cloud storage, you can use Gladinet Cloud Backup to get it done.

You can use the familiar Virtual Directory Mounting wizard to mount Peer1.

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In the following dialog, the Full Token ID is an Atmos terminology. The Full Token ID is the subtenant ID, forward slash ‘/’ and the UID all concatenated together.

For example, in the following account, the Full Token ID is:

76b4f0eebfaf482aa2667a4764df25ae/7002188

Mirror Backup

Mirror backup is a simple form of backup. Basically it is a one to one mapping between a local file and a file sitting in Peer1 CloudOne.

It is a simple 3 step wizard. First you select the source folder, then the destination folder and then the schedule.

Snapshot Backup

Snapshot is a more advanced mode of backup compares to the mirror backup. It is capable of taking snapshots of files, folders and SQL servers.

It is a simple 4-step wizard. First pick the source, then the destination, the schedule and the rest of the parameters.

Snapshot Backup –SQL Server

SQL Server backup is in the Backup By Application category. The application refers to applications that support Volume Shadow Copy Service.

Use EMC Atmos for File Synchronization

EMC Atmos Desktop Integration

How-To Access EMC Atmos Online via CIFS or NFS

Cloud Storage APIs & Universal Connectors

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When it comes to cloud storage, there are many standards out there in the market. For example, Amazon S3 is the leader and many are using S3 API to create a S3-clone service. Rackspace Cloud Files and OpenStack are trying to create its own standard by giving away the software to open source community. Microsoft has its own standard in Azure Storage, incorporating Table storage and SQL storage, in addition to blob storage. There are also other technology heavy-weights that are trying to setup CDMI as the cloud computing standard.

In this race, every party has a different edge. For example, Amazon is expanding S3 API to include support for IAM (Identity and Account Management) with its edge in offering the most maturing and most adopted services in its platform. OpenStack has an edge in Open Source, which potentially can be adopted by many organizations looking to have full control of their code base. Microsoft has an edge too because whatever it does, it owns a significant market share. The rest of the consortium can unite together to push for CDMI.

Owning the standards means owning the future of Cloud Computing and Cloud Storage. Owning a big chunk of the market share means owning the standard. Thus, there is no clear sight of which standard will win since every service provider is busy earning the market share.

This means, there is a market for cloud storage universal connectors that works with each and every cloud storage service providers, which happens to be the same as Gladinet’s goal. so far, Gladinet software is connecting user’s desktop, laptop, file servers and web browsers to cloud storage service providers.

Here is a list of cloud storage service providers Gladinet supports.

Amazon S3
- Amazon S3 (East, West, EU, Singapore)
Box.Net
Caringo CAStor
EMC Atmos
- AT&T Synaptic Storage, Peer1 CloudOne, Redstor, MTI, Ninefold
Google Storage for Developers
Rackspace Cloud Files
- US & UK
OpenStack
- Internap XIPCloud, KT
Mezeo
Windows Azure Storage
Misc. – SkyDrive, Google Docs, Amazon Cloud Drive and etc..

Over the years, the Gladinet software is refined every iteration to support more cloud storage service providers. Currently all three Gladinet products, Cloud Desktop, CloudAFS and Cloud Backup support all the cloud storage service providers listed above.

Three Primary Cloud Storage Use Cases on Your Desktop

BASIC Cloud Storage Use Cases

Cloud Storage Infrastructure Overview

Amazon S3 Compatible Cloud Storage

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If you are the leader, you have supporters. If you have many supporters, your API becomes the standard many would like to use. Now Amazon S3 is the leader when it comes to cloud storage so its Amazon S3 API is widely used.

There are many cloud storage players that have Amazon S3 compatible APIs. For example, Google Storage for Developers; Eucalyptus/Walrus; Scality/Dunkel; Mezeo Compatibility API and etc..

Gladinet supports Amazon S3 compatible cloud storage with its suite of cloud storage access solutions, including Cloud Desktop, CloudAFS and Cloud Backup.

Mount Amazon S3 Compatible Cloud Storage

(If it is Google Storage for Developers, it has its own entry.)

In the next step, you will change the access point to point to the corresponding API url for the S3 compatible cloud storage. For example, for Dunkel storage, you will change it to http://dcs.dunkel.de .

Use Cases after the Amazon S3 Compatible Storage is Mounted

You can do Backup, Access, Sync, Integration and Connect, 5 use cases together.

Backup – Backup from local to cloud storage and from cloud storage to local.

Access – Access with drive letter and access from web browser

Sync – Sync files and folders across multiple PCs

Integration – Integrate with your existing backup application, document management applications

Connect & Share – Connect and share documents with people around you

How to Sync Folder over Amazon S3

Amazon S3 Client for Windows

On-Premise Gateway to Amazon S3

Gladinet Cloud Storage Blog

Getting Started with AT&T Synaptic Storage Video

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1. HTML 5 Multiple Upload

2. Multiple-Select Files from Local PC

3. Drop the Files into the Browser File List View

4. Advanced Multi-File Upload (non-HTML 5)

5. Multi-Select Files in the Advanced Upload

6. Use Native Client

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Step 2 – Share Receiver got Email Notification

Step 3 – Confirm You are the Receiver

Step 4 – Sharing Done!

Step 2 Rewind – For Gladinet Cloud User

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Marketing Message

Partner Development

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What is New in 2012?

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Backup & Access

Sync

Share

Others

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Step 4 – Drive Access

Step 5 – Automatic Backup

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What can Gladinet Cloud do for You?

Why Do You Need Gladinet Cloud for Teams?

Use Case 1 – Share Your Local Folder through the Cloud

Use Case 2 – Instant, Secure, Anywhere Access with a Cloud Drive

Use Case 3 – Backup Your Local Folder to the Cloud

What Else is New?

Cloud Drive for Teams

Basic Concepts

Access Methods

Where to Start?