Symform 100GB Free cloud storage. Is it really Free?

Found an interesting offering from Synform today. You can have 100GB of free distibuted cloud storage if you contribute 150GB of local storage space to the cloud. Seems a little more like distibuted storage of the PtP variety to me, but there are obvious benefits to having distributed redundant storage. I need to read more to fully understand how this offering will work, but you can check it out for now: http://www.symform.com/free-cloud-storage.aspx

Amazon cloud outage derails Reddit, Quora | Deep Tech - CNET News

Is there a silver lining? One of the topics I can’t stress enough when talking to my customers about virtualization and cloud computing is the importance of infrastructure planning, monitoring, and capacity planning.  Doing more with less is great! It doesn’t matter if we are talking about an SMB virtualizing their bare metal servers, or a large company with a Public/Private cloud strategy. At the end of the day the computing is being done on some hardware, and the less hardware you have, the more mission critical it becomes.  There are plenty of strategies to mitigate the risks and achieve five 9’s that you can implement if you have control over the infrastructure.  What about this situation with Amazon? We really don’t have anything other than the SLA to fall back on… So maybe you recoup some fees, but is that enough to offset a potential business outage? Oddly, it seems as though it just might be for many EC2 customers.  Just look at the funny 404 messages coming from EC2 customers.  It would seem that they are so happy with Amazon cloud services, that they are taking it in stride.  I remember a few years back when RackSpace had a datacenter problem and everybody was freaking out! I find it really interesting that this Amazon cloud outage is being treated entirely different.  I’m not exactly sure why, but it is quite interesting isn’t it?

Amazon cloud outage derails Reddit, Quora | Deep Tech - CNET News

Turn Your Amazon Cloud Drive into Desktop-Accessible Storage - PCWorld

Finally… Thank you Gladinet. I’ve been waiting for this for a while. And there is a free version! I’m installing now and I’ll report back with my impressions.

Turn Your Amazon Cloud Drive into Desktop-Accessible Storage - PCWorld

Riverbed Technology: Riverbed Expands Breadth and Depth of Cloud Storage and Backup Solutions Ecosystem

“Whitewater simply acts as a target for an organization’s current backup software, requiring no expensive integration or complex configuration.”
Nice! This is sounds like a winner to me.  Simply point Quest vRanger at Whitewater and it handles translation and transport to public cloud.  That is a nice model.  I look forward to reading more.  Hey Riverbed… Want to send me one for review? :-)  I see that they support a wide array of Public clouds, but I don’t know if you can setup more than one cloud target at a time… One-to-many style. Still check out the article.  Seems like a painless way to add cloud backup storage capabilities to existing backup infrastructures.
Riverbed Technology: Riverbed Expands Breadth and Depth of Cloud Storage and Backup Solutions Ecosystem

VMware Takes Over Mozy Backup Service - PCWorld Business Center

 

Interesting move by VMware, moving beyond platform vendor to Saas provider. Wise to retain the Mozy employees. Looks like Parent EMC wants to keep expanding VMware’s offerings.  I wonder if will have any impact on customers or pricing models? It will be interesting to see what the next new offering will be from the combined companies.

VMware Takes Over Mozy Backup Service - PCWorld Business Center