With the number of photosand videos we take on our phones and the number of important documents we may have on our systems, backup storage is a necessity these days. Sure there are options like Dropbox, Google Drive, Amazon Drive, and more, but not everyone wants to store or share their files on a public service, or pay monthly fees.

Promise Technology has just announced a personal cloud storage device, the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo, which offers up to 8TB of storage for a safe, simple, and fast storage solution.

In launching our second-generation product, we designed the Apollo Cloud Duo with careful consideration and our consumers needs in mind, said Justin Cleveland, Promise Technologys Director of Biz Dev IoT. Aligning with our main goal to redesign storage and sharing, the Duo is easy to use and ensures content is always with the consumer whether they are at home or on-the-go.

Simple to set up, Apollo Cloud has a two-step setup process for backing up your files, photos, and videos. If you wish, you can quickly and securelyshare your storage space with up to 40 people. Each person with access can share their files with others through time-limited links accessible anywhere in the world. The device can also be set up in RAID0 (striped) for 8TB of storage space or RAID1 (mirrored) mode for 4TB of storage space with mirrored backup and supports hot swappable hard drives.

Some additional key features of the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo personal cloud storage device include:

Apollo Cloud 2 Duo is available starting on August 31st atwww.promise.comfor a one time fee of $449 USD andis compatible withiOS, MacOS, Android, and Windows.

What do you think about the Apollo Cloud 2 Duo? What are you currently using to backup and share your files? Let us know in the comments below or on Google+, Twitter, or Facebook.

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Apollo Cloud 2 Duo offers personal cloud storage with no monthly fees - Techaeris

In most of the cases, a cloud storage cost analysis requires domain-specific expertise, otherwise, a company may overlook some small but significant circumstances

The size of the cloud computing market has increased threefold over the past five years, and it is predicted to go beyond $128 billion by 2019.

However, companies should make sure that the expenditures related to the migration to a cloud storage will not eat away the potential economy that this technology entails.

The careful analysis of these expenses will help answer a question that concerns many businesses: How much does a cloud storage cost?.

For readers, here is acloud migration checklist, which advises companies to rest when estimating the cost of moving from traditional on-premises repository.

>See also:Cloud storage is the new battleground in the cloud price war

Usually, it comprises both transparent costs that companies generally expect and hidden ones that may not become evident until contract signing.

For illustration purposes only, we will use the example of Amazons cloud storage pricing, as this public cloud provider does not conceal it.

The price for a cloud storage usually depends on a number of gigabytes that a company requires per month. Some providers, such as these of Amazon S3, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, use a sliding-scale approach to price formation, which means offering bigger storage volumes at downward costs. Also, some vendors provide redundant repositories at higher prices as compared with less redundant or archival ones; the latter are charged the least.

Amazon charges the first 50 terabytes at $0.023 per a gigabyte, while successive volumes are quoted cheaper at $0.022 and $0.021 per GB.

Transferring data out of the storage also entails expenses, while on the average, their moving into it is free. When charging for the bandwidth, many providers apply a sliding-scale pricing. As for AWS, the cost of one gigabyte of data that a company needs to send from within the repository starts with $0.010, while in some cases it is free.

>See also:Enterprise cloud storage: usage and trends

Despite the fact that these numbers seem reasonable if a company needs to send just a few gigabytes a month, transferring large data volumes will cost a bundle.

Depending on a vendor, various REST-based storage requests, a.k.a. transactions, can also be charged, such as:

Get Delete List Post Others

Amazon S3 is among vendors that include transactions into the cloud storage cost. The company estimates this item starting from $0.004 per 10,000 transactions, but the delete request is free. Rackspace Cloud Files, Nirvanix and services alike provide storage requests on a free-of-charge basis.

Companies that require native access to their information bear gateway-related costs. Depending on the demands, a company may opt for a providers gateway or its own one.

