Tag Archives: EFSS

TrueNAS – The Secure Data Platform for EasiShare

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The Enterprise File Sync and Share (EFSS) EasiShare presence is growing rapidly in the region, as enterprises and organizations are quickly redefining the boundaries of the new workspace. Work files and folders are no longer confined to the shared network drives within the local area network. It is going beyond to the “Work from Anywhere” phenomenon that is quickly becoming the way of life. Breaking away from the usual IT security protection creates a new challenge, but EasiShare was conceived with security baked into its DNA. With the recent release, Version 10, file sharing security and resiliency are stronger than ever.

[ Note: I have blogged about EasiShare previously. Check out the 2 links below ]

Public clouds are the obvious choice but for organizations to protect their work files, and keep data secure, services like Dropbox for Business, Microsoft® Office 365 with OneDrive and Google® Workspace are not exactly the kind of file sharing with security as their top priority. A case in point was the 13-hour disruption to Wasabi Cloud last week, where the public cloud storage provider’s domain name, wasabisys.com, was suspended by their domain name registrar because of malware discrepancy at one of its endpoints. There were other high profile cases too.

This is where EasiShare shines, because it is a secure, private EFSS solution for the enterprise and beyond, because business resiliency is in the hands and control of the organization that owns it, not the public cloud service providers.

EasiShare unifies with TrueNAS for secure business resiliency

EasiShare is just one several key business solutions iXsystems™ in Asia Pacific Japan is working closely with, and there is a strong, symbiotic integration with the TrueNAS® platform. Both have strong security features that fortify business resiliency, especially when facing the rampant ransomware scourge.

Value of a Single Unified Data Services Platform

A storage array is not a solution. It is just a box that most vendors push to sell. A storage must be a Data Services Platform. Readers of my blog would know that I have spoken about the Data Services Platform 3 years ago and you can read about it:

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Sleepless in Malaysia with Object Storage

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Object Storage? What’s that?

For the past couple of months, I have been speaking with a few parties in Malaysia about object storage technology. And I was fairly surprised with the responses.

The 2 reports

For a start, I did not set out to talk about object storage. It kind of fell onto my lap. 2 recent Hitachi Vantara reports revealed that countries like Australia, Hong Kong and even South East Asian countries were behind in their understanding of what object storage was, and the benefits it brought to the new generation of web scale and enterprise applications.

In the first report, an IDC survey sponsored by Hitachi Vantara, mentioned that 41% of the enterprises in Australia are not aware of object storage technology. In a similar survey, this one pointing towards Hong Kong and China, the percentages were 38% and 35% respectively. I would presume that the percentages for countries in South East Asia would not fall too far from the apple tree.

How is Malaysia doing?

However, I worry that the percentage number could be far more dire in Malaysia. In the past 2 months, responses from several conversations painted a darker hue about object storage technology with the companies in Malaysia. These included a reasonable sized hosting company, a well-established systems integrator, a software development company, several storage practitioners in Openstack and a DellEMC’s regional consultant for unstructured data. The collective conclusion was object storage technology was relatively unknown (probably similar to the percentages to the IDC/Hitachi Vantara reports), but it appeared to be shunned at this juncture. In web scale applications, Redhat Ceph block and files appeared popular in contrast to Openstack Swift. In enterprise applications, it was a toss of iSCSI and NFS.

Image from https://zdnet4.cbsistatic.com/hub/i/r/2018/04/24/c79e9dfb-b4a9-46bb-b831-f2c57fdf8a1d/resize/470xauto/5e4846d1bc7a034c382baf6dcbb612ed/cloud-storage.jpg

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Magic happening

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[Preamble: I am a delegate of Storage Field Day 15 from Mar 7-9, 2018. My expenses, travel and accommodation are paid for by GestaltIT, the organizer and I am not obligated to blog or promote the technologies presented at this event. The content of this blog is of my own opinions and views]

The magic is happening.

Dropbox, the magical disruptor, is going IPO.

