Jesse Noller (of Python fame) launches simple fileserver for the cloud | Hacker News Reader

Jesse Noller (of Python fame) launches simple fileserver for the cloud

nasuni.com

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For what it's worth - I'm Jesse :)

Like I've said in previous replies - I'm just a (very happy) employee. On launch day I did post to HN (here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1112218).

If you're interested in details, take a look at the technology section, FAQ:

http://www.nasuni.com/product/technology/

http://www.nasuni.com/resources/faqs/

It's important to note that an important feature of the Filer is that we have the capability to talk to $N cloud storage providers, see: http://www.nasuni.com/about-nasuni/partners/

Finally, you can take a look at the blog posts the team has been doing since launch. We've been covering various aspects of the Filer, including security, testing the cloud providers, etc.

http://www.nasuni.com/news/nasuni-blog/

At my company, we continually are looking for new providers for shared storage. Right now, we're on Dropbox, but I'm evaluating just throwing them all into Google Docs since they give us free storage and we can copy/paste direct URLs for files into IMs and e-mails.

Can you compare Nasuni's offerings to Dropbox and GDocs? The "choose your cloud" is nice, I suppose, but that's way too complicated for me as a business person who can barely write SQL.

Does anyone worry about the built-in Law Enforcement Access systems that the cloud services have? Bruce Schneier wrote an essay (http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hackin...) describing why that was bad and how it played into the Chinese hack of gmail. I hate to be a wet blanket, but just can't help to wonder, how many people stop and think of their privacy and the privacy of their corporate data, or do they just rush, following the herd over this particular cliff?

In the case of Nasuni and the Filer product; we have thought about this. All data is encrypted using your encryption keys, before being stored in the cloud. You're perfectly right to be concerned though.

Storing your data in the cloud, in the clear does open you to risk, which is one of the reasons cloud storage has not "taken off" for businesses in general, and why we do so much work to encrypt and protect all data before it is sent over the wire.

We wrote a blog post on this recently, in fact:

http://www.nasuni.com/news/nasuni-blog/security-and-the-nasu...

Oh! Another question (and I'm not trying to be a dick; I'm just really curious - data storage/retrieval in the cloud solves 1,000 other problems): how's Nasuni different than Cleversafe? Cleversafe runs their own data centers, I believe, but other than that, it seems similar: http://www.cleversafe.com/

Questions and feedback/questions like this are best sent to feedback@nasuni.com, where the team can look at it at comment as a whole.

For this type of question, I would actually ask you send feedback/questions like this to feedback@nasuni.com, where the team can look at it and comment. Alternatively, you can also call us directly at 508-651-0580

Jesse was launching this at PyCon last week. It's a simple appliance NAS server that your normal, every day end users save files to via CIFS or NFS. It just happens to back onto the cloud.

I.e: a secretary saves files to their D: drive, and it's in the cloud. And when you run out of disk space, you buy more from your cloud provider and suddenly there's another 10TB on your D: drive.

I find this very neat as it brings cloud benefits (around reliability and expansion) to real people, using crappy early 2000s desktop apps - ie, most people using computers.

Jesse's blog port on the launch: http://jessenoller.com/2010/02/09/say-hello-nasuni-launches-...

Why I'm feeling really complimented right now - I'm just a Nasuni employee. Last week at PyCon I did a lightning talk thanking the Python world for everything that helped us along.

But; back to the product - you're spot on. It's a auto-scaling NAS device, with snapshots/versioning, end to end encryption, etc. There's actually no need to "buy more" from the cloud vendor - we do that automatically/seamlessly.

Cloud storage is nice because there is no real "transaction" to buy new storage - you just consume what you need. So your office, secretaries, and CEOs can just write to the shared drive endlessly. The never ending hard drive, so to speak.

> real people, using crappy early 2000s desktop apps

I wish more companies would concentrate on these kinds of uses rather than whatever the next social media thing is supposed to be. It basically describes my sys admin life and is something I will cheerfully spend money on.

