Gladinet Cloud Desktop v1.4 adds the capability to define file type based backup sets. This gives users the ability to easily backup their documents to EMC Atmos. As shown below, the user interface is very easy to use.
First, select “Backup My Documents” from Gladinet Cloud Desktop’s systray menu.
After doing this, a backup wizard will appear. The first page allows selection of a name for the backup task and the included extensions. It also allows the addition of additional file types.
The second screen of the wizard shows the files and folders which the backup manager’s file finding algorithm will include in the backup set. The algorithm leverages NTFS indexing to find the files quickly. Thousands of files can be located in a couple of seconds. Once these files have been found, the user is given the opportunity to exclude files or folders from the backup set.
Finally, the user will arrive at the backup storage selection screen where they can select EMC Atmos or one of its subfolders as the backup location.
Gladinet Cloud Desktop has always provided advanced backup capabilities including incremental backups and dynamic backup sets. However, these features have always been folder centric. So, after a user selects a folder or a set of folders to be backed up, Cloud Desktop’s backup manager monitors those folders for changes and uploads the changes incrementally. The Gladinet solution also allowed the backup set to be changed as new files or folders are added to folders which already exist in the backup set.
With the release of 1.4, Gladinet has added the capability to define file type based backup sets. This enables users to simply specify the kinds of files that they would like to include in a backup set. For example, if a user wanted to backup all music on the system, they would simply select “Backup My Music” from the systray menu.
The next step is to specify the file types to be included in the backup set:
Once this has been done, Gladinet Cloud Desktop uses an intelligent algorithm that leverages NTFS indexing to quickly find all music files on the system and adds them to the backup set.
The obvious advantage of this approach is that users no longer need to worry about which folders contain the files they care about. With the folder based backup, a manual search would have to be performed to make sure that all folders containing music files are included. Additionally, any time a music file is added to the system, it will be added to the backup set no matter which folder contains it. Finally, the user can select which cloud storage services should serve as the backup store. In the following example, the user only has two mounted storage services, but the system supports many others like Google Docs, Google Picasa, Amazon S3, Box.net, etc…
The enhanced backup management has built in support for Documents, Music, Videos and Pictures and allows the inclusion or exclusion of specific file types. For instance, if a user just wants to backup their excel spreadsheets, they would select “Backup My Documents” and then select the checkbox beside .xls in the wizard.
Gladinet Cloud Desktop version 1.4 enhances support for EMC Atmos, AT&T Synaptic Storage, Google Docs and Google Docs for Google Apps. The enhanced support for Google Docs includes support for shared folders. Finally, Win 7 support has been improved along with the inclusion of several other fixes and usability enhancements.
- Cloud Gateway Support – Central Access Point to External Clouds
- AT&T Synaptic Storage Support -Map Synaptic Storage As Network Drive
- Better Windows 7 Support
- New Settings Manager
- New Context Menu to Clear Cache and Refresh File
- Online Service (Beta) – Share configuration information across your computers
Related Press Release:
As the IT director for a small and medium sized company, Joe is thinking about moving some company data to cloud storage. He wants to setup several tiers, some reports go to S3, some go to AT&T Synaptic Storage (2 copies, one site) and some go to Synaptic with 3 copies across two sites. He wants his end users to have a seamless experience when he is moving. Sounds interesting to you? Read on …
With the release of Version 1.3 Cloud Desktop, Gladinet introduced Cloud Gateway. Cloud Gateway is a file server, backed by different cloud storage providers. From the IT administrator’s perspective, they can set it up on a central server and publish folders to users. From an end user’s perspective, they just see extra folders on their desktop, when they drop files into the folder, files are going to the Cloud Gateway and onto different cloud storage services later on.
Here is a picture about the difference between connecting directly to the cloud storage or using a gateway.
As an administrator, you can mount the cloud storage on the gateway server, publish the folders, without giving out cloud storage credentials (such as an S3 ID and SecretKey).
