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File Storage Comparison: Rackspace Cloud Drive vs Cloud Files

28 Jan 2011CPOL2 min read 21K   4  
Rackspace Hosting offers two file storage products—Cloud Files™ and Cloud Drive. Even though both offer cloud-based file storage, they are designed for different uses. Is your goal content delivery or file backup and synchronization? The use cases determine which product best suits your needs.

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Cloud Files vs. Cloud Drive

We offer two file storage products—Cloud Files™ and Cloud Drive. Even though both offer cloud-based file storage, they are designed for different uses. Let’s take a deeper look . . .

Cloud Files

Cloud Files is designed for businesses that need unlimited, high performance object storage for your data, with the ability to deliver files and media worldwide at top speeds.

Although our Control Panel makes it easy for anyone to upload, store, and share files—privately or publicly—Cloud Files really comes alive in the hands of web developers and IT professionals, who can use our Cloud Files API to integrate Cloud Files technology into their own web apps.

Cloud Files is also ideal when you need to deliver data and media across the globe, without lag time. Thanks to our integration with the Content Delivery Network (CDN), your public data will be stored in cache on edge servers all over the world. This way, your data is delivered from the closest server (e.g., a user in Tokyo will access your data from a Tokyo-based edge server)—dramatically reducing delivery time.

Best for:

  • Image and video delivery
  • Web-accessible storage
  • Integration with your web apps
  • Scalable storage needs

Cloud Drive

Cloud Drive is designed for businesses that need to store and share files (privately or publicly), back up workstations, and synchronize files across teams and workstations.

After you install the Cloud Drive software on your desktop or laptop, it can work automatically in the background—backing up and/or synchronizing your files. And since your private and public drives look and act just like a drive on your computer, it’s easy for any user to store and share files.

Best for:

  • Automated and simplified file backup and storage
  • Easy data retrieval and restoration (Cloud Drive supports versioning, so you can easily restore files “as they existed” at a specific time.)
  • File sharing and collaboration among teams
  • Synchronizing data across workstations
  • Backing up files that need to maintain a nested directory/folder structure (Cloud Files organizes data into containers, and cannot be nested.)

Have a question about Cloud Files and Cloud Drive, and which one is the best fit for you? Contact our Fanatical Support team

License

This article, along with any associated source code and files, is licensed under The Code Project Open License (CPOL)


Written By
Canada Canada
Adrian Otto is a System Architect, and a Web Scale Linux Specialist. You can see more of his blog entries here: Writing Code that Scales

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