Last week Google announced the availability of a Preview of Google Storage for Developers. This is a cloud service similar to the Amazon S3 service, and allows fast, reliable access to your data stored across multiple data centers.
There have been several Windows Home Server Add-Ins built around the Amazon S3 service, such as Cloudberry and HP’s own Online Backup Add-In that was removed from the 3.0 software update. These Add-Ins allow you to selectively choose files that are stored on your server and designate them to be backed up to the cloud for an extra level of security in the event of a home fire, flood or theft.
It will be interesting to see how quickly an Add-In is developed to make use of the new Google Storage service. The Preview is currently limited in availability and only to US developers, who receive 100GB of storage and 300GB of bandwidth free every month during the preview. You can read more and sign up for the preview here.
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Article by Alex Kuretz
I'm Alex Kuretz, and I'm the founder of MediaSmartServer.net. I was the Lead Test and Integration Engineer at HP for the MediaSmart Server until April 2008 when I moved on to other opportunities outside HP. I've kept active in the Windows Home Server community, creating several add-ins and helping users make the most of their Home Servers.
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Looks like the fees after the preview;
Google Storage for Developers pricing is based on usage.
Storage—$0.17/gigabyte/month
Network
Upload data to Google
$0.10/gigabyte
Download data from Google
$0.15/gigabyte for Americas and EMEA
$0.30/gigabyte for APAC
Requests
PUT, POST, LIST—$0.01 per 1,000 requests
GET, HEAD—$0.01 per 10,000 requests
Yup, I believe that’s a bit higher than S3, but I expect Google to leverage this with their other service offerings so we’ll see if there is additional value that warrants the higher cost.