I have a server at home on which AeroFS is running, so my data generally is available. And if my internet at home is down, usually there's another machine where it's running.
As it's syncing and keeping the local copy, the most current data will be on the machine I'm working on anyways.
The installation feels a bit "heavier" than dropbox which does a better job at staying out of my way, but the advantages of next to unlimited storage and no third-party server are huge for me.
I'd love to see installers made for a few of the NAS devices on the market for this. It would solve the "must have another computer on" thing really well.
I'll try it again now, however. If they nail the fundamentals down, it'll replace Dropbox for me.
EDIT: Or do you mean custom NAS OSes? Mine just runs Ubuntu.
Gripes: 1- It's a lot chattier than dropbox. This could be a tradeoff for being a distributed protocol, but it's something that dropbox seemed to improve in over time as well. 2- Iffy compatibility with Lion: I often get "AeroFS is already running" messages. 3- They recently added the needed ability to change the location of the AeroFS Library, but I'd love to modify the location of each Share in the Library. 4- This is likely beyond the project's scope, but I'd love to be able to access my files without syncing in a pinch. 5- Better activity view: Dropbox's menu icon changes to indicate activity. I find this useful, so I can shut it off if my connection is slow. AeroFS's icon doesn't change, and to view activity, you need to open Preferences.
Positives: 1- Unrestricted size, great for large media libraries 2- Seems very fast, especially over LAN 3- I love how you can set up multiple shares - one for a workgroup, one for personal projects, and one for photos, and you can sync those among any computers you want. 4- It makes offsite backup effortless 5- Auto-updates are great
As for #3, That's actually a highly requested feature (see http://ae.ro/iUi6OZ), so it's pretty high on our to do list
#4. We've thought about this for a while, not really sure yet how we will implement it though.
#5. Working on that, as well, no ETA yet though :)
For things like music and photos where I have 40+GB of accumulated bits it feels a better option than a straight cloud based system like DropBox or JungleDisk (which I also use, but for a smaller amount of stuff).
I have a number of machines with many GB of spare disk space, so rather than paying monthly storage fees for back up, I can just use this to replicate rarely changing content. Since machines on the local network sync at LAN speeds it is also very fast in the usual case.
On a LAN, I don't really see the advantages over something like FreeFileSync, which is GPL'd.
Over the 'net, locating the machine and performing NAT traversal can be useful, though, especially for people behind ISP NAT.
AeroFS is not a 'copy diffs' tool, it's like dropbox - changes are propagated instantly and automatically, in all directions. Yes you can run a cron job syncing every 2 minutes or whatever but that still doesn't do syncs to many machines, it means you need to keep the machine with the cron job always on etc. So no, AeroFS/Dropbox are not like FreeFileSync or Cobian Backup or rsync or SyncToy or anything like that.
AeroFS and Dropbox are not as simple as inotifywatch+rsync. They don't only offer synchronization, but replication and version control.
I don't have to worry about which machine has which copy of which file, or even what the machine names are. I just login and can choose which 'Libraries' to sync with the local machine -- it handles finding the correct source, retrying when I close the laptop lid in the middle of something, etc, etc.
(edit: wrong link before, my bad)
I guess I'm still stuck with rsync and cronjobs until they work out the issues.
It often seems to churn away endlessly shoving meta data back and forth, and has periodically gotten confused about what files have been deleted or moved. Also had an issue where it kept duplicating some files. Toss a directory with a few thousand small files in it and it takes forever to sync. Not particularly light either.
They have a way to go to make it clean and elegant, but being able to seamlessly sync between Mac and Windows machines anywhere, without having to store in their cloud is nice.
Really hope they work it out one day, because I'd love the functionality for keeping dirs in sync w/o having to pay for the cloud portion; but right now its primary use case for me (dealing with dirs larger than I want stored in dropbox) appears to also be its Achilles' heel.
On the bright side, I finally got around to setting up Unison + cron to keep files in sync between my MacBook Air and my MacBook Pro, and it's working quite well. I'd highly recommend it to anyone facing a similar challenge.
The only thing I don't like about Live Mesh is that it's very difficult to tell what it's transferring and how long it's taking. It works, but I wouldn't be able to tell you "it'll be another 20 minutes before it's done".
How does AeroFS stack up here?
