Need some advice on a server!

satanicguardian

satanicguardian

satanicguardian

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Hi guys,

Got an issue that one of my customers has brought forward and I'm not very good with in house servers etc. I'm more of a cloud IT guy (as well as gaming rig builder!)

Basically I put these guys onto Office 365 about a year ago, all went okay and migrated them from an ancient server running SBS 2003 or something really old!

I moved their documents from the dying system to SharePoint online (which as some of you may know can be amazing providing you have decent connectivity).

Unfortunately it seems that their connection is really struggling to support it (they failed to mention that they had some PDF's that are regularly accessed in excess of 100mb).

Downloading a 100mb of pdf from sharepoint using a 6mb/s ADSL connection is not fun! I have already tried to upgrade their connectivity but unfortunately there's nothing available.

Due to this we are looking to reinstate an in-house server for document storage, below is what we need it to do:

  • Provide speedy access to large documents on site
  • Allow us to set full access rights (read/write/edit/restore)
  • Have an incremental offsite backup to ease load on broadband
  • Allow some kind of access for VPN/out of office access
  • Be stable/reliable and fast

They wish to continue using office 365 for email as it is spot on, I know it is possible to have some hybrid sharepoint online/offline system but I wouldn't have a clue how to implement it!

Am I perhaps just better off using this server and having it backup to some 3rd party?

Also, I assume to get full use out of the server I would have to reattach all machines to the server acting as a domain controller(at present all PC's are standalone and use the internet for everything else).

Some assistance would be greatly appreciated everyone - I've tried PC world business but they are bloody useless, HP business weren't any better!

Thanks all!

Jamie
 
Id just buy an entry level server with local storage in raid 6 and then use mozy backup to backup off site.

If you don't have a rack then just buy a non rack server.

The alternative would be getting a dedicated NAS (like a qnap 6 disk) then just look in to one that supports some form of online backup natively.

I think some modern enterprise qnap will definitely have some form of a cloud based backup integrated.

The benefits to going non nas would be you could use it for local application services, if they need it. The down side would be that you have to pay for windows licensing. While if you go with a NAS it will have no windows OS licensing cost.
 
OK, so I got in touch with an SME at Microsoft through a friend, and this was his response:

OneDrive for Business is actually pretty good (we use it ourselves here) and there’s a new unified sync engine across ODfB and OD - coming out soon. We already have unified clients on iOS, Mac OS and Android.

In the past I’ve used Colligo Briefcase and it is very good – and can sync more than just document libraries – it is more of a general SharePoint sync tool that understands SharePoint content as elements in a database.

BranchCache can cache HTTP content to reduce bandwidth usage on your WAN but it doesn’t do sync/active cache.

For your scenario I would absolutely start with ODfB and test Colligo on parallel.
Click to expand...
So Branch Cache is out, but ODfB definitely worth checking out (especially the new one).
 
The new sync client is so much better than the old one, just bare in mind it is still in preview and as such has bugs. Also the new sync client will only currently sync a user's OneDrive and not a SharePoint document library.
 
satanicguardian said:
Hi guys, I'm going to steer around the onedrive idea for now, I'm still unsure about it as it's preview, I need 100% reliability for this!

Has anyone ever had any dealings with these:

https://iosafe.com/assets/pdf/ioSafe-1515-Datasheet.pdf

Apparently they are spot on!
Click to expand...

Other than being fireproof/floodproof (* to a certain degree), it's surely just a Synology Diskstation 1515+ ?

Imagine it's not cheap, and surely you don't need this level of physical protection when data is already backed up to the cloud?
 
well this is the thing, I don't know how able the synology is to keep an incremental backup, and also where it would back it up to - hence why I'm thinking just to keep it locked down on site in a rock solid fire/waterproof box.

I think it is just the diskstation 1515, essentially all I really need is speedy local access to large files in large file tree's across their existing network!
 
I think you're out of your depth and need to step out of this one. You've stressed how vital the reliability of the system is several times in this thread, you don't want to be learning on the job really.
 
To be honest I would be tackling the internet issue. Get another line and load balance off that using a draytek modem etc.

The cost and complexity of bringing it back in house could be a real headache.
 
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