Archive for: Nasuni Technology
Follow us with RSSAug. 24, 2010
The Road To Release – Microsoft Hyper-V and Windows Azure
In this installment of our road to release series, I’m really proud to be able to unveil the next two features. We want the Filer to simply “work” for different virtualization platforms and we want customers to be able to choose from a range of cloud storage providers. It’s important that we support as many of these as we can, while still ensuring their quality.
Aug. 18, 2010
The Road to Release – Taking Control of the Cloud (Credentials)
Some of the best features of the Filer are possible because we have established strong relationships with the cloud storage providers we support. When customers select a cloud storage provider (CSP), we automatically provide the needed credentials. In addition to the simplicity (you do not need to establish relationships with the cloud storage providers) this gives us the ability to provide an incredibly simple bill from a single company – Nasuni.
Aug. 12, 2010
The Road to Release – Taking Control of your Cloud Storage Bandwidth
Continuing with my new release preview series, I thought it would be good to move to all the network-related improvements we’ve added. Much like the UI changes and the Windows integration enhancements, we’ve left no stone unturned (much to the chagrin of our QA team).
Aug. 7, 2010
The Road to Release – Windows Integration Updates
One of the core benefits of the Filer is its tight integration with the Microsoft Windows platform. This is not due to any Windows “bias” on the part of our company or team. It's a business reality: Most enterprises run Windows. Apple OSX and Linux are both steadily gaining ground, but you have to have good, solid integration with Windows to succeed in the marketplace.
This is why we offered such good integration in our first version: for security we fully supported Active Directory (and its ACLs), share creation, etc. We spend most of our time testing and proving the product in Windows, so we have been confident in our level of support.
Aug. 6, 2010
Simple, Secure Backup and Disaster Recovery Through Cloud Storage
Earlier this week we released our list of five key considerations for disaster planning, highlighting the point that the right cloud storage gateway can deliver where traditional storage falls short. The Nasuni Filer in particular enables fast, reliable, simple, cost-effective, and secure disaster recovery. Many of our customers have signed on with Nasuni because of the backup and DR benefits, and we're going to use this post to demonstrate just how simple it can be, starting with the initial backup process and then jumping ahead to the aftermath of a disaster.
Aug. 3, 2010
The Road to Release – A Refreshed UI
After the introduction last week, I had a hard time picking a feature (or group of features) coming in the next big release that I wanted to show off. There's a lot to come.
That said, I figured I'd start with what I know best: the Filer User Interface. In my previous post, I introduced some of the changes and enhancements we've made. But in this post, I'll go a bit deeper into the changes, and some of the reasons why we implemented them. One of the important things to note, though, is that most - if not all - of these changes were driven by user and customer feedback. Sure, some of the small visual touches were courtesy of the UI team, but the bulk of the functional-type changes came from your feedback.
June 22, 2010
Cloud Storage Challenge: Security
Today we are announcing the first in a series of Cloud Storage Challenges. This first challenge centers on one of the main concerns people have with sending their data to the cloud: security. Businesses that would benefit significantly from using cloud storage are holding back due to fears of data leakage.
June 21, 2010
Customer Story: Simplifying IT
When one of our new clients, a real estate firm here in Massachusetts, first approached us about the Nasuni Filer, they were considering moving their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud. They don’t have a dedicated IT person, so this shift to the cloud was tremendously appealing. They wouldn’t have to worry about adding or managing disks, expanding data centers, or any of the headaches that come with handling hardware.
June 14, 2010
Automatic Cloud Provisioning
There are basically four ways of provisioning cloud storage accounts today. You can sign up with a cloud storage provider and do it all yourself, but then you end up writing data to the cloud without all the added features of a gateway. You forego thin-provisioning, snapshots, encryption, etc.
June 4, 2010
Compressing Costs with OpenPGP
In previous posts we’ve discussed why we chose OpenPGP as the heart of Nasuni’s security framework. Security has been one of our primary concerns from the very start, and OpenPGP is one of the most widely used, vetted, discussed, and attacked encryption standards in the world. We detailed a few of its security benefits here and will dig even deeper in our forthcoming security white paper.
May 28, 2010
Thanks to Django
We’re going to take a break from banging on the cloud storage drum and offer an appreciative hat-tip to Django. Not the legendary Gypsy guitar player – although he was pretty good – but the Python-based web framework.
May 19, 2010
Customer Story: Simple, Secure Backup
The full version of the Filer has only been out for a month, but we are already seeing a wide range of use cases. Last week, we discussed a consulting firm that plans to use the Filer to quickly and inexpensively set up secure, high-performance offices in remote locations. We are also seeing plenty of interest from schools and universities.
May 17, 2010
Four Cloud Security Must-Haves
A group at Microsoft Research just released a paper describing a new storage system designed to address the security issues associated with the cloud. They point to the fact that none of the cloud providers offer security guarantees in their Service Level Agreements (SLAs) as a major obstacle to wider use of the cloud; you can read about their proposed solution, a system called CloudProof, here. What caught our attention in particular was the group’s list of the four desirable security properties for cloud storage:
April 30, 2010
The Filer Defined
We’ve noticed a fair number of questions out there in the blogosphere asking what the Nasuni Filer "is" exactly. Is it a network attached storage device for near-term data? Is it a backup and synchronization tool that stores your data in the cloud? Is it secure?
April 28, 2010
Cloud Arbitrage and the Filer
The first ACM symposium on Cloud Computing, which will bring together a range of experts on the topic, is going to take place this June, and we noticed an interesting proposal for a new kind of cloud storage proxy. The basic idea is a good one, but to some extent it falls into a familiar trap: the tendency to look at cloud computing and cloud storage through a similar lens.
March 31, 2010
What’s in a Snapshot?
The term “snapshot” can be confusing. When people discuss it in the context of backup and file systems, they’re not always talking about the same thing. So we’re going to clearly define snapshots with regards to the Nasuni Filer—what the term means and what tools you can use to take advantage of snapshots.
March 22, 2010
Calling Home: Configuration Data and Key Escrow
The Filer does not stand in the path of your data, which moves directly to and from the cloud, but it does call home on occasion. We discussed the alert system in a previous post. Here are two more reasons.
March 15, 2010
Data Security and the Nasuni Filer – Just the Facts
One of the core features of the Nasuni Filer is its end-to-end encryption. We strongly believe that the cloud is the future of storage, but unfortunately, most cloud providers out there today simply don’t have built-in encryption. Yet this is a critical feature for the long-term adoption of cloud storage. With that in mind, we’ve been working to design and implement a data security system that provides strong security while remaining easy to use and manage.
March 12, 2010
The Donut Solution: Nasuni’s New UI
We heard you. Several customers have come back to us with comments on our initial User Interface—particularly the cache status widget. This graphic, created by a customer, sums it up:
March 9, 2010
Caching the Cloud
We all know clouds offer affordable data storage, but this typically comes at the expense of performance. If your users cannot access their data quickly, those cost savings might not seem all that worthwhile. With the Nasuni Filer, however, you no longer have to trade price for speed. The Filer’s substantial local cache, managed by intelligent algorithms, ensures that files are there when your users need them.