Author:
Hi Everyone!
As many of you know, we are in the process of starting a few new companies and offering services not only to the T* Community, but expand our services out to the internet as a whole.
One of the services we had the idea of starting, was a "cloud storage" service.
Suddenly we thought: Where better to store your private files, than in Your BigCloset!
For a nominal amount, you could have unlimited access to store your private files, on our private cloud storage server in our secure cloud storage environment.
Our cloud-storage solution would be based on the opensource OwnCloud project, which has sync clients for Windows/Mac/Linux, iOS, and Android. It's also available to any device that can mount a WebDav drive, and of course, available via the web interface to any computer/device with a web browser.
All communications would be secured with SSL and encrypted on the drive to keep prying eyes from looking in and be completely private.
If you wanted to disconnect from our Shared Cloud, we'd even offer you a Private Server of your own, running OwnCloud so that you would have your VERY OWN CLOUD!
We currently OWN all our own servers, and switches, and spend a lot of time protecting our network and servers from prying eyes.
Unlike most cloud server providers, we aren't reselling services like AmazonS3 or RackSpace cloud. This is all our own infrastructure and equipment to help maximize your privacy.
Just to stress this would not be linked in any way to your TopShelf account. Billing would go through QnEZ or Janglewood and we would have no system in place for tracking who you are/what you do. We are trying to build a system built on Privacy.
So let us know, are you interested?
-Piper, Joyce & Cat
--Janglewood LLC
Comments
BC Cloud
Sounds quite interesting. My limiting factor would be price. My sole income is disability so you can count me in if it's affordable to me.
Would it have a separate login ID and password than here?
Hugs,
Erica
Separate Logins
The plan is to support completely separate logins. The goal is to basically have a cloud sync filesystem separate from other services or anonymity. Our goal is to have our pricing start at right around $5/month. We are still working on how much space you get for a price. There will be discounts for annual contracts also.
Looks at clothes closet..
I don't supppose there will be a teleport feature that I can hang some clothing in, will there? :-)
Janice. (Who really needs to go through her dresser and closet.)
Interesting!!
Sounds interesting, indeed!
Will be looking forward to see your proposed service contract, especially the section covering SLAs and service commitments.
Will you also be proposing any kind of confidentiality and service commitment clause?
Security
I'm not talking about the "OMG Haxxors got in!" type of security but the "Why doesn't that server have any lights on?" kind of security.
For the kind of cloud you are offering to be worthwhile it has to have a certain level of redundancy, which means at the minimum servers in at least two separate locations - preferably not both on the San Andreas fault.
Apart from that consideration, your offer would seem to be ideal for most writers here, as somewhere safe to archive off their precious source files and notes. I would certainly be interested.
Penny
SLA and Geographic Diversity
As of right now, we are operating out of 2 Geographically Diverse Datacenters. One in Bridgewater, NJ, one in Denver, CO. We are also contemplating shortly after launch a build-out in a third Datacenter, but are still evaluating locations.
Our plan is not only to operate RAID arrays on the individual servers, but also to have no less than 2 servers, offering full redundancy at launch and we are still working out the details of our SLA and Privacy Policy. We're also evaluating a standard response to Law Enforcement, and how to guarantee any warrants provided are legit.
As we said before our plan is to offer this service separate from your BigCloset login, to keep from being like Google/Microsoft that use logins for extended tracking. As stated all data will be encrypted in our cloud provisioning software, and on the drive itself. We are also looking into using an extended validation certificate for SSL so that you know it's us you are talking to. :)
While most providers build a Storage Network for other services, and then turn to selling the excess space, we are specifically designing our service and infrastructure to be a SaaS (Storage as a Service) Network for YourBigCloset. This give us the advantages of not having to compete with our own shared hosting, or our VPS servers for IO bandwidth and file transfers.
I don't supose, . . . . umm, . . .
That the Polices could be written to be both properly legal and understandable by non-lawyers.
Just a wild hope!
*grins*
~Hypatia >i< ..:::
Too Much Jargon
If the SLA / Privacy Policy gets TOO jargony, we will try and provide a 2nd document for each, that will basically be a simplified translation version :)
As would I....
