

Jesse Noller (of Python fame) launches simple fileserver for the cloud - nailer
http://www.nasuni.com

======
jnoller
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/>

~~~
sachinag
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.

~~~
0wned
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...](http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html))
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?

~~~
jnoller
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...](http://www.nasuni.com/news/nasuni-blog/security-and-the-nasuni-
filer/)

~~~
sachinag
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/>

~~~
jnoller
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.

------
nailer
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-...](http://jessenoller.com/2010/02/09/say-hello-nasuni-
launches-today/)

~~~
m0nty
> 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.

~~~
0wned
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?

~~~
nailer
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.

------
ra
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.

~~~
jnoller
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.

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

------
arnorhs
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!

------
simplegeek
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.

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

~~~
nailer
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.

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

------
mark_l_watson
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.

~~~
wizard_2
Jungle Disk can use your own encryption keys ;-)

------
tsuraan
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?

~~~
jnoller
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.

------
jnoller
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/>

------
notmyname
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.

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

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

~~~
alttab
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.

~~~
rlpb
> 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.

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

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

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