When Dropbox first entered into the market which eventually termed as BYOD (Bring your Own Device), it was a phenomenon. There was nothing else that matched its simplicity and ease-of-use. A file uploaded into the cloud was instantaneously available on the tablets and smart phones. It was on every storage vendor’s presentation slides, using Dropbox as the perennial name dropping tactic to get end users buy-in.

Dropbox was more than that, and it went on to define a whole new market segment known as Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing (EFSS), together with everybody else such as Box, Easishare (they are here in South East Asia), and just about everybody else. And the executive team at Dropbox knew they were special too, so much so that they rejected a buyout attempt by Apple in 2011.

Today, Dropbox is beyond BYOD and EFSS. They are a full fledged collaboration platform that includes project management, project workflow, file versioning, secure file transfer, smart file synchronization and Dropbox Paper. And they offer comprehensive plans from Basic, Plus and Professional to Business and Enterprise. Their upcoming IPO, I am sure, will give them far greater capital to expand, and realize their full potential as the foremost content-based collaboration platform in the world.

Dropbox began their exodus from AWS a couple of years ago. They wanted to control their destiny and have moved more than 500PB into their own private data center for their customer data. That was half-an-exabyte, people! And two years later, they saved $75million of operating costs after they exited AWS. Today, they have more than 1 Exabyte of customer data! That is just incredible.

And Dropbox’s storage architecture started with a simple foundational design called “Magic Pocket“. Magic Pocket is a “fixed-length, immutable” block storage layer.

The block size is fixed at 4MB chunks (for parallel performance and service resumption reasons), compressed and deduped (for capacity savings reasons), encrypted (for security reasons) and replicated (for high availability reasons).

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Novell Filr Technology Overview – Part 2

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Part 1 of the Novell Filr Technology Overview was too heavy and I had to break up to share the feature of storage.

How will storage space look like to the different access methods or mobile device? Novell Filr does not deviate from the comfortable interface that is functionally similar to applications such as Dropbox. Under the guise of folders and files, the interface is a familiar one. It is called “MY FILES”.

But under the wraps of “MY FILES”, Novell Filr consolidates both Personal Storage and Net Folders locations under one roof. Here’s a look at “MY FILES” and how it consolidates various underlying file storage structure:

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Novell Filr Technology Overview Part 1

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I am like a kid opening presents on Christmas mornings today.

Reading and understanding the Novell Filr architecture is exciting with each feature revealing something different, some that may not be entirely unique, but something done simplified. Novell Filr has simplified a few things that are much more appreciated from storage guys like me. Let me share with you this technology learning session.

2 Key Features

First of all, I see the Novell Filr as a Secure Access Broker.

The Novell Filr provides file access, file sharing and file synchronization with multiple mobile devices. The mobility revolution in the likes of smart phones, tablets and other “connected” devices in our personal lives are changing our habits in the way we want information to be accessed, which I can summarize in 2 words – SIMPLE, UNINHIBITED. It is the lack of inhibition that scares the hell out of IT because IT is losing control, and corporations fear data leaks.

Novell Filr lets users access their home directories and network folders from their mobile devices. It lets the users synchronize their files with Windows and MacOS computers, regardless if these devices are internal of the company’s firewalled networks or external of it. Here’s a simple diagram of how Novell Filr defines its position as a Secure Access Broker.

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Novell Filr about to be revealed

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My training engagement landed me in Manila this week. At the back of my mind is Novell Filr, first revealed to me a week ago by my buddy at Novell Malaysia. After almost 18 months since I first wrote about it, Novell Filr is about to be revealed in my blog within this month. And it has come at an opportune time, because the enterprise BYOD/file synchronization market is about to take off.

Gartner defines this market as Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing (EFSS) and it is already a very crowded market given the popularity of Dropbox, Box.net, Sugarsync and many, many others. It is definitely a market that is coveted by many but mastered by a few. There are just too many pretenders and too few real players.

The proliferation of smart phones and tablets and other mobile devices has opened up a burgeoning need to have data everywhere. The wonderfulness of having data right at the fingertips every time they are wanted give rise to the need of wanting business and corporate data to be available as well. The power of having data instantly at the swipe of our fingers on the touchscreen is akin us feeling like God, giving life to our communication and us making opportunities come alive at the very moment. Continue reading →