Centralised Storage

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bigal_nz

635 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#159950 18-Dec-2014 09:34

Hi All,

I have a few people around the country who all need to access some sort of centralised storage.

The head office doesnt have a server - its just a workgroup with a QNAP NAS.

I see two ways this could be done:

1. Cloud based
2. Central Office NAS based

The limitation is that the people on the road are not very PC savvy.

I kinda dont want to use VPN because it would have to be a nailed up type connection, most VPN's would rereoute all gateway traffic through the VPN although OpenVPN has the option only to reroute traffic for central office LAN, but more importantly its another point of complication for non savvy users.

I have tried a few of the QNAP based solutions but they either:

Want me to open up ports - which I dont want to do for security reasons
Or seem to all use the a single login - and everyone needs there own login

I dont like the idea of drop box since its not really backedup in anyway - but its simplicity is attractive.

S3 could be a go, especially if there is a way to sync it with a NAS foolder without opening ports. Is there a client type agent for connecting to S3?

Any other ideas?

Cheers

-Al

plambrechtsen

1948 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#1199704 18-Dec-2014 09:49

It does depend on how sensitive the data you are wanting to store is? I would think about backups and BC, so perhaps a service like Dropbox or similar could be the go.

- Do you need backups?
- How bad would it be if you lost all the data. Thinking cryptolocker, if someone got malware and then all the data was encrypted and there was no way to recover it what would you do?
- Do you need to track who changed what and when they changed it?
- Is there anything commercially or professionally sensitive information stored such as business plans that you don't want to get out or personal information about employees or customers?
- What would happen if you are running a local NAS and there was a catastrophic loss of data from harddisk failure or event that cut off the headoffice from the interwebs (earthquake/digger nukes the connection). How long could you realistically be out of service
- If using a cloud service, the same / similar applies as to if the provider was taken down (hacking or ddos or copyright takedown) what are your recovery plans?

I'm personally quite fond of VPNs for the above reasons, plus having some sort of backup strategy to ensure the data is backed up in a number of different places with cloud providers with a history so you can go back x number of days should something really weird happen (such as cryptolocker starts encrypting all the files, so the sync process stops and you clean all the malware from the source machines before re-syncing everything down from one of your backups).

So perhaps in short.

What's the value of the data?

bigal_nz

635 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1201012 20-Dec-2014 11:38

Yes VPN could be the way to go then.

How do you nail up a VPN connection at startup? What software?

OpenVPN?

btrevarthen

35 posts

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#1201022 20-Dec-2014 11:48

Something like Fileshare from Code42?

-------------------------
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blackjack17

1705 posts

Uber Geek

#1201044 20-Dec-2014 13:40

what about keeping it simple with microsoft 365?

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bigal_nz

635 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#1201052 20-Dec-2014 14:00

365 ONe Drive? This could be good as they already have 365.

Does Code42 have a QNAP App?

blackjack17

1705 posts

Uber Geek

#1201053 20-Dec-2014 14:04

Just sign up for one of the business plans, included is 1tb of data storage, per person

http://office.microsoft.com/en-nz/business/compare-office-365-for-business-plans-FX102918419.aspx

guaranteed up time, no mucking around with ports and security.

What type of files do they need access to? office, video, pdfs, spreadsheets?

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Dynamic

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#1201058 20-Dec-2014 14:19

blackjack17: what about keeping it simple with microsoft 365?

There are many things I like about Office365, but my experience with OneDrive sync is poor. We find that sync issues are common across multiple clients.

We have not come across the same sync hassles with DropBox, or Google Drive, though we use these on fewer sites.

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toyonut

1508 posts

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#1201188 20-Dec-2014 18:38

Not had many problems with 365 onedrive/sharepoint sync yet. Seems pretty solid but we are still in initial rollout. Basic sharepoint through office 365 may be another option depending on your plan.
Otherwise, if you want to go the server route, you could look at work folders in Windows Server 2012R2. Not used it yet as we have moved to sharepoint through 365, but it offers give you more centralised management of files for staff working remotely.

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