Google One to Google Drive your Life

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Google looks set to replace Google Drive with Google One, a broader ranging storage service designed to incorporate storage across a whole range of Google services.

Google One will be available with up to 15GB storage for free (as with Google Drive now), $1.99 a month for 100GB, $2.99 for 200GB, 2TB for $9.99. It’s not yet clear whether these prices will be adjusted for UK users.

Drive users will be migrated to the new service over the ‘coming months’ and can stay updated by email by subscribing with Google here.

Google Drive has been able to handle direct sync from Android’s photos app, and more advanced tasks like full PC backup, or on-demand file sync on the business version, for a while now – but the new platform unifies the offering under a shared storage allowance.

There are also other nods to a more ‘iCloud like’ service – including shared plans for families, a support service, and promotional customer benefits like discounts for other products.

For now, the new app appears to be a unifying ‘personal’ platform (rather than a more formal ‘work’ platform like Microsoft Office 365.) Google are hoping to centralise your personal life such that desktop PC files, data and media generated by a whole pantheon of Android apps all will are share a central storage plan. The tech giant’s target of making ‘life simpler and less cluttered’ with Google One is being kept at arms-length from G-Suite business customers.

One simple way to get more out of Google? If you’re using Android, this could make a lot of sense.

For assistance and advice in adopting cloud-based technologies: contact Lineal today.

Is the Intel Ruler the future of server storage?

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Intel technologies has released it’s newest generation of storage products, including new drives and a curious intel ruler format solid state drive (SSD)

The futuristic M.2 format storage ‘stick’ is a lengthy SSD designed to add jaw-dropping storage density to servers: a single 1U server space (approximately 1.75 inches high) will be able to hold 1 Petabyte (that’s 1,000 TB of storage, or the equivalent of more than 500,000 free Dropbox accounts, if you prefer.) 

For perspective, this is sufficient to hold a simply staggering 300,000 HD movies, equating to 70-years of non-stop video.

Intel’s design allows each unit to use significantly less space on holding, connecting to and cooling large numbers of traditionally shaped drives. The solid state format, increasingly the standard in laptops but now also in many servers, holds no moving parts making them increasingly durable. Flash-only storage allows far greater performance, less weight and more efficient power use. Smaller DC S4500 and S4600 formats are also available for a variety of storage sizes, if you prefer the more conventional design.

It’s unclear how manageable the new intel ruler drives will be if a server suffers a drive failure, although expect these to be ordered by the hundred in the world’s most futuristic data-centres, where data replication and forward planning are a science in their own right.

Intel also insist that like the miniaturised version fitted to laptops to improve performance, the new format helps cut power consumption, although here the details are a valuable and closely guarded technology secret. 

 

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