- How Dropbox ended my search for seamless sync on Linux - Ars Technica
- VMware Rolls out 2009 Roadmap - Byte and Switch
- Start-up ParaScale launches cloud storage beta trial - Computerworld
Monthly Archive for September, 2008
DreamHost, one of the largest website hosters in the world, just announced that they allow each customer to host 50GB of their backups with an account. Those 50GB will not be accessible via a website, just with FTP or SFTP.
In the August 2008 newsletter, DreamHost describes it as like this:
You CAN use 50GB of your disk space for backups now! The only caveat is, it’s a separate ftp (or sftp) user on a separate server and it can’t serve any web pages. There are also NO BACKUPS kept of THESE backups (they should already BE your backups, not your only copy), and if you go over 50GB, extra space is only 10 cents a GB a month (a.k.a. cheap)!
If you are already a customer with DreamHost, you find that new option under “User” > “Backup User” or by clicking this link.
Dropbox is now open for everybody. On the blog the team around Drew Houston announced the public beta of Dropbox.
The same blogpost also mentions the availability of an option to buy storage:
Our most common request has been for more storage. Next week, you’ll be able to buy a 50GB Dropbox for $9.99/month, or $99.99/year. Don’t worry — the free 2GB accounts will always be free, and you can keep the amount of space you had in the beta. Stay tuned for more on this.
These prices are pretty much the same as Wuala offers (50GB is $95). But I have to say, personally I like the Dropbox method better. You just have a folder on your computer or Mac (Linux client comming soon) and can drag and drop your files with the Explorer/Finder. No need to start a huge, memory intense client.
So give Dropbox a try! Just download and install their client and you get 2GB of storage for free.
The Economist has published an article about the technical details on how Wuala is working.
The challenge is how to minimise the number of copies of the same file that have to be distributed. Copying costs participants both storage space and bandwidth. Yet there have to be enough copies to ensure that there is at least one available most of the time. If, for example, each computer is online 25% of the time, then a quick calculation shows that you would have to copy each file to 100 different computers to ensure that 999,999 times out of a million there is at least one copy available when a user looks.
But copying every file a hundred times is hugely inefficient. Instead, Mr Grolimund and Mr Meisser plan to break each file into chunks, which can be scattered liberally around the hard disks of participating computers, and then to use a mathematical trick to reconstruct the original file from those chunks.
This trick is called “Reed-Solomon error correction” and is actually used for CD/DVD/BluRay-Discs, DVB and DSL.
If you are interested in more details on how Wuala stores and distributes files, you should give the article a read.
Via [Slashdot]
