UbuntuOne in the cloud

Why do some articles have a nice link to discuss and some don't? I am guessing that it is because it's a manual process to add the link?

Anyway - I'm interested to hear this and chuckling to see that you need to be an Ubuntu user to benefit. My question is - where is the hosting done? I imagine the US of A... wouldn't it be nice to have a local hosting option for free... I don't blame them for hosting elsewhere, but it would be great.

For the Akamai clients such as Google - I understand they have distributed servers - does this mean that although the domain is hosted overseas, some traffic is pulled locally - i.e. if I have a dual low cost routing solution aka Gatecrasher's fantastic DDR-WRT script, then my akamai traffic goes over the local only account? Any takers? Do Ubuntu use a similar setup?
 
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Yada yada yada, jap jap jap, no need to bother.

With a 3 gig cap an online storage system is not an option in this digitally backward country.
 
honestly in south africa it is not worth it well not until they drop or supply us with uncapped at reasonable prices. but that will never happen well I doubt it at least
 
mbp said:
Anyway - I'm interested to hear this and chuckling to see that you need to be an Ubuntu user to benefit. My question is - where is the hosting done? I imagine the US of A... wouldn't it be nice to have a local hosting option for free... I don't blame them for hosting elsewhere, but it would be great.
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Well as far as i can tell this is STILL Amazon S3 services. Everything is distributed either EU or US [you can usually choose which]. EU Storage is also slightly more expensive than US etc etc.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOne
This provides 2GB-10GB of remotely accessible disk space stored on Amazon S3. Rather than using an existing protocol (eg. FTP, SFTP, NFS, Webdav) access to this remote disk space is via an invented-here communication protocol called "u1storage".
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UbuntuOne is not actually the Storage SERVERS themselves, it's more the "user application" [and the protocol] built to interact with the servers which Amazon already built.

Dropbox, JungleDisk , all same thing. They provide a nice application/interface and effectively resell the storage.

Amazon basically built this entire network of storage services, but they provide it in a wholesale "raw" format. It's up to you to write apps/interfaces to interact with this storage in a meaningful way.

So you can actually go directly to Amazon and buy the storage, and then use whatever application you can find to interact with it as it's not simple FTP [S3Fox addin for Firefox is an example of this] . I use JungleDisk [which is not free] primarily because their app transforms your S3 Storage into a mountable network drive (which implies all my existing syncing software will work with this).

You can get this directly from Amazon here http://aws.amazon.com/s3/ . It's absolutely dirt cheap, and explains why it will NOT be in South Africa [show me where you can get 1GB space @ $0.15 a month] .


Pilgrim said:
With a 3 gig cap an online storage system is not an option in this digitally backward country.
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Depends on what you use it for. Alot of people use it as a backup solution, so you're not going to upload/download 3GB every month. You do it once and then do incremental syncs. Obviously in the USA they mount this drive like a hardrive and stream their entire MP3 collection from it, but mostly it's more to keep your data somewhere without worrying what happens to it if your house burns down....or whether your burnt DVDs will work in 5 years...
 
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Got both UbuntuOne and Dropbox. Dropbox is still my default as I will wait for UO to settle first.

Dropbox has come a long way and I use it as my main online storage - trust me, the cost of 2G of cap is nothing compared to the real cost of loosing my information!
 
shrug....guess its a good idea if you live in a first world country..for poor old south africans this is something we can but only dream off :(
 
Adie said:
I don't understand, if we can download all Ubuntu files, applications, games, etc. locally, then why can't we also upload it locally?

I am no geek but I assume Ubuntu has put online some of their own servers in RSA. I believe then that they are not big enough to host a million people's 2 GB of files?
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They don't host it themselves - they use a storage service from Amazon called S3, which means they have no real say in where it gets uploaded. They probably don't wanna do the hosting themselves, for obvious reasons.

The local mirrors of Ubuntu repositories and disk images are hosted for free on university net connections, afaik, because it's open source and non-commercial. They are also merely passive copies, whereas UbuntuOne is an interactive service. It's a commercial service, which means no free hosting for 'em.
 
Adie said:
I don't understand, if we can download all Ubuntu files, applications, games, etc. locally, then why can't we also upload it locally?

I am no geek but I assume Ubuntu has put online some of their own servers in RSA. I believe then that they are not big enough to host a million people's 2 GB of files?
Click to expand...

It's to do with living in the Southern Hemisphere (hard drives are manufactured in the North and the polarity reverses when shipped over the equator hence this issue affects us and not the North)... here, for every Mb you add to a hard drive, the weight increases by 12 grams (correct me if I'm wrong)... if they offered 2 gig account to everyone in South Africa, their server would fall through the floor... especially since there are so many people on the net here when compared to our Southern Hemisphere compatriots. I know what you are thinking, but Australia has relatively low population and many hosting providers with mirrors distributed throughout the outback.
 
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It's to do with living in the Southern Hemisphere (hard drives are manufactured in the North and the polarity reverses when shipped over the equator hence this issue affects us and not the North)... here, for every Mb you add to a hard drive, the weight increases by 12 grams (correct me if I'm wrong)... if they offered 2 gig account to everyone in South Africa, their server would fall through the floor... especially since there are so many people on the net here when compared to our Southern Hemisphere counterparts. I know what you are thinking, but Australia has relatively low population and many hosting providers with mirrors distributed throughout the outback.
Click to expand...

OMG....now we know... I just couldn't understand why ;)

LOL
 
Oh we got a wise cracker on board... mbp ... its a funny reply thought.. ha ha ha ....
 
We use Amazon servers and the cost is soooo cheap. To "upgrade" our storage needs by a few Terrabytes cost a few dollars - think it was R20 pm to get 1,5TB !!!

Cannonical are good at offering a service. To give 2Gb out for free is an absolute bargin when considering the cost of advertising. And not all users will be using their full amount. Being elastic store the virtual drives can be upgraded or downgraded within a matter of seconds.
 
Would it not be cheaper to purchase a 1Tb drive hosting it locally on UbuntuOne server as $0.15 per Gb = $150 per Tb

Store it on a local server and update via local only DSL account - S3 service perfect for Americans and Europeans with low latencies not for Africans

Am i missing the boat here ? Not sure if UbuntuOne will be a service or you can purchase the software.
Yes local servers will have to backed up etc etc
 
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