Using FTP storage like a local folder on Linux

Recently here at theCloud we launched our online storage offering so I thought that I’d share with you a neat little trick that I recently learned.  For those of you out there in Linux land did you know that you can mount your cloud storage as a local folder?  Thanks to curlftpfs you can,  I’m running Ubuntu 9.10 so my instructions will be tailored to that but these instructions should work on any Debian based Linux distro or it should be easy enough to figure out what you need to change to get it working on your distro of choice.

For this first step you will need root/sudo access on the machine your working on.  To install curlftpfs on a Debian based system (like Ubuntu) you run:

sudo apt-get install curlftpfs

Now we have that done we need somewhere to mount the file, it’s important that you are able to write to this location I noticed that I had issues when I tried to use mount it with sudo.  What I ended up doing was just creating a directory in my home folder:

mkdir ~/theCloud

Now that we have curlftpfs installed and a directory created mount to it’s time to make the connection the following command will take care of this for you:

curlftpfs ftp://[username]:[password]@backups.thecloud.co.nz ~/theCloud

Where in the above you replace [username] and [password] with the username and password you got when you signed up for storage.  As I mentioned earlier I had issues running the above command as root as it locked the folder and I wasn’t able to get in, if you find you are having the same problem then the following command will unmount storage:

fusermount -u ~/theCloud

You’ll notice that when you restart your machine that storage will no longer be mounted in which case you’ill have to re-run the command above.  There are two options available to you if you want storage automatically mounted the first is to have the command we give you here run each time you log-in, I won’t go into that here as how you do this can differ from distro to distro.  The other method is to add an entry to you /etc/fstab file the curlftpfs site suggests that the following line should do the trick:

curlftpfs#[username]:[password]@backups.thecloud.co.nz /mnt/theCloud fuse rw,uid=500,user,noauto 0 0

In the above example I had also created a user independent directory at which to mount storage.  I was unable to get this to work I don’t know if that is an issue on the part of myself or curlftpfs.  If you do get it working with fstab leave a comment letting me know what I need to change to get it up and running.

Tags: ftp, Linux, storage, tips
Category: Cloud Services, Linux  |  Comment

Couch DB moves to the Cloud with CouchIO

According to its motto, the underlying premise behind the open source CouchDB NoSQL database is about helping developers “relax” – chiefly by providing them with a simple, powerful database alternative.

To better help achieve that goal, Couchio, a commercial entity led by the founder of the Apache CouchDB project, is now launching a cloud hosting project to make it easier to ramp up CouchDB projects.

The new Couchio hosting service is currently in beta, but it could hold the promise of helping to accelerate usage of CouchDB among developers, supporters said.

“Basically, we’re trying to provide a super-low-friction way to enable people to get started with CouchDB hosting online,” Damien Katz, creator of CouchDB, told InternetNews.com. “We’re not focusing on large customers or high scalability. Primarily we’re focusing on making it dead simple for people to have a CouchDB instance in the cloud.”

Katz noted that with the Couchio hosting service, the plan is to get around some of the barriers that users have had in getting started with CouchDB. Among the issues cited by Katz is problems that developers may encounter when they try and build a CouchDB instance from source files.

Couchio will also be providing some additional components beyond just a core CouchDB instance.

“We’ll be including Apache Lucene full-text indexing,” Katz said. “That’s an add-on for CouchDB that people usually have to download and build themselves.”

Katz added that support will also be included for the GeoCouch geospatial indexer, which enables address information inside of a document to be added and interpreted. As an example of what the feature can do, a query could be written to find all the points within a certain distance, and GeoCouch can return the appropriate information.

From a management perspective, the Couchio hosting platform will leverage the existing Futon interface technology that CouchDB already provides.

For now, Couchio’s CouchDB service is using Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) as its delivery platform, but that’s not likely to remain where the service is based. For one thing, Couchio will be moving off Amazon – at some point in the future – to reduce cost.

Source: www.databasejournal.com (full article)

Tags: Cloud Database, Couch DB, Database, The Cloud
Category: Cloud Services, Database  |  1 Comment

LayerX Launches ‘theCloud’

The Cloud is alive and kicking!!  Earlier this week LayerX launched version one of the platform to the public. Well over a year ago we started this journey, to create an environment in which the 450,000 small businesses in New Zealand could leverage the benefits of Cloud Services with an on-demand, self-service and scalable architecture we call theCloud.

We are now moving as quickly as possible to finish all the service automation work for the various elements of the platform, as follows:

• Web Hosting – Done, fully automated. Sign up and start using it instantly.
• Storage - Done, fully automated.  This functionality will be enabled next week.
• Microsoft SQL Server Database Hosting – In final testing phase, fully automated sign up expected to go live before the end of May.
• Exchange Server 2010 Email – In final testing phase, fully automated sign up expected to go live before the end of May.
• Virtual Servers – Fully automated server setup will come online in June, for now please make contact with us regarding your requirements.
• Cloud Computing – Still being planned.

So it is early days for the platform but we are very excited about it and welcome any feedback, we’d like to make it perfect so tell us what you think…

Tags: Cloud, Cloud Services, Exchange 2010, Online Storage, SQL Server 2008, The Cloud, theCloud, VMWare, Web Hosting
Category: Cloud Services, Technology  |  Comment

Hadoop Because We Can

With any reasonable luck we will have our proof-of-concept Hadoop Cluster up and running by the end of the month.  We have some ideas for MapReduce and image data, and thought it would be cool to have an instance available to mess with.  If anyone has any cool ideas for MapReduce or a Hadoop Cluster in general, leave comments here – innovation comes from trying new things afterall.

As the cluster build nears completion we will update this post with details of what’s happening.

Tags: Distributed Computing, Hadoop, Linux Cluster, MapReduce
Category: Computing Cluster, Hadoop, Linux  |  Comment

The New Face Of Hosting

Having had the pleasure of hanging out with John Zanni at a few events I can say first hand that he knows his stuff, and this recent article not only backs that up but provides a great view of the state of Cloud Services in the Hosting market today.

The article touches on some key points that continue to drive the uptake of Cloud Services.  Companies considering IT to be crtical to their success is up 20 percent from 2009 and 65 percent of the companies interviewed already use some type of cloud service, with 73 percent of those that don’t currently considering it.

Naturally the article has a Microsoft slant to it, but personally I think Hyper-V has a long way to go to catch up with VMWare in this space.

We’re working hard to get theCloud website up and running, it won’t be long now, so tune in and keep in touch with what’s happening in this space, we’d love to hear your thoughts on all this hype too!

Tags: Cloud Services, Hyper-V, theCloud, VMWare
Category: Hosting Industry, Statistics  |  1 Comment