Hello fellow San Diegoans,

   Since you are a local company and offer competition to Amazon S3, I had a few questions to ask and I am considering using your service. We have had a bear of a time trying to get S3 to work correctly. Just a fair warning- I am not a coder/developer, but the overall ideas guy and project manager. I understand technical things, but cannot implement them myself. So please bear with me if I ask a stupid question.

1) With Amazon S3 you are allowed 99 buckets. I think I read that Nirvanix uses folders. I think I also read that they were unlimited. So, if we are building an application that requires us to track exactly how much file space a specific account is using, we could have a separate folder for each account and calculate how much space is in that folder?

2) Do you guys have cname aliasing for storage could service? Meaning instead of Nirvanix’s name in the url when pulling assets, could we have our own domain instead?

3) We have been trying to get either SWFUpload or Fancy Upload to work with Amazon S3 to no avail. From what I understand, this is due to the type of method Amazon requires to send files from a browser. Nirvanix supports standard HTTP post which means either one of these javascript / flash uploaders should work correctly?

Thank you for your time answering these questions- I appreciate it!

 

 

shaxs:

1) With Amazon S3 you are allowed 99 buckets. I think I read that Nirvanix uses folders. I think I also read that they were unlimited. So, if we are building an application that requires us to track exactly how much file space a specific account is using, we could have a separate folder for each account and calculate how much space is in that folder?

We have the concept of folders but we also allow child accounts.  A child account is a unique file space within an application that can have limits placed for the storage and bandwidth.  You can also get current usage for a child account programmatically and through our management portal.

shaxs:

2) Do you guys have cname aliasing for storage could service? Meaning instead of Nirvanix’s name in the url when pulling assets, could we have our own domain instead?

 

We refer to these as Virtural URL's which can be setup as CNames or you can delegate a sub-domain to use to have us manage that for you.  Once it is setup you would refer to your files as http://services.yourdomain.com/ or http://nodeX.yourdomain.com/.  If you delegate a subdomain it would be services.subdomain.yourdomain.com.  Also this feature allows you to map to a specific application or child account meaning you can hide which account / application you are accessing such as:

http://services.nirvanix.com/yourapp/yourchild/yourpath/file.txt

could be:

http://services.yourdomain.com/yourpath/file.txt or http://services.yourdomain.com/yourchild/yourpath/file.txt

shaxs:

3) We have been trying to get either SWFUpload or Fancy Upload to work with Amazon S3 to no avail. From what I understand, this is due to the type of method Amazon requires to send files from a browser. Nirvanix supports standard HTTP post which means either one of these javascript / flash uploaders should work correctly?

 

We have a flash upload in the download section you can take alook at if you are doing your own.  We also have had a number of external uploads used with customers products successfully.  A standard post will work as long as you can get the upload token and append to the URL before uploading.  We have a two step process that you request the node and security token which is then used to tell the uploader where to upload and how to authenticate. 

We haven't specifically tested either of those but I don't see a specific reason why they wouldn't work.  If you have tried them please let us know if they work or if they don't, we have made changes in the past that allow 3rd party uploaders work correctly.

Regards,
    Barry R.

 Hello Barry,

   Thank you so much for those responses. A few questions about a child account:

1) Can they be created on the fly? Meaning, if a user signs up for our service, can our system then go and create a child account behind the scenes with no intervention from us? I guess automated is the word I am looking for.

2)  Is there an unlimited number of child accounts?

3) You said  "You can also get current usage for a child account programmatically and through our management portal." I assume that means via an API, our system can automtically get the amount of space used in each child account?

 I think what we are going to do at this point is do standard file uploads to our server, jsut so we can get thsi reelased. Then we will come in and integrate into your system. Unless this could be developed rather quickly, then maybe we can use it from the start.

 

 

shaxs:

1) Can they be created on the fly? Meaning, if a user signs up for our service, can our system then go and create a child account behind the scenes with no intervention from us? I guess automated is the word I am looking for.

Child accounts can be created using our API which is available in REST or SOAP interfaces.   You can find the details in our API document: 

http://developer.nirvanix.com/sitefiles/1000/API.html#_Toc175999955

shaxs:

2)  Is there an unlimited number of child accounts?

 

There is are no limits to child accounts. * We will always monitor for abuse cases but if you have a valid business case then creating large numbers of child acccounts is ok.

shaxs:

3) You said  "You can also get current usage for a child account programmatically and through our management portal." I assume that means via an API, our system can automtically get the amount of space used in each child account?

 

The API Contains a GetAccountUsage, SetAccountLimits  to manage both limits and view current account usage.  You can also see your childs usage in a GUI report at http://nmp.nirvanix.com/

Documentation for Account Usage: http://developer.nirvanix.com/sitefiles/1000/API.html#_Toc175999957

Also take a look at our SDK's in the downloads area since they abstract the hard work of connecting to the web services and just let you call the methods directly.

Regards,
   Barry R.

 Wow, I am very impressed. Okay, I think we will go this route. Is there a demo account we can use to test and see if we can get this flash video uploader to work properly?

  Sorry for all the questions. We just wasted so much time on S3, Im trying to get more answers before I jump head first into something.

 There are no demo accounts, but if you are not storing much data you will only be charged 1 dollar.  Feel free to let us know if there is a problem since there are a number of people who do use flash as an upload tool.  You can see an example of a flash uploader to our system at www.freedrive.com

Regards,
    Barry R.

 Thanks for all the help. I have created an account and will work with my team to work with the javascript / flashvideo uploader and will report back here with progress.