Elasto Cloud Storage Gateway

At this years SambaXP conference, I was lucky enough to be able to present the Elasto cloud storage gateway. Elasto is an open-source cloud storage library and client that I created as part of SUSE Hack Week.

In addition to Elasto, the project makes use of istgt and existing operating system components to expose a cloud storage object as a local filesystem, on which all data is transparently encrypted before going anywhere near the internet.

Such a tool can offer a number of benefits over traditional cloud storage clients:

• Secure: Client-side encryption, via dm-crypt or Bitlocker, reduces reliance on transport and cloud provider security.
• Cost effective: Client-side compression (e.g. with Btrfs or NTFS) improves cloud storage utilization.
• Flexible: Standard interface, no vendor lock-in.

Both Elasto and istgt components are available to download for openSUSE and Fedora. Given the immaturity of the project, be warned that its use may result in data loss or corruption - play safe, take backups!