>See also:The year of the cloud: flexible, agile and scalable

Businesses that use a vendors gateway, should be ready for the expenses on the equipment and maintenance fees. While companies that choose to integrate their data via their own, specific one should take on the costs of the gateway custom development.

An important consideration, to which many businesses do not give due regard, is the retrieval or restoration of the corporate data. The transfer of large data volumes requires considerable bandwidth, which is why most vendors provide this service on a paid basis.

On top of all, this process does not come cheap. Depending on a service provider, it may vary from some hundred US dollars to a few thousands of them.

For example, Amazon provides data retrieval at the cost that significantly surpasses ordinary data transfer: at $0.05 per a gigabyte. So, the restoration of 100 terabytes of data will cost $5,000.

>See also:Cloud Storage articles and industry news for senior IT business leaders

In most of the cases, a cloud storage cost analysis requires domain-specific expertise, otherwise, a company may overlook some small but significant circumstances.

Down the line, they may make up a large sum and will drive up the total cost of the migration. That is why it is best to turn to a reliable service provider,as subject-matter experts will provide a thorough and correct calculation of anticipated costs.

Sourced by Stanislau Belachkin at Sam Solutions

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Top 5 tips for doing a cloud storage cost analysis - Information Age

We have become accustomed to the terminology of the cloud, a digital storage unit in the proverbial sky. It is touted as the solution to keeping track of meaningful photos and videos, important documents, business correspondence and much more. While this is a physical space-saving measure, these items may not be protected unless some security measures are in place. It has been said, There is no cloud. Its just someone elses computer.

Better Business Bureau serving the Northwest provides these tips for researching and choosing a cloud-storage service:

Keep dual copies. It may sound old school, however, keepsakes and important documents are good to keep in a safe or safedeposit box, in addition to storing them on a secure cloud service. Just like your house can burn down, the cloud could burst.

Take responsibility to research. Technology is moving fast and furious. If you are going to move your most prized information to a digital platform you must stay informed. For example, would you keep your life insurance policy in a grocery bag in the back seat of your unlocked car? Without research, this may be the equivalent of what you are doing.

Ask yourself questions. What can cloud storage do for you that you dont have? How will you be using the cloud? What does encryption mean? What is a zero-knowledge provider? What cloud storage do you already have access to? What is the difference between paid and free cloud storage? How do various cloud-storage providers compare with each other?

Read the agreement and know what they offer. It may not be the most interesting read and most likely will require additional research for terms and technology applications. If there is something you do not understand, ask and research until you do.

The bottom line is that there are advantages and risks associated with cloud-based storage. A good place to start research is ftc.gov. For more tips, or if you would like information about consumer assistance, turn to bbb.org. If you are a victim of a scam, report it to bbb.org/scamtracker.

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BBB Tip of the Week: What to look for in cloud storage - The Spokesman-Review

As enterprises deploy more storage resources to the public cloud, the performance of each provider's service can...

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have a profound effect on related workloads. Issues like storage service levels, network connectivity and application design can all affect application performance. Workloads depend on storage, so it's important to achieve and maintain the necessary levels of storage performance over time.

Use these five tactics to optimize the performance of your public cloud storage service.

Traditional enterprises have complete control over IT resources and their performance. But public cloud computing doesn't work this way. A cloud storage service provider won't change its offerings to create something unique for your business -- that defeats the speed and scale that makes public cloud so versatile.

Users instead have to select from a limited menu of storage services, each with its own advantages and constraints. One of the best ways to optimize the performance of a public cloud storage service is to understand those constraints and make your choice carefully, based on performance requirements.

For example, Amazon Web Services (AWS) users typically choose Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) Standard for low latency and high throughput of frequently accessed data, though performance is variable. The challenge is to select a storage service that provides a level of performance and resilience that is most appropriate for your workload, at the lowest possible cost. If you already chose a service and find it inadequate, consider shifting data to another service tier, a different storage service or even a different public cloud provider.

