Allow caching of virtual network (wan) drives/volumes.

[Andy22]

Hi,

recently i got frustrated with the crappy caching handling of most of the cloud storage mounting tools like NetDrive/Expandrive/Webdrive/CloudberryDrive/Wuala. They are all based on the idea to only use a temporary cache and they handle even this job poorly. The virtual disk/volume those tools create all report either NTFS/FAT/FAT32 as there virtual file systems and are usually setup as a "network drive" or "removeable drive" under windows.

So i was wondering if PrimoCache could cache such a volume as well, so i could fine tune the cache settings and have a permanent cloud cache. One of the use cases would be to directly use something like http://portableapps.com/ from the cloud, without the need to sync/copy a full local version per used PC. So if you have 20gb portable apps in the cloud, but only use 1-5GB frequently, you could setup a 5GB PrimoCache and have a decent local working speed, without all the synchronization problems.

Maybe think about expanding into this realm, since i personally prefer a local cached more direct approach to cloud storage over this silly sync everything paradigm. I mean DropBox is a good example, how in the world would could you actually use your 1 TB cloud storage, if most laptops/phones/(pc's) will never be able to locally sync this 1TB. Most cloud storage providers that sell 500GB+ sync storage, actually sell storage no one can use without third party tools that allow direct access without a full local copy.

thx
Andy

PS: I also would prefer if the local cache for such a cloud volume would be encrypted, so having no local sync copy/app would leave no useable/viewable data on the local client.

[Support]

Quite a few users have already suggested such feature. However, caching network drives is totally different than caching local drives. It is not just some simple steps to support network drives. Anyway, thank you for the suggestion, and we'll consider it.

[Wagz]

If it helps out, I have a linux image on amazon EC2 which is presenting an iscsi block device from across the wan to my PC and I use primocache on it after connecting and formatting the iscsi lun for NTFS. works great, though after a crash, the cache rewarming up can be a bit painful. .

[Support]

iSCSI targets are supported by PrimoCache. But net mapped drives are not supported.

[Axel Mertes]

Hi Andy22,

out of curiousity - how did you manage to provide a system as iSCSI target?
Any links?

I am looking for something similar - not for WAN, but for local SAN. I would like to use a server as either iSCSI or FC target. Searching for links how to accomplish this.

[Wagz]

http://www.freenas.org/ can provide iSCSI devices. y oucan even boot off of them diskless and use primocache to improve performance.

Also, windows 2012r2 has the capability to act as an iscsi server to provide iscsi targets to other systems on the network.