XenData Cloud File Gateway is software that connects your file-based applications to cloud object storage, creating a hybrid storage infrastructure. It manages a local disk volume which means you can cache frequently accessed files on your local storage. And when you add the XenData Multi-Site Sync cloud service, you can consolidate files from multiple locations, each with their own gateway, to create a synchronized global file system.

Yes, CFG software can be installed on either a physical Windows server or VM, which can be on-premises or in the cloud.

The XenData CFG software takes control of a dedicated disk volume on the on-premises server or the VM. All files written to the CFG are always first written to the disk volume and it is also used to retain frequently accessed files. Policies are defined that can provide highly granular optimizations of the files that are retained on the disk. You can set different retention rules for different file types and different folders. For example, specific file types in specific folders may be written to the cloud and also held on disk for a week after written or last read; whereas others may be removed from disk immediately after they are written to the cloud.

The disk volume must be NTFS formatted and it must be a single logical drive letter.

Please refer to the list of supported clouds at this link here.

Yes, it is optimized for media files and supports video streaming and partial file restores.

Yes, each file is written to a single object and the XenData Cloud File Gateway is compatible with a wide range of applications and utilities provided by the cloud storage providers including Azure AzCopy, Azure Storage Explorer, Wasabi Explorer for Mac and Windows.

You can write, read, delete and rename files. The system supports partial file restores. You can create new folders, rename empty folders and delete empty folders.

A Cloud File Gateway is licensed for a maximum cloud storage capacity. When an application checks the amount of available space, the gateway returns the amount of licensed space that is available in the cloud.

You can use SMB, NFS, FTP or local file transfers.

You can share the files stored on the gateway across your local area network. You create one or more file shares as you would for a standard Windows logical drive using the standard Microsoft utilities.

The only limits are those of the Windows operating system that you are using.

Yes, if they represent each file as a single object and use an object name equal to the file path and name. For example, Azure Storage Explorer or AzCopy, when used to upload to Azure blob storage, are fully compatible with the Cloud File Gateway.

Yes, for AWS and Azure. You can upload files from other applications and the gateway will allow access to the new files within minutes. This means that you can upload from anywhere worldwide and the uploaded files will appear as stub files in the gateway file system. Similarly, if you delete or overwrite files from a remote location, these changes will be propagated to the gateway file system within minutes.

Yes, you can use AWS Snowball, Azure Data Box and Wasabi Ball to import data into the cloud provider’s data center and then access the transferred files using a CFG.

The Cloud File Gateway is fully compliant with the Microsoft security model. The Windows computer that runs the XenData gateway software may be installed in a domain or Workgroup. The only limitations are those of the Windows operating system.

FS Mirror is a XenData utility that may be used to synchronize a local file-folder structure to and from a gateway. For example, it can be used to mirror a network share on the local network to the cloud. It runs automatically on a schedule, for example, every hour or every day.

FS Mirror synchronizes local file systems to and from the cloud. It runs on a schedule. Multi-Site Sync synchronizes two or more gateways creating a global file system. It uses a low latency database which provides very fast synchronization. They are complementary functionalities built on Cloud File Gateway software.

An Anchor Point is a XenData term for a path prefix added to the files stored in one or more Azure containers or S3 buckets. An Anchor Point can be used with the Multi-Site Sync cloud service to organize a global file system. For example, if you merge a file structure that was previously uploaded to a container or bucket which relates to a particular facility, say in Houston, Texas, you may want to add an Anchor Point such as \Houston\ when it appears in the global file system.

There are two ways to implement Anchor Points: locally or globally. When defined globally, the Anchor Point is recorded within an Azure container or S3 bucket and it applies to all gateway instances. With a local implementation, the Anchor Point only applies to the file system view for that gateway instance.

No. There is no deduplication or compression.

The volume of files stored in the cloud is unlimited but the disk cache volume is limited to 256 TiB. A single gateway is limited to 2 billion files, no matter whether stored on the disk cache and/or in the cloud.