Users need to know when a public cloud storage service performs the way it should, when performance falters and when the service is disrupted. Measure relevant metrics to gauge availability and performance. Consider a native monitoring service from a cloud provider, such as Amazon CloudWatch, Azure Monitor and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) Stackdriver Monitoring.

This kind of service monitoring and measurement simplifies troubleshooting and facilitates improvements to workload architectures and designs. For example, monitoring reports can help an enterprise identify bottlenecks in network or storage performance. Insights from monitoring tools could also lead to service configuration changes, such as more storage capacity or the integration of another storage service.

Many other organizations will use the same storage services that you use, which results in unexpected performance variations. Users cannot change a provider's public cloud storage service to address this, but they can potentially change the architecture and design of their workload to optimize performance.

For example, if you move or deploy a workload in one public cloud region, while the storage resources for that workload remain in a different region, performance can suffer. To address this issue, architects can replicate the original storage repository to a duplicate storage resource in the new region and redirect the workload to use the replicated storage. Architects can also implement caching. For example, sensitive database workloads could benefit from a service such as Amazon ElastiCache or Azure Redis Cache to provide high-performance, in-memory cloud caching.

Ultimately, a workload that relies on public cloud storage must adapt to the behaviors of that storage.

Finally, developers should evaluate the storage sensitivity of applications and consider design changes. For example, asynchronous communication can be more forgiving of latency and disruption than synchronous communication -- though asynchronous operation poses a greater risk of data loss. Ultimately, a workload that relies on public cloud storage must adapt to the behaviors of that storage.

When local workloads cannot overcome the performance limitations of a public cloud storage service, implement specialized tools to accelerate the connection between your data center and the cloud.

One example of such a hybrid implementation is the AWS Storage Gateway, which organizations typically deploy as an appliance in their own data centers. The gateway operates in three primary modes: file, volume and tape. As a file gateway, local workloads deliver file objects to Amazon S3. Organizations primarily use this mode for backup and disaster recovery tasks. As a volume gateway, local workloads can access iSCSI volumes in the cloud. Volume mode -- which organizations commonly use for snapshots and other backups -- also enables local caching, so frequently accessed data can remain in local storage, while other data is stored in the cloud. As a tape gateway, users can extend an existing tape-based backup system to the cloud as a virtual tape library.

Performance problems aren't necessarily rooted in the cloud storage service provider or the service itself, but can be precipitated by limitations in internet connectivity. Public internet carries risks of unexpected congestion and disruption -- both of which can interrupt storage traffic and impair performance.

One option is to increase WAN bandwidth to the public internet. To accomplish this, replace existing WAN links with a high-bandwidth WAN link, such as a 10 Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) or faster. As an alternative, combine multiple, lower-bandwidth WAN links, such as two or more 1 GbE links. Multiple links can also enhance network resilience -- if one link fails, another can maintain connectivity.

Organizations can also use dedicated network connectivity services between their data center and the public cloud storage service. Examples of these services include AWS Direct Connect, Azure ExpressRoute and Google Cloud Interconnect. A dedicated, high-performance connection can eliminate the variable performance of the public internet and improve the use of limited WAN bandwidth.

Review Google cloud storage services and options

High-performance cloud storage is now a reality

Find out which Azure storage types fit your workload

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Optimize a public cloud storage service with these performance tips - TechTarget

The Lima Ultra, a tiny device which allows you to create and run your own personal cloud, has hit the mainstream.

The Lima Ultra is geared towards consumers who need a file access and backup system, regardless of which device or OS they are using.

Once connected to a router, the Lima Ultra acts as a personal cloud system which can be accessed from anywhere in the world, while users retain full control over their data and do not have to pay any kind of subscription fee to use a cloud service.

With a price tag of $129, the Lima Ultra is the successor to the original Lima with an improved CPU and hardware designed to increase the power and efficiency of the device.

Now sporting a quad-core 1.5GHz processor, Gigabit Ethernet port, and more RAM than its predecessor, the Lima Ultra is now capable of improved transfer and streaming speeds.

But is the device worth the investment?

