Jerry Huang

Azure Sessions at Cloud Expo So much happened in January 2010 for the cloud storage world. First was the Windows Azure Platform went from public preview to full production. Second was Google Docs opened up  for any file type upload/download, effectively making it a GDrive in the cloud. How would these affect you? This article will compare the two cloud storage offerings from price, speed, usability, service level agreement and to developer support. 1. Price Google’s storage cost = 25c / Gigabyte / year = 2c / Gigabyte / month. There is no additional transfer cost. Windows Azure’s storage cost is at 15c / Gigabyte / month. There is additional cost for transfer data in and out. Note: Google storage is clearly cheaper, about 10 times cheaper. 2. Speed We will use Gladinet Cloud Desktop to map both in a virtual drive in Windows Explorer and compare the time it takes to... (more)

Map GDrive (Google Docs) as a Local Drive

Google on Ulitzer Gladinet Cloud Desktop provides a mapped network drive interface to Google Docs making GDrive accessible through a local drive letter, like G: or any other one that is available. This enables users to access and manage files in Google Storage exactly as they would on their desktop. And with Google Docs new any file type support, any file can be easily transferred (or backed up) to Google Docs. To mount Google Docs, first launch the mounting wizard from the systray menu for Gladinet Cloud Desktop: This launches the wizard. Select Google Docs from the drop down l... (more)

Gladinet Cloud Desktop vs ZumoDrive

At first glance, these services may seem the same. And there are certainly similarities; after all, both create a drive on your desktop that is actually connected to the cloud. However, there are some important differences. These differences give Gladinet Cloud Desktop users more control of their data and the ability to use any cloud storage service provider. Let’s take a closer look. One critical concern for cloud storage users is data control. What happens to your data if a dispute arises between you and your service provider? Can they hold your data hostage? What about pricin... (more)

Here Comes Another Azure Drive

I have been using Gladinet Cloud Desktop to map a network drive to the Windows Azure Blob Storage, backing up documents, moving files from PC to PC. The Azure storage looks to me just like another network share on the LAN. If you ask me, where is your Azure Drive? I would point to the Windows Explorer on my local PC. Now here comes another Azure Drive, Microsoft just came out with a beta release of the Windows Azure Drive. As quoted from MSDN, “Customers have told us that they want to take their already running Windows applications and run them in the cloud using the standard Wi... (more)

Migrating Data from Amazon S3 to Azure

Windows Azure Session at Cloud Expo Windows Azure enables the hosting of web applications in Microsoft data centers on a scalable and highly available platform. To do so, Microsoft has provided a set of services aimed at making it easier for developers to build applications that scale and elastically utilize physical or logical resources in the cloud. They have also provided a lot of value to lure customers away from services like Amazon S3. Depending on usage patterns, storage is cheaper on Azure and is also free for the first 8 months; the C# API and dev studio integration are... (more)