Work needs a Server, perhaps, any help??

gradyhawks

gradyhawks

gradyhawks

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So,

As well as a Student Civil Engineer, I am also the companies go to IT tech guy. I know a fair bit, but its mainly for consumer products and the what not, have built a fair number of PCs but never done anything server wise.

This is where I turn to you chaps. Right now we have a HUGE problem with the 260 character limit for Windows. Our folder system we used to everything goes rather deep, and WE MUST GO DEEPER. Its getting to the point now where we cant rename stuff, move folders or open them with some programs.

This folder is on google drive and is downloaded and kept up to date on each PC. Works well on google drive, as it doesn't care about the 260 character limit... but when we use it on our PCs it does. You've used 10% of the character limit just to get to the starting folder. Now I can't seem to find a way around this, yes you can use programs to help move things, but its going to get to the point in a few months where it really slows us down.

Now we have a NAS type storage box, connected to a continous PSU, that backs up everything on the google drive and on the master PC (the big bosses PC at the moment that houses all the project folders for the various CAD programs we have and where they look for licence files). This NAS storage box has a few HDDs inside that back up every 4 hours.

Aside from that, that's it. Right now if you need to get a file from a certain project you navigate to the google drive and find it there, often a good 8 folders deep. Our resources go even deeper (as there is a hell of a lot of information!).

My question, what do we need here? Whats best? The business is growing, don't want to get something that will just last for a few days. Our google drive alone has around 30gb of data inside, we'd like to be able to access the files we have here whenever we are out and about. Its useful as anything to be on site and to be able to just bring up your phone and get the required drawings downloaded quickly.
TL;DR We need a server, there are 10 of us in the office, with 10 PCs attached. We need to be able to have everything backed up and to be able to access it locally and via the net. Help!
 
The character limit is always going to be an issue if you are all running Windows.

Unless you map the driver thats on the NAS via a mapped drive. eg:
\\server\really\long\folder\path\that\makes\things\really\long\winded\
becomes f:\winded

But that would only work if the host runs Linux (as most NAS's do these days).

The way I would recommend having 10 pc's access one set of files would be to have a server running Windows Server 2012 R2 foundation or essentials. This is more so the machines can be added to a Domain along with everyone has a user account that can be given access to folders via groups for easy administration.

The only issue is that with the likes of foundation you only get 10 cal's so if you get an 11th machine it can get costly. The way you can control stuff is a lot easier but Windows is Windows and has its restrictions and costs. But in an idea world you'd have different shares so instead of having lots of long winded paths you'd try and have shares at the top level that dont go too deep. Then backup that to the NAS and ideally an off site backup provider also. On the plus side you've not got huge amounts of data. so backups will be rather quick. The off site thing would be encrypted but the one thing you could use if you had a Windows 2012 server is DirectAccess. Its basically an auto-vpn'ing tool. The other option would be to look at Azure (also by Microsoft). I've not worked with those but its basically a cloud server.

I wouldn't recommend having long paths simply due because if you go down a linux server route then the business expands and wants to revert back to Windows you'll have a headache getting the folder paths down to a decent length.
 
I think you need to rethink how you work.Having one area as a dumping ground gets messy but, 30GB is nothing and you are hitting the character limit.

Mapped drives or DFS shares set up could do the trick for you.

Overall I would pick one, have everything local backed up to the cloud or just have everything on the cloud and you share documents via email . eg upload a document to One drive and share it with your boss and they can live edit or download it.

Rethink and have a proper set up in place, what you got now is not that clean or simple.
 
To be honest I'm not seeing anything in the OP which really says that you need a new server (other than replacing the functions currently being performed by the Boss's PC).

It would seem that the OP's company need to look more at their methods of data management so that they are not hitting the character limit, i.e. not using the directory and filenames to present information which could be held differently.
 
This drives me mad with some of our customers. If you can't do it in 4 folders deep, your doing it wrong.

Stop trying to make your folders aesthetically pleasing to look at using brackets, spaces between dashes etc etc

I think you need to rethink the way you organise your data, much bigger companies than you manage with the limitation.

without knowing what files your primarily dealing with its hard to recommend a solution.
 
If you're hitting folder limits in Windows then you need to look at how you are arranging your files. It seems like you're trying to use folder structures to avoid having to look at proper asset management packages.
 
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