Some desktops apps should not be in the cloud. Letting the cloud generate your passwords is a bad idea. Complexity kills and the cloud ain't simple. Who has outsourced what to where?

Agreed. But in this case, neither the file server provider nor the backend storage provider can see your data - speaking to Jesse quickly at PyCon this seems to have been a very deliberate design decision.

So it's like a little more flexible ZumoDrive http://www.zumodrive.com/ (YC backed).

Why you should not use the cloud: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjfaCoA2sQk

Yes, it's funny, but also very true. Many of us have to actually deal with all of these buzzwords. You can't outsource responsibility.

At USD3000/year + storage, it's a little more expensive than jungledisk, etc... I wonder if they'll gain the traction they need at the price?

It's an interesting price point actually.

I believe the features speak for themselves. End-to-end encryption, versioning/snapshots (no more backups), the ability to talk to $N cloud providers rather than a single one, simple to use and unified management for an entire company to use.

JungleDisk offers all of this for 4$/user/month.

What an amazing video introduction. I think more websites should do something like that. I'm really tired of watching video presentations of programmers clicking through a bunch of menus to show me how easy the product it.

Excellent approach good job.

I also love the idea. It's like Dropbox, but for enterprise users!

Actually Jesse Noller works for a company that launched this product. I, initially, got the impression that he founded this company-which is not correct.

Correct; I am an employee, my boss is one of the founders.

Sorry, you'd mentioned 'we're launching this week' during PyCon and I thought that (along with your Internet Celebrity (TM) status) implied you had some level of equity.

It's all OK :) I'm glad (ecstatic actually) that you were excited about it enough to post about it!

Yes. That's a misleading title

For a large business, this looks like a great product. Way too expensive for an individual or very small company. Jungle Disk is a lot cheaper, and I am going to set my wife's MacBook up to use it since she is not so good about backing up frequently to Time Machine. Personally, I use a remote git server, and frequently back up the remote git directories to S3. The only problem is this is not secure if remote servers get hacked so there is quite a bit of proprietary work (mostly for customers) that only gets backed up by zip/gnupg copied manually to S3. I would like to use some form of encrypted git but that is not (I am fairly sure) practical.

Jungle Disk can use your own encryption keys ;-)

So, you support multiple backends (looks like two, moving towards four), but as a user, I have to choose one? Is there a plan for a RAID-type storage? One of my big fears about cloud storage is that when a provider decides it's done with the game, I have to try to slurp all my data off that provider onto a new one. If I could have a RAID5 between the four providers you offer, it would provide some peace of mind. Or is that feature already available, and I'm just missing it?

This is a good idea - I would recommend you email it to feedback@nasuni.com as well as any other features or ideas you have. That way the entire team can take a chance to discuss it and respond and save it.

I also wanted to take a moment and let those who might be looking for a job in the Boston area know that we are hiring:

http://www.nasuni.com/sub/jobs/

Seems to be very similar to Jungle Disk's business edition. However, I like that nasuni offers access to the remote data after one stops using their service.

For some usage cases isn't Coda a suitable replacement?

http://coda.cs.cmu.edu/

While Coda has been around for a while and is great - it looks like this provides a different service. This is cloud based, does your backups for you, and doesn't require that you have your own servers, which reduces maintenance. Code is software - not a "turn key" full solution.

But you are correct, if cost cutting isn't your issue and you wanted a distributed file system that's leaps and bounds over NFS that would be your ticket.

> and doesn't require that you have your own servers

It looks to me like it requires a virtual machine somewhere, which presumably means that you need a server to run one on. There's an FAQ "What happens when I need to migrate to a new server?" which suggests this too.

Although I can't seem to find a summary anywhere of what would be involved in setting this up on your own network.

The download/appliance is a VMware image (ergo, a virtual appliance). This means you must have a VMware server somewhere on your LAN.

what about the local cache + write infinitely? howzat work? lifo?

This is a question better asked on our forums here: https://www.nasuni.com/forum/ where the entire engineering team can comment as needed.

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