Cloud File Server Options

crazyswede · 9 Feb 2017 at 10:34

Hi all,

I need some advice or some suggestions from you clever people. I have joined a startup business and need to setup a file server in the clouds. I am trying to figure out what the best option is. There is Office365 Business with OneDrive/SharePoint and I can see SharePoint would be good for procedures, certificates, templates, CV's etc., but project folders that has a certain folder structure with the potential of having a lot of files might not be that good. There is also DropBox Business that seems to have become more competent and interesting.....Don't think Google drive is an option... What do you think I should be looking at?

Skiddley · 9 Feb 2017 at 10:50

AWS. Dogs danglies.

crazyswede · 9 Feb 2017 at 11:07

Thanks. Not looked at them yet.

BigT · 10 Feb 2017 at 21:46

How many people in the startup business and are you mainly Windows, Linux or Mac users?Also interested to know the IT literacy of the user base. I've got some ideas I can share of what can and what doesn't work having grown the current company from about 10 to 100 people, but we're very IT centric.

crazyswede · 11 Feb 2017 at 16:43

Hi BigT, 4 of us and then freelancers. Windows, but I also use a Mac. I don't think they are too bat with IT, but I am probably a bit more literate (Used to be a IT manager a few years back, but had a few clever people under me). The company I worked for before had 4 people when I joined and had 150 when I left. But my expertise is mainly hydrographic surveying. My previous company had their own servers. My main job can't be IT, as that will not bring the money in, and as I said it is not my main expertise. It needs to be relatively easy to manage, especially if I get hit by a bus. The emails are already on MS Exchange Online.

BigT · 11 Feb 2017 at 17:49

How much do you need security to be a consideration between yourselves?

If you will share and have everything open between you then I suggest you go for something like Amazon S3 storage or Amazon Cloud Drive and then use something like Expandrive, odrive, stablebit Cloudrive or Mountain Duck to have the online storage available to you all as if it were a local drive in Explorer or Finder. You can have hierarchies to your hearts content. You can do most anything you can with a regular network drive and if you use odrive and Amazon Cloud drive you're looking at £60 a year for all of you for unlimited storage.

Think carefully about backup and security though. We moved to use a corporate google apps account as you have better control over permissions which was required and we use them for email too. I'm sure onedrive for business must be able to d the same but I don't know it.

crazyswede · 12 Feb 2017 at 17:13

Thank you. Some things to think about there. Security between the 4 of us is not important but if we bring someone in to work on a report, then it is.

crazyswede · 12 Feb 2017 at 17:28

Forgot to say that teamwork on documents could be an important part.

BigT · 12 Feb 2017 at 17:50

crazyswede;30496660 said:
Forgot to say that teamwork on documents could be an important part.

OK, another option if document collaboration is important are:

Confluence cloud. About $100 a year for up to 10 people. You can have security on pages/documents and it's a decent enough collaborative working environment that can export to Word and PDF

A corporate Google Apps account. As much granularity on permissions as you want and collaborative editing.

Ev0 · 12 Feb 2017 at 21:08

We use Box which seems decent enough, no idea how much it costs though.

Caged · 15 Feb 2017 at 16:15

Ignore the "in the cloud" part for now, what do you actually want to be able to do? Features such as:

File versioning for easy recovery
Replication across multiple places for DR
Sharing outside of your organisation
Local sync for working offline
Maximum file size of x
Total capacity of y

etc etc. There are loads of different ways to achieve this, something like Dropbox or Box are decent file sync options but you can have issues with things getting overwritten if you go for a pure sync setup. Something like Nasuni is great for distributing files between offices and having the cloud manage that as well as versioning and backup retention, but doesn't allow an individual to access their files when not in an office. Egnyte might cover off your requirements but gets expensive fairly quickly.