hi,

the product looks great. 3 questions

1) Can I use this product with network attached storage? E.G. suppose I Have a NAS device (call is device A) which my server (device B) can see. If B is a Windows/Linux box running your software, can it back up content on A?

2) Eventhough you haven't implemented scheduling, is there a way for me to automate backups by running your software on a Linux box and making use of a Kron job? In that case, is your software smart enough to act like RSYNC and only sync the changes I make to my directories?

3) How long roughly until you implement scheduling? Say, before Jan 1 2008 or afterwards?

Thanks!

ecruben:

1. Yes, NAS device should work just fine if you can map the drive on Windows. (or may be mount it as a drive on Linux?). For now, it will not work with UNC paths. Give it a try with your NAS device, and if you find a problem, let us know. We will fix it soon.

2. No, Bucket Explorer is not designed as an automated backup software, so it will not do the backups. Its more like a power client for Amazon S3, which will let you explore what's stored on S3, set permissions, access someone else's buckets, set bucket logging etc. You can manually select a folder and upload entire folder.

2a. It still works like RSYNC. Its not block level replication, but we NEVER upload a file again if it already exists and if the content is not changed. We keep MD5 AND SHA-1 as meta data on S3, and if they match, we don't upload it again.

2b. YES, before Jan 2008, we will have a product out for backups. For automated backups. It will be a command line program, so you can use from cron.

I think the "explorer" and "automated backup" are two different products and they should not be merged. If you disagree, let us know and we will merge that code here in the Bucket Explorer.

Thanks for your feedback.

Saurabh

This is added to our roadmap:
http://www.bucketexplorer.com/forum/topic158.html

If you can find a way to make this work with Mac Leopard's Time Machine, you will probably make 3 companies very happy and a lot of money.

- Amazon
- Apple
- Yourselves!

If I can schedule something using cron on Linux, can I scheduled it using the Time Machine? i.e. if we provide a command line utility, can that be integrated with the Time Machine?

Not yet I don't think. Right now Time Machine is only programmed to look for external harddrives connected via USB or Firewire. Once this feature is hacked or updated to recognize network drives, then this may be possible. Definitely something to keep on the features list though.