I was wondering if anyone has tested out the Egnyte software with the readynas as it appears to be the only out of the box NAS that will run their software. It looks quite promising http://egnyte.com with the local cloud option and 1TB of storage on the remote cloud also for the price. I'd like some feedback from actual users if anyone has any?
We support both infrant (sparc) and intel based ReadyNAS devices - like Duo, NV+ on the low-end and Pro, NVX etc on higher end.
Great, can you tell me about local users mapping to the NAS via drive letter for normal nas usage? How do the permissions for Egnyte correlate to the user permissions on the nas.
Once the local cloud "add-on" is installed, you can map the local NAS user to the username in the Egnyte Cloud File Server. Subsequently, when the synchronization happens, the cloud ACL's are applied to the file system on the NAS device. Any changes made in the folder permissions in the cloud, are automatically percolated down to the NAS device.
This is from our product guide: Local access permissions are automatically managed Egnyte synchronizes all access permissions from the Cloud File Server into the NAS device. This allows users to access files locally with the same level of security as they would on the Cloud File Server. No additional directory service is required to establish access security. Optionally, it can integrate with an existing directory service like Active Directory."
Been testing this out for the last day or two. Quite impressed so far. Only thing I'd really like to see added is Encryption of resting data with a private key.
Been testing this out for the last day or two. Quite impressed so far. Only thing I'd really like to see added is Encryption of resting data with a private key.
Agreed, but then how would you share data with Egnyte Standard users accessing through the web? I'm OK with them storing the file server data unencrypted, but at least offer encryption for the backup portion of their service. This is one of the reasons why I continue loving Jungledisk for backup. I hold the encryption keys and no one else. Very few cloud backup services like that! Egnyte is more than just backup though.....
claykin, Using ReadyNAS Vault you can use your own key as well I believe. So if you choose to use your own key and then lose it, there goes your Vault backups.
Yes Egnyte is far more than backups. It's good for sharing documents and syncs changes made on the cloud or on the NAS, not just one way.
claykin, Using ReadyNAS Vault you can use your own key as well I believe. So if you choose to use your own key and then lose it, there goes your Vault backups.
Yes Egnyte is far more than backups. It's good for sharing documents and syncs changes made on the cloud or on the NAS, not just one way.
Correct, losing your encryption password means your data is lost, but as far as I'm concerned that is acceptable alternative to having to trust an unknown with my data. Frankly I don't care how many certifications they have, SAS, UL, CE, HIPAA, etc... I cannot trust that their datacenters are trustworthy, their employees are trustworthy, and every employee that ever worked for them is trustworthy. There's been too many examples of data loss associated with supposed "trusted" providers.
Jungledisk offers sync and with their 3.1 beta they are offering public file sharing. Its not really competitive with Egnyte's file sharing solution which I believe is more competitive with Sharepoint. Haven't tested Egnyte but have heard fairly good things.
I've tried the egnyte software - though not a particularly thorough test. Overall it appeared to do as it claimed with no major issues except one - I could only get it to work under windows. I reported the issue to which was acknowledged by Egnyte, but no follow up since then and the lack of mac support stopped my tests pretty much dead (I only ran the windows test to diagnose why I couldn't get the software to work on my mac)
BTW: My issue may not actually be an Egnyte caused problem. It was this that caused the issue:
Local access permissions are automatically managed Egnyte synchronizes all access permissions from the Cloud File Server into the NAS device. This allows users to access files locally with the same level of security as they would on the Cloud File Server. No additional directory service is required to establish access security. Optionally, it can integrate with an existing directory service like Active Directory."
The permissions are enforced via ACLs on the ReadyNAS - they were there and all seemed correct but my macs could not access any protected folder over AFP or CIFS, and ReadyNAS hasn't rolled out NFSv4 yet (though it appears to be in the kernel). So this may be somethign related to ACL support on Macs or on the ReadyNAS
I was having a look at this new offering also but was wondering, the Office-NAS plan is $89.98 per month and the similar small business plan via the website is only $50 a month.
With a quick look, the only difference I could see is the NAS server license, seems a bit of a high premium unless I am missing something else.
Thanks for your response and interest in Egnyte. You have got the cost breakdown pretty much right for the solution. The cloud service costs $49.99/month for 10 users and 1 TB online storage. Now right of the bat, I would say that is one of the most competitive deals in the market for an online file server (not pure backup, but an online file server). If you add the NAS license, $39.99/month, then yes, that's a bit south of $90/month.
When you say expensive, I am not sure what you are comparing this to. The solution Egnyte-Netgear jointly offer (and hence the cost ) should be compared to the cost and maintenance structure of a traditional file server. The join Egnyte-Netgear solution eliminates the need for servers, VPN, local backups etc. Not just that, the cloud aspect offers a host of attendant capabilities - file collaboration, mobile access, file versions, sharing with customers (so you can replace FTP), file distribution using links and search capability. These are capabilities that a traditional file serving infrastructure does not provide and you would need additional point solutions to meet these needs. This would significantly drive up the cost of a comparable solution using traditional means into several hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars per month, not to mention significant upfront capex spend as well.
We have a cost calculator on the Egnyte site (http://www.egnyte.com/corp/hardware_vs_ ... lator.html) - you are welcome to run this to compare a traditional file serving solution compared to the join Egnyte-Netgear solution. This would be the apples-apples comparison.
Given all these capabilities, our customers feel that the solution we offer jointly with Netgear is a steal. A cost of file serving for 10 users at less than $90 /month is a steal for them. This is why we have over 100 joint customers already with Netgear in the very brief time we have offered this. These range all the way from 5-10 user firms to companies with several hundred employees across multiple offices.
I hope this explanation helps break down the price/value ratio of the offering. If you would like to discuss further, please feel free to also reach out to me directly (Rajesh Ram, rram@egnyte.com). Once again, thanks for your interest and for looking at our join solution with Netgear.
Thanks for the replay, I guess I missunderstoood a lot of the business usage features. Do you think in the future there is the possibility of an offer for power home uses that wants to look at offsite backup with their readynas - it would seem like a good fit.
Thanks for the replay, I guess I missunderstoood a lot of the business usage features. Do you think in the future there is the possibility of an offer for power home uses that wants to look at offsite backup with their readynas - it would seem like a good fit.
As far as I can tell, Egnyte is designed to replace a SMB or SOHO file server. It incorporates some permission features that one would typically get using a DC and Sharepoint. It indirectly acts as backup by keeping a copy of your data in their cloud (and/or your Readynas).
I poked around Egnyte's solution a bit a couple months back, and while it looks good, there is still some quirkiness associated with the local vs. cloud based shares. Upload/download by users can be confusing. Maybe that will improve as the product matures.
I know this is an old post, but those of you that tried Egnyte before should see how much we've improved. If you're interested in business cloud file sharing using the ReadyNAS, visit our community page: http://www.readynas.com/?cat=92 Or if you have any questions/comments go to our ReadyNAS forum page: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=146