As an end user, you will see extra folders in your cloud desktop.
Give it a try, you can download Cloud Gateway from Gladinet Home Page.
See Also:
Online backup is interesting with the addition of the AT&T Synaptic Storage. The two copies one site or 3 copies in two sites policy differentiates itself from the other cloud storage service providers. With the Gladinet Cloud Desktop 1.3, you can now do a set-it-and-forget-it backup to AT&T Synaptic Storage and take advantage of this offer.
Step 2: After that you can use the Backup Manager to setup the task.
Step 3: Select AT&T Synaptic Storage as the destination. You can pick a sub folder as the destination.  Step 4: Customize the other parameters of the backup task, such as when to repeat the backup, how to monitor for changes and etc.
Step 5: You can use Gladinet Task Manager to monitor the progress of the backup task.
That is it. Set-it-and-forget-it backup to AT&T Synaptic Storage.
Today Gladinet Cloud Desktop reached version 1.3, build 206. AT&T Synaptic Storage has been added to the supported list of Cloud Storage Providers. This means you can map a virtual drive to the AT&T Synaptic Storage and start using it from Windows Explorer (See this link for detailed HowTo information).
I have been itching to see how AT&T Synaptic Storage compares to Amazon S3. Since Gladinet Cloud Desktop can map both in as virtual folders in a virtual drive, a quick drag-and-drop upload/download experiment should be easy.
Sometime ago, I did a simple comparison between EMC Atmos onLine and Amazon S3. In that test, EMC Atmos onLine was slightly ahead in the speed. AT&T Synaptic Storage is backed by EMC Atmos onLine, I would expect to get similar result.
The test is simple, I have a 20M zip file. First I drag and drop the 20M file into Synaptic virtual folder and watch the upload progress in the Gladinet Task Manager and time it from begin to end. Then I repeat the same thing with Amazon S3. (more…)
Today we released the .Net SDK beta. It opens the doors for developers to write storage plugins.
One of the most common feature requests was adding more and more storage plugin, such as Flickr, CloudFile and etc. Now the SDK enables more developers to do so and do it with ease in .NET language. We wanted the Gladinet Cloud Desktop to be a platform and now the SDK enables it even more.
Inside the SDK, you will find a storage plugin example for Windows Azure Storage Service. As you see the full source code for the Azure plugin, you know we are also going down the path of open source too. The Windows Azure Storage plugin will find its way into the open source site (such as SourceForge, CodePlex and etc). The Azure Storage plugin will also be fully supported here in a couple of months as a commercial quality plugin with version 1.3.
Check it out at http://www.gladinet.com/p/developer.htm
 With the recent introduction of Gladinet Cloud Desktop version 1.2, Gladinet has introduced the ability to create an automatic backup of your Google Docs files to a redundant array of cloud storage. This feature allows you to specify a Google Docs source account, a cloud storage target, and a monitoring interval. You can also specify whether you want to use a designated folder or backup all files. If you choose to use a drop box, any files moved to it will automatically get backed up to Amazon S3, EMC Atmos, Box.net, or whichever service you select. Otherwise, all files in the specified Google Docs account will be backed up by the monitoring thread at the specified interval. In either case, the backups are incremental and will just copy the changes.
Version 1.2 also introduces support for the Windows 7 platform along with the following features and enhancements:
• A New Virtual Directory Manager
• A Simplified Systray Menu
• An Improved Task Manager
• The ability to pause or resume all tasks from the systray menu
• Backup Monitoring Task Optimizations
These enhancements, particularly the Google Docs backup, are examples of Gladinet’s desire to leverage its ubiquitous cloud storage client for Windows which is based on an open-platform integration with Google Docs, EMC Atmos, Amazon S3 and many other providers. The platform has been providing users with the ability to create a redundant array of cloud storage to backup the data on their PC or provide external storage. The new Google Docs backup feature is a natural extension which takes the company one step closer to its goal of transforming the Internet into a virtual PC by integrating cloud services directly onto a PC desktop.