Also, LiveMesh looks and feels a bit alien GUI-wise, while AeroFS feels more native (although it's not quite there yet either, but gradually improving).
I suppose they probably haven't figured out their eventual pricing model, but I'd certainly pay a few bucks a month just for coordinating NAT traversal, papering over dynamic IPs and a web interface to set sync policy. For the most part, when my computers are sync'd peer-to-peer, I really don't need or want a copy of my data in the cloud -- my boxes _are_ the cloud. That means that their typical incremental cost per user would be practically zero.
But, AeroFS requires a client installation and sync to get any access. I've used the Dropbox web interface and iPhone app numerous times to look up a file or reference when I was away from the office. Sure, I could set up a web interface on my desktop as an alternative, but that's not end-user simple. It's also a problem in that, at least on OSX, changes made my system-level processes (such as file sharing) don't always register as modification in the File System Event Database, and thus don't get synced.
Can anyone shed some light on that? Thanks.
"(...) a Library is realy just a folder on your computer!" http://support.aerofs.com/customer/portal/articles/25637-wha...
Also I don't fully understand the product from just the first page. Who is your target audience?
"Your computer quite possibly has hundreds of gigabytes of space..." actually, no. Yes, I have a desktop with hundreds of GB free, but my laptop fights with me every day to keep 10-20 GB free. In that case, I think a network file share makes more sense.
Aside from the confusion marketing, I like it. Definitely looks like a potentially nice, secure Dropbox replacement.
It's not as fire-and-forget as Dropbox so I don't see everyone using AeroFS, but there are quite a bunch of non-techies that can get it and could be very interested in such features.
It reminded me of two projects --
Wuala which allowed seemless syncing between machines, as well as donating storage to gain the benefit of "cloud storage" for your files. They eventually went the route of offering storage space and got bought by Lacie.
The second is much older (mid/earlyish 90s) that had the same p2p based donate space on your drive and fragments of your files will be stored on other connected machines.
The sharing and other similar features will be interesting to see how those are implemented.
I think you are thinking of MojoNation, which died and forked off several sub-projects/companies based on its original codebase: Allmydata was just like Wuala but five or six years earlier that never gained any traction and now lives on in the Tahoe-LAFS project, and BitTorrent (which you have probably heard of...)
http://julien.danjou.info/blog/2011.html#Handling_my_music_c...
Only if they had option to have different path for each libraries.
Closed source = no good for privacy.
(Actually, even if not. Why would you pay someone to have access to your own files on your own computer?)
No. Tahoe-LAFS is very different (access is only over HTTP for a start)
Why would you pay someone to have access to your own files on your own computer?
Ignoring the whole free-to-use-on-your-computer-but-we'll-sell-you-cloud-backup model, there is always the old fashioned you-pay-us-for-the-software model.
http://git-annex.branchable.com/
http://julien.danjou.info/blog/2011.html#Handling_my_music_c...
E.g. - backing up your first massive backup locally using an external drive, then moving it physically offsite and beginning the sync online.
That seems like a fantastic feature to me. That way, instead of having - say - a photo library on each of my laptops - I can have a single photo library at a remote location on an external hard drive that's constantly synched with new photos, without the need to upload hundreds of GB in an initial seed.
Plus - of course - being able to access any of my photos from anywhere.
Crashplan offers something similar - but it's purely a backup solution - and doesn't make your files "cloud-like" accessible.
Totally unrelated: how do you pronounce aerofs? If I try to say it in French it either comes out as "erofesse" (erotic buttock) or "aerofesse" (flying buttock). That will definitely win points with French-speakers :-)
casey.marshall@gmail.com
bostonvaulter[ät]gmail.com
Then isn't that the same situation we had in the DEFCON hacks: what keeps people from recording all your traffic and one fine day when the encryption is not secure anymore, they can simply decrypt it?
What is your point exactly?
I was talking about the part where people use Aero for their personal backups and syncing their own machines, not about sharing with other people.
With something like dropbox traffic goes between me and their servers and whoever is listening in between there.
The way I understand it, with Aero it will go through P2P even if I am just syncing my own machines since both are likely to be behind some sort of NAT or firewall.
(I suppose DropBox has the same issue with Python to some extent, but at least Python can be fully embedded in an executable and bypass the system environment questions.)
