July 4, 2012

What's New

Improved visualization capabilities in FileCatalyst Central

In 3.0.1 (showcased at this year's NAB) we have improved the visualization capabilities of FileCatalyst Central. Now when a client accesses the Central main page, in addition to the status information details, we also provide a graphic visualization of each connected server's bandwidth usage.

Simply select a server in the Bandwidth Visualization panel and you will be shown a live graph of that server's bandwidth usage over the last two and a half minutes.

Tips and Tricks

Mobile App Walk-through

As you may know, FileCatalyst has recently launched our first mobile upload application in the Apple™ App Store. This walk-through is a look at our app from the point of download onward.

The first step is to download our app. Visit the app store from your Apple™ device and search for "Filecatalyst" or "Upload".

When you first launch the Filecatalyst Upload application you are presented with a "New Site" window. FileCatalyst Direct Server is a supported FTP server and can use SSL transfer for security; however, you may also use a third party FTP server such as FileZilla without SSL. After filling out the required information and testing site connectivity, save the settings. On to the Upload!

You have taken photos and recorded movies; it is now time to upload them to your server for safekeeping or editing. The first thing you will see is the location warning. You must select "allow" or you will be unable to upload your files. Now select your camera roll and choose the media to upload. Finally, select the destination server and choose "Upload".

To avoid carrier charges you can specify to use wi-fi only for transfer. From the main screen select the configuration gear icon, then "Preferences". Set "Wi-fi only" to ON.

From the Blog

New and useful posts

FileCatalyst Staff Golf Tourney 2012 - It's a rare day that work feels like work around here, but that doesn't change the fact that we're indoors, most of us in front of computer screens. What better way to enjoy the weather than to play a quick round of golf?

Open Source Fast File Transfers - There exist a number of open source projects trying to tackle accelerated file transfer via UDP. Some solutions are more mature than others and also use different technologies to solve the same problem of large data transfer over WAN. This article should provide the reader enough information to compare the different solutions

Feature of the Month

HotFolder "Always On" File Monitoring

HotFolder is not just another "dumb" FTP client. No, sir! HotFolder is rich with features that help automate the timing of file transfers. One of these helpful features is the "Always On" file monitoring system.

"Always On" monitoring is for users who want transfers (uploads or downloads) to be triggered by file system events within a specified folder on the client machine. These file system events can be such actions as copying, moving, renaming or deleting a file. When one of these events occurs, the task will immediately transfer, delete or rename the file in question.

Once the transfer has occurred, a task that is set up for "Always On" will go back into a monitoring state and remain that way until canceled by the user.

Why is this feature useful? One really great application is the synchronization of large sets of files. Let's say you have a couple hundred thousand files that you need to keep up to date. Changing just one single file with a "dumb client" can take up resources as recursive listings and transfers are performed. With HotFolder "Always On", only the changes made to targeted files is of concern to the system.

Customer Spotlight

NICE Software

NICE Software, a leading provider of comprehensive grid & cloud solutions, has integrated FileCatalyst fast file transfer technology within EnginFrame, the world's first grid portal.

The EnginFrame portal allows reservoir engineers to upload data, monitor the solution and download the result. Files are automatically detected, uploaded, cached and reused, with unattended and incremental simulation results synced back automatically. The process is driven entirely from the portal.

The problem their engineers had was submitting these jobs from Perth, Australia to Houston, Texas. The data sets vary from 2GB to 5GB. The engineers had to transfer the files to Houston using Windows Explorer, submit to the cluster and then copy back the results.

"This is where we thought about combining our portal with FileCatalyst for the accelerated and automated transfer of these files. We are pleased to report that this has resulted in measurable increased efficiencies."
- Antonio Arena, Solutions Architect at NICE Software.

NICE provides solutions for the oil and gas industry including British Gas, BHP Billiton, ConocoPhillips, ENI, Hess, Nexen, Statoil, TNK-BP, TNNC, and Total.