Furthermore, these changes give users the peace of mind that comes from increased redundancy and reduced dependence on the reliability or robustness of a single provider. It also provides the flexibility to switch providers without having to worry about moving a large amount of data all at once. The bottom line is that Gladinet’s software puts users back in control of their data. Check it out at http://www.gladinet.com/.
Google Docs offers a hosted storage service for storing files in the cloud. Gladinet, a software vendor, has released a freeware solution called Gladinet Cloud Desktop that makes it easy to sync to Google Docs from Windows Explorer. In fact, Gladinet Cloud Desktop turns Windows Explorer into a cloud storage portal that can easily sync to Google Docs from other storage services or upload files from your desktop to any storage service you choose. Gladinet achieves this through a complete Google Doc integration with your file system.
What is Google Doc File System Integration?
Gladinet Cloud Desktop allows you to mount Google Docs storage as a local folder that looks and behaves the same as any other folder you would access from Windows Explorer. One neat thing about this support is that you can mix and match storage services, so if you run out of storage from one free provider you can add storage from another free provider. Or, if you need to move files between providers, its as simple as a drag and drop. This is possible because Gladinet’s Google Docs plugin is accompanied by plugins for every other major service provider, all in a single package!
To create the Google Doc integration, we must first mount Google Docs Storage as a local folder. Right click on the Gladinet systray icon and select “Mount Cloud Storage” to launch the wizard that allows us to mount cloud storage.
Before you can sync to Google Docs, you must enter the credentials for your account. This is done in the next step of the wizard.
After the completion of this process, your Google Docs Storage can be accessed from a local folder as shown below and you can sync to Google Docs with a drag and drop, cut and paste or use any other native explorer method to sync files to Google Docs. And now you have a complete Google Docs integration with your desktop.
For more information about Gladinet Cloud Desktop, its Google Docs integration or its integration with any other provider, please visit:
http://www.gladinet.com/
Thinking about how big corporations and cloud computing fit together, I came across the word “Internal Cloud” when reading more on the EMC Atmos.
While big corporations may not want to move to external cloud for the sake of control, there is a middle ground where they can still take advantage of an internal cloud.
A cloud service comes with a virtualization layer for the distributed computing resources beneath. First, every object has a URL. Second, every object has meta data. Third, every access to the objects is using HTTP/SSL. This layer simplifies many management tasks. For example, Gladinet can insert another virtualization layer, aggregating different cloud services together for the presentation.
 For those of you haven’t seen EMC Atmos Online, here is a picture of the admin console. You can create multiple users within the same account, as compared to Amazon S3’s one S3 per account. Out of the box, Atmos supports a group of users and is fit for an internal cloud deployment.
Imaging later on, other technologies appear to enrich the Atmos layer, such as mapping an Active Directory user to Atmos user; providing single sign-on between NT token and Atmos token; creating SharePoint like collaboration accounts. When it is all done and set, all that left to do is switching the DNS name for the access point. Saves deployment cost, saves management cost. Server side computing. All with an Internal Cloud.
If you have EMC Atmos, you can go on to download the Gladinet Cloud Desktop, map Atmos Online as a virtual network drive and start drag and drop data across.
Related Link:
EMC Atmos vs Amazon S3
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With the recent introduction of Gladinet Cloud Desktop version 1.2, Gladinet has introduced the ability to create an automatic backup of your Google Docs files to a redundant array of cloud storage. This feature allows you to specify a Google Docs source account, a cloud storage target, and a monitoring interval. You can also specify whether you want to use a designated folder or backup all files. If you choose to use a drop box, any files moved to it will automatically get backed up to Amazon S3, EMC Atmos, Box.net, or whichever service you select. Otherwise, all files in the specified Google Docs account will be backed up by the monitoring thread at the specified interval. In either case, the backups are incremental and will just copy the changes.