Up to now, whenever I wanted to share a video/audio file, I've had to upload it to a file storage site, which is less convenient for me as well as anyone else who wants to view it/listen to it. If it's possible to do such a thing on this new server, then yes, I'm interested as well. $5 a month is not going to break me financially.
Livin' A Ragtime Life,
Rachel
I would be interested
I have too many things I could louse if anything happened to my fragile world not to be interested in a safe place among trusted friends to store them. Count me in.
Huggles
Michele
With those with open eyes the world reads like a book
Um .... 'Cloud Storage'
This sounds quite promising.
At this moment, I see that first I would want to use it to store mutual files that both Penny Lane and I could access, as we are working together in a way. Do you envisage a multiple access capability? I can always, of course, share my login details with her, but I was wondering if it may not perhaps be better to have some way I could specify who I could allow to have access.
Hmmm
Just thinking aloud really.
J
Look at all the pretty features!
Files/Folders can be shared between multiple accounts. There is also as of this point, a Shared document Editing feature built in that is quite like GoogleDocs and based off of LibreOffice.
We are still working out what our final service offering will entail, and so the Editor is to be considered a "alpha, maybe included at launch" feature at this point while we are testing.
While there are a lot of Add-on Features we can add to the service to increase it's value to many, our main goal is still to provide a rock-solid, stable, secure cloud storage platform.
I've been working for the last few days on our backup and mirroring strategies, and documenting things for the SLA.
-Piper
Scrivener
I might be interested in something like that. It really would depend on what storage I would get for the price. Another consideration is how well it jived with Scrivener project files. I know some Scrivener users have had issues with Google Drive and OneDrive, but Dropbox works fine. It would really depend on how the files are synchronized.
Have delightfully devious day,
WebDAV / CalDAV / CardDAV - $0.75 to $0.05/GB
Sync is done with a windows client, much the same as DropBox. One issue some people may run into, is if saving a file directly to a "sync on write" style fileystem, is that a LOT of programs, actually first write a TEMP file, and then change the name, which causes some issues with sync. I ran into this issue with Photoshop durring the first test release of the software we are using, but have since updated it, and am not experiencing this same issue.
For the Techie's here, the base protocol is WebDAV/CalDAV/CardDAV so it's open and supported by many many projects, not just the Windows/Mac/OSX/iPhone/Android and SOON WindowsPhone8 clients.
owncloud
Just did a bit of searching on Scrivener's forums. One owncloud user did have issues syncing, but he was able to clear it up. Hopefully, it'll work for the Windows version (I'm running it on Linux with WINE). I don't imagine there'd be too much trouble since both versions use the same file structure even if the mac version does have more features and probably includes some information that the windows version doesn't.
Have delightfully devious day,
Windows?
Oh. As a Linux only shop I'm going to have to do some research, then.
WebDAV might be the way to go for me.
Unlike Julia, I'm more interested in the backup/archive facilities. If it is possible to edit files that have been stored, that kind of defeats the object of backups.
Penny
Perfect Backup Solution
There is a Linux desktop client that works much like the windows client, but you can always just mount the WebDAV share using FUSE as a native file system.
One thing to note, if you are interested, is that we will be offering inexpensive Private/Managed Clouds also. Where we maintain a VPS and keep the software up to date for you, but your software is on it's on VPS Containerized cloud, backed up regularly.
We're also looking into the ability to FTP upload files that will be auto included to your cloud drive, as an added bonus for facilitating some automated backups if you don't want to use WebDAV.
Oh did I mention the server does File Revisioning?
-Piper
Editing vs archiving on the cloud
If you can edit, you still don't have to. That's pretty much true of any sort of backup; we're not using some sort of CD-WORM media. These files are stored on RAID HDD's and backed up with multiple locations, and file revision histories. If you wanted something that you wrote a backup to once, a simple USB Thumb Drive would work, but that would NOT have the redundancy and convenience of being in the cloud. Another good strategy is to tar, zip or otherwise archive your backup files.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.