Enterprise File Fabric™
A pre Covid-19 Microsoft commissioned Harvard Business Review research report looks at how the proliferation of corporate data may require global companies to alter their data security, privacy, risk, and compliance policies and it found that:
Continue reading “CISO Bulletin: Data Governance in the Digital Transformation Era”
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Access Microsoft Distributed File System Shares (DFS) from a web browserThis blog post will highlight how a company can leverage their existing Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) infrastructure as a part of their cloud strategy. Companies will be able to treat DFS shares as cloud storage and automatically create cloud DFS shares for users based on their DFS home directory.
Microsoft Distributed File System (DFS) is a technology that allows multiple servers to host a single file share, providing fault tolerance and performance enhancement for multi-site Active Directory topologies.
Microsoft introduced DFS as an add-on to Windows NT 4.0, and DFS has been included in all versions of Windows since Windows 2000. DFS consists of a server component, included in all versions of Windows Server, and a client component, included in all versions of Windows. It works with the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol (sometimes referred to as Windows networking). The SMB protocol is also more commonly known as the Common Internet File System (CIFS). Continue reading “Access Microsoft Distributed File System Shares (DFS) from a web browser using the Enterprise File Fabric – Part 1”
by Many service providers and companies offer Remote Desktop Services to enable companies to access their desktop remotely. Applications are installed for the users where user settings and data are saved to their profile.
We’ve had a few requests from companies and service providers now who wanted users to easily be able to access data on remote clouds (such as Azure, DropBox, Box, FTP, WebDav, Sharepoint Amazon S3 etc) from a remote desktop.
With Storage Made Easy, this is easily done as SME presents a WebDav entry point to all clouds that SME supports whether they support WebDav or not. This means the service provider needs only co-locate the SME software appliance (supplied as an OVF compliant file) in their network and add a simple script to the users startup. The script it:
NET USE * \\webdav.storagemadeeasy.com@SSL\DavWWWRoot
pause
This enables user to get a mapped drive to remote cloud storage as soon as they login to their remote desktop and to browse and access these files like any other data drive and is a simple solution for bringing remote clouds directly into a users remote desktop using a simple metaphor they understand, “a drive”.
by Microsoft rolled out their changes to SkyDrive overnight which means that our native SkyDrive provider is currently in-operable. We are checking to see if it is possible to re-activate this with the new version of SkyDrive. Users can still use the native SkyDrive API provider. For an overview of the differences between the two please see our earlier blog post.
Update: This is now resolved and the native provider functions as normal
by It may be 2011 but there is no rest for the wicked, as they say ! We’ve been hard at work over the holiday period adding support for Windows Azure Blob Storage. This is now implemented and you can sign up for free from the site.
As well as working with the SMEStorage web interface, you can also access Windows Azure Blob Storage from our free Windows Dashboard client, Windows Tools (which also include virtual drive and desktop sync) Mac Virtual Drive, Linux tools, and of course our mobile clients which encompass iPad, iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry.
Key features are:
– Map Network drives from any desktop OS to Azure Blob Storage
– Use the SMEStorage Lifetime Cloud package to connect to as many Windows Azure Blob Accounts you require.
– Create, browse or delete files and folders directly from the web or the desktop
– Manage your containers and blobs from the web or the windows desktop tools
– Create / Delete Rename blob containers
– Complete access from Mobile devices (iPad, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry)
by We’ve now released the update to the Android SMEStorage application which adds support for the Samsung Galaxy Tab and other Linux Tablets. Other updates to the Application include:
– Now supports in-app registration
– Added support for large file downloads
– Enhanced sync and added support for background sync on login
– Added a simplified view option
– Changed folder navigation to make it easier for those without trackpads or thumbwheels (now double click supported)
– Adds support for DropBox and Google Storage Clouds
– Updated Notes to support categories
You can find out more about the App and it’s features on our wiki here.
User who already purchase this through SMEStorage can update their App bu logging in from the website and going to “My Cloud add-in’s”. Other users can update from the Android marketplace.
by We’ve updated the plug-in that backs up your WordPress blog to any cloud that is supported through the SMEStorage Gateway. The plug-in is now able to backup uploaded content as well as the database.
by We’ve just released the new version of iSMEStorage to the App Store. We put so much effort into it that is has become a major release version rather than the 1.67 version we had previously intended.
The release includes the following features:
Apple normally approves within a week so we are hoping that the App will be released around the 20/21st October unless we have to do any amendments as required by Apple.
by We’ve made some update to our HTML file uploader for the Rich File Manager on the website. Uploading a few files over the web was always difficult because you had to browse each file one by one. Now you can choose to launch the uploader and just drag and drop multiple file which will then be uploaded in sequence.
Of course as the File Manager view lets you see multiple clouds due to the Virtual Cloud File System that SMEStorage providers through its Cloud Gateway, you can easily batch upload files to different cloud or information stores and as such works with all those we support which includes DropBox, Google Docs, Amazon S3, RackSpace, Microsoft SkyDrive etc.
A short video below demonstrates how this works:
by We’ve updated our SkyDrive Provider to support Windows Live Essentials / Windows Live Sync files. Live Sync files appear as a folder within your “My SkyDrive files” contained within the Virtual Cloud File System on the SMEStorage gateway. This means you can now access your Live Essentials files from Mac and Linux, as well as Android, iPhone/iPad and BlackBerry.
As with accessing the files directly via SkyDrive, the files in this directory are read only and can only be downloaded. Anything in your Live Sync directory is for download only ie. you cannot upload files in this directory via our Gateway.
by One of the things we have been working on is enabling WebDav across the SMEStorage Cloud Gateway platform. This would mean that any Cloud Storage Provider we support would then be available to be used via WebDav even if the underlying cloud provider did not support it. We’ve now finished this work and we’ve made this available to be purchased as an add-on from the Cloud Add-On’s page which is available in every users sidebar after login.
This feature is ideal if you use iPhone / iPad and other phone applications that offer WebDav integration but don’t support application such as SkyDrive or Amazon S3. If you use our iSMEStorage Application you can open files into these apps but there has been no way to save them back out to the cloud until now as many apps are silo’d in that they don’t offer you the ability to open the files back into iSMEStorage.
WebDav can also be useful when you are blocked from installing third party software on your OS but still want to access your cloud files. We support the ability to do this on Windows and LInux with our WebDav integration but not the Mac OS. The Mac OS WebDav support is not great and you should use the iSMEStorage Virtual Drive for the Mac if you wish to access your Cloud files from the Mac OS.
Watch the video below to see the popular Office HD app being used with SMEStorage CloudDav to open, edit and save files on Microsoft SkyDrive and Amazon S3.
by One of the things we get asked about a lot is Sync, especially for the WIndows platform, and especially for Google Docs and Amazon S3. Our Sync tools, Cloud Dashboard, Virtual Drive, shell integration etc, work above any cloud that is mapped to the SMEStorage platform. If you have a multi-cloud account and have 10 clouds mapped to our gateway then you will see 10 cloud directories from each of the different storage providers.
You can set your primary cloud for any sync directly from the Cloud Dashboard tools and and any files you nominate for sync will be sync’d with the underlying cloud. We prepared a small video that you can see below that will show you further details on how this works.
As more and more SMB’s and Organisations move to cloud they want a way to work with their files which is intuitive to the way they worked in the past. They also want ways to keep certain files in sync. For example doc files with Google Docs, maybe video or music files with Amazon S3 etc. This is the aim of our cloud desktop tools. To enable the user to have a more natural user experience and tie the desktop to the cloud environment, but in a more intuitive way, whilst at the same time layering on business features that are useful and productive to the user.
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