iCloud Drive now supported for web, desktop and mobile access

Please note that since June 2017 the iCloud connector has been deprecated and the File Fabric no longer supports it

Since Apple updated their iCloud Provider some users were unable to use our iCloud connector as it did not work with users who had converted their account to iCloud Drive.

Today we have resolved this issues by updating the Connector for iCloud that supports the Apple Drive functionality.

Continue reading “iCloud Drive now supported for web, desktop and mobile access”

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Giving up MobileMe ? Don’t worry SME now supports iCloud !

Please note that since June 2017 the iCloud connector has been deprecated and the File Fabric no longer supports it

It’s taken a while but we are finally happy to let you know that we support iCloud. As MobileMe’s comes to an end and we have to retire our MobileMe Provider we’ll now be supporting iCLoud instead.

We had held off implementing iCLoud for a while as support for document’s is basically limited to .Pages, .Number and .Keynote. However we have implemented full file support in our iCloud provider. How have you done that you may ask ! Well we’ve done this by implementing a “hybrid” iCloud provider in which you can save iWork documents to the relevant locations but any other documents will be stored as file attachements in your iCloud email enabling you to make full use of your iCloud Space.

To start, first sign up for a free account at SMEStorage. Once you have your account then sign in, navigate to the Cloud DashBoard and choose to add a new Cloud Provider and choose iCloud:

Next enter your iCloud authentication details so that SME can sync the meta-data from your iCloud account.:

Once done you can choose to synchronise your files:

Once this is done then we can navigate our files in the Cloud File Manager:

Any iWork file that you upload within the Document directory of Pages, Keynote and Numbers should be available from any of the iCloud Apps. If you wish iWork files to be seen by other iCloud Apps you must put them in these folders.

Also note that you must have added some iWork files already to see these folders. If you have not they won’t be present and you’ll need to re-sync your account once you have added files.

You are free to create other Folder and upload any type of files and these files will actually reside in your iCloud email account and if you use any of the SME Cloud Access clients you will be able to download, create share links, etc for all files types within your iCloud. Note that you cannot upload files to root unless you have an active iCloud email account and have logged in at least once to this email account.

Below is an example of what is seen from an iCloud mail view when files types are stored on iCloud email.

and what these files look like in the Cloud File Manager:

iCloud is a beta provider right now and is available for all free, personal and business accounts.

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OpenStack now supported for SME Open Cloud SaaS Platform and Cloud Appliance

We are really pleased to announce that we have added OpenStack Swift object Storage support to the SME Open Cloud Platform. Swift is a sub project of OpenStack and provides a highly scalable redundant unstructured data store. Swift is 5 separate services, object, container, account, auth and proxy. Although each of these can be scaled separately, in practice they run together.

Never heard of Swift? it’s the underlying distributable object store that supports RackSpace Cloud Files. It’s akin to Amazon’s S3 implementation but unlike implementations such as Eucalyptus, which clone S3 API’s, but are not sponsored by Amazon, openStack and Swift has RackSpace firmly onboard, and have proven scale.

As Swift is used by Rackspace Cloud Files. Swift RackSpace claim it is production-ready code that is scalable to massive levels (100-petabyte clusters and 100000 requests per second). Swift sacrifices C for A and P from a CAP theorem perspective. Although most operations happen synchronously consistency is sacrificed in failure scenarios.

From our perspective we have seen ISP’s and larger SMB users of our on-premise Cloud Gateway appliance expressing interest in SME supporting this, and we supply this as VMWARE Appliance (OR XEN, KVM) or as a dedicated hardware appliance for smaller companies who wish to embrace their own private Cloud infrastructure.

As with our S3 API endpoint support SME will overlay a more traditional file store on top of Swift layered with the business functionality we provide in our  Cloud File Server, which includes virtual drives and clients for Mac, Windows and Linux, and feature rich mobile clients for iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry, as well as value added features to Swift such as Webdav and FTP support.

Setting up Swift with SME is easy. First you need to add a new Cloud Provider and then the Cloud Wizard will be invoked. The first step is to enter your OpenStack details:

When entering the endpoint URL you should be sure to include the Port. An example URL is: http://<IP Address>:11000/v1.0.

Next you will need to choose which containers you want to work with and which should be the default container for any uploads to smart folders.

Once you have done this you will be ready to start the meta-sync which pulls in and caches all the information about containers and files.

If you have any issues connecting please refer to this advanced post on using SME with OpenStack 1.60 and SWAuth.

Once complete you will be able to access/amange your OpenStack files from the SME Web clients,  as well as using a Cloud Drive on Windows, Mac or Linux, and mobile clients for Android, iOS, and BlackBerry, and  the plethora of other tools and clients that SME provides. We’v e posted some screenshots below of this.

Web File Manager

iOS OpenStack

Android OpenStack

Firefox Plug-In OpenStack

Chrome OpenStack Plug-In

Mac Cloud Drive OpenStack

The OpenStack Swift API’s also get embedded for use within our own feature rich multi-cloud API framework in which we add many business driven features.. You can find details about that on our developer page

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