The Lima Ultra comes as a kit with the device itself, an Ethernet cable and power cable, as well as an instruction guide. You must provide an external hard drive for storage, which connects to the Lima via USB.

For the purposes of testing, I used a Seagate Expansion 4GB hard drive, although anything up to 8TB is supported.

The device is compatible with the main ecosystems, including Mac, Windows, Linux, iOS, and Android. If you are a Chrome or Windows Phone user, you can access Lima through the web application.

An additional strength of the Lima is that installation takes no more than a few minutes and the instruction manual is no more than a page long. Once you have visited the Lima website to download the installation application -- roughly 111mb and closer to 280mb once unpacked on Mac -- you are asked to accept the Lima T&Cs before either logging in or creating an account.

To create an account, you need to input an email address and password. To boost security, Lima will require a mixture of numbers, letters, and capital letters, and will award you a security "percentage" to outline how secure your password is. Transfers and communication are protected by TLS security.

Lima will then search for available devices, so you need to make sure your product is plugged in and ready to go. At the same time, you need to use the Ethernet cable to connect Lima to your router and your external hard drive to Lima via USB.

Once the device has been discovered, the automatic setup and update process will begin and it takes no more than a few seconds to complete.

At this point, once you click the next prompt, you are at the point of no return when it comes to your hard drive. In order to associate the drive with Lima, anything currently stored on the drive will be erased -- so make sure you have backed up any data on your drive you wish to keep.

You are given the option to back out of the installation if you need to save content. If happy to proceed, the external hard drive is then configured automatically, a "health check" occurs, and you then have the option to authorize Lima on both your PC and mobile device.

Lima also asks you to input your mobile phone number if you wish to give your smartphone access to the cloud storage device.

The service then automatically sends an SMS message. After an hour, however, no message appeared during testing, and so I skipped this step and was eventually able to connect Lima to my Android smartphone at a later stage.

The Lima will now appear as a mounted disk, complete with folders already set up for pictures, video, and music which you can access as long as you have Wi-Fi or mobile broadband available.

There is a reason the Lima Ultra is considered by some a Dropbox alternative. The ease of use and of transferring files between systems in order to access them through others is certainly reminiscent of the web cloud storage service.

The Lima Ultra's core strength lies in its user friendliness, and as a way to backup and store files, it is a valuable device to own as a consumer if you just want to view content over multiple systems. However, some may ask: why not just use Dropbox, or connect an external hard drive directly?

The product does eradicate storage limitations on your mobile devices and gives you the option to access your files remotely, which could certainly prove useful not only to the average consumer, but also business clients. Lima calls the process "Hologram Files Technology"; in other words, you are streaming content directly from your personal cloud rather than storing them locally on your devices.

If you have more than one Lima Ultra or original Lima devices to hand, you can also set them up to backup your data automatically -- and so if one is damaged or breaks, another is waiting in the wings with the same stored files.

However, what could have made this product special was support for UPnP and DLNA streaming.

If you are trying to entice consumers to pay over 100 dollars for a bolt-on device, especially considering how many of us own smart TVs and use services such as Plex and Kodi -- and already have cloud-based storage services to hand -- this functionality would open up the device to a new group of consumers.

Over a year ago, a Lima engineer said in a forum post that UPnP and DLNA streaming support "is a feature that is not available as of now but we certainly intend to add it in a later firmware update."

However, nothing has been heard about this addition since.

According to the product's roadmap, file import improvements, web file sharing, and the ability to change the hard drive are all anticipated in the next firmware release. There is no mention of UPnP and DLNA support as of now.

ZDNet reached out to inquire further, but at the time of writing, there has been no response.

If you wanted to use the Lima Ultra as a network-attached storage (NAS) alternative to more expensive models capable of streaming, you are out of luck for now. Should this feature be included in the future, the Lima will have a place -- and likely a successful future -- in households worldwide.

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Lima Ultra: Tiny, personal cloud storage which just misses the mark - ZDNet