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I need cloud storage that can be mapped as a network drive

override367override367 ALL minionsRegistered User regular
Hi folks, I set up a network, server, security and whatnot for a local business between their various locations and all is well - however they are concerned that in the event of an outage at the office with the server that their data will be inaccessible (internet outage or whatever) at all other locations and want to move to cloud storage

For the software they use, I need to be able to put all of their records into a folder on the root of a networked drive. There are a number of solutions out there for this but I haven't dipped my toes into any of them, does anyone who works with this have any suggestions?

Very small data requirements, it just needs to be functional and able to be mapped as a lettered network drive

override367 on

Posts

  • jungleroomxjungleroomx It's never too many graves, it's always not enough shovels Registered User regular
    edited December 2011
    http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/map-a-network-drive-to-your-online-skydrive-amazon-s3-or-google-apps/2650

    As is pointed in the URL, You can use a bunch of different ones. I'd recommend Skydrive, personally.

    Edit: Note that I've had Gladinet for a while now, and it's stable as hell. I just like Skydrive due to the large capacity and cost (nothing) for 25g.

    jungleroomx on
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited December 2011
    Thanks a bunch, I just ended up going with Hamachi

    Not the best solution I'm sure, but it works fine. They still want cloud storage so Ill look into that

    override367 on
  • Centipede DamascusCentipede Damascus Registered User regular
    Dropbox might be what you're looking for. The application causes a folder to appear on your computer like so:

    dropboxscreenshot.png

    www.dropbox.com

  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    Update, tried dropbox and boy is that a mistake, uploading just the 200 megs in tax records will take days, I need a better option. Really shouldn't have taken this job because I didn't realize how much of a rush and how little time I'd get to work on it, so far I've probably ended up working well under minimum wage because I have a cobbled together duct tape solution since a static IP->server->traditional VPN is off the table because of cost, nearly every day I get a call because something isn't working, or I have to remote in and disconnect PCs at one location since vista home, which is my only option for a server, can only support 5 connections at once

    yikes I'm trying to build a space shuttle with half a cigarette and some yarn here, Im going to try gladnet and skydrive since I promised I would have their shit working on all 12 systems at the same time by tomorrow (without physical access to any of the systems)

    Edit: skydrive is a nogo, it's just like dropbox where it's not an actual network drive but a sync thing, which wont work: if two people work on the same file someone's work will be overwritten instead of saying "file is in use", also I'm dealing with 12,000 files, and sync services seem to take 500000 years with lots of small files. Plus if I add a new PC, it has to download the entire skydrive, it can't just see the files that are on there and access one of them

    override367 on
  • Lucky CynicLucky Cynic Registered User regular
    I uh, the only thing that comes to my mind that would be what you are looking for could have been Google Wave... >_>;

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    Also why is a vpn off the table? We're talking probably $100 in hardware at each location.

    http://www.google.com/products/catalog?cid=16807573829808420939

    Have them all dial into the central office, their only limiting factor is the network speed, instead of server load and throttling those cloud services will use.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    bowen wrote:
    Also why is a vpn off the table? We're talking probably $100 in hardware at each location.

    http://www.google.com/products/catalog?cid=16807573829808420939

    Have them all dial into the central office, their only limiting factor is the network speed, instead of server load and throttling those cloud services will use.

    traditional VPNs are useless when you have a dynamic IP address, and I don't think I can swing $200 in hardware (their existing routers are capable of VPNs so it wouldn't be necessary). I got everything working now its just that the "server" only supports 5 incoming connections because its a home operating system, and since the owner's wife assumes Im probably an idiot and seems to think that they've already spent too much ($200) on this, I'm going to take care of that since i have a spare copy of vista ultimate - keep in mind the vast bulk of the time I've spent working on this was just routine cleanup, they were infected with a trojan, they had no automatic backup despite having an external hard drive for just that, TONS of obsolete bloatware installed on each system... but at the end of the day for the user its hard to notice all that work I did

    Right now I'm trying to find a cheap server, because I'd rather do that than apply yet another band-aid.

    I think my problem is that I haven't been assertive enough, and this is job has me so worked up because of how many clients these people have, if I ever want to work in this area I have to stay in their good graces. I need to put that aside and flat out say "If you want this done properly, we need to contact your ISP and get a static IP address and we need a server". It's just that the price point that was floating around in their heads for "network offices" was somewhere in the $50 range and I've already charged 4 times that

    override367 on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Holy shit, they need a real solution. If you've got enough money for more than one office, you've got enough money to buy proper business connections with static IPs.

    I somehow don't feel bad about charging someone $160 to clean antivirus fuckups off their system and restore exe/lnk associations now.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    I spent hours trying to figure out why their tax accounting software wasnt updating, assuming it was something I had done wrong, turns out the anti virus software from charter was identifying it as a threat and helpfully deleting files as it installed without any popups
    I think she's still convinced that it was something I did

    bowen wrote:
    Holy shit, they need a real solution. If you've got enough money for more than one office, you've got enough money to buy proper business connections with static IPs.

    I somehow don't feel bad about charging someone $160 to clean antivirus fuckups off their system and restore exe/lnk associations now.

    Yeah they do good business, they gotta be doing well enough financially to make a proper go of this, its just to them I must sound like a tool right? There's all these commercials out there about cloud storage (which I have now pretty firmly written off despite them wanting it) that make it look like it can fix everything forever for free, but thousands of tax records and your ipod playlist are two different things, and enterprise cloud solutions near as I can tell cost bank

    My friend suggested I print up an itemized list of everything i've done (rather than the pretty broad invoices I've been doing), since the owner's son works in IT, and have him show it to his son and then tell him what he's paid me, and this sounds fantastic. His son's head is going to explode

    override367 on
  • GnomeTankGnomeTank What the what? Portland, OregonRegistered User regular
    It's always the owners wife dude, I swear to god. Last place I worked, the owners wife ran HR, and it was a nightmare. Paychecks were late, health insurance would randomly disappear because she didn't pay the bill...and who are you going to take those complains to? The owner? "Hey boss, your wife is uhh, dropping the ball here".

    I'll never again work for a company where the owners spouse (wife or husband) has anything to do with day to day operation of the company. It's bad juju.

    Sagroth wrote: »
    Oh c'mon FyreWulff, no one's gonna pay to visit Uranus.
    Steam: Brainling, XBL / PSN: GnomeTank, NintendoID: Brainling, FF14: Zillius Rosh SFV: Brainling
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    Yes, you absolutely should. And yes.

    They don't necessarily need cloud anything. They need a storage solution that works across multiple offices. What they need is a network attached storage that is accessible via VPN. Worst case, SSH.

    Cloud storage makes sense if you need storage available anywhere, anytime, for any reason. Which is not the case for terabytes worth of company documents. You don't sound like a tool. You sound like you've been wrangled into doing the impossible with an impossible budget. What you should do is highlight what you've done by request and show them the proper options.

    Hell you could probably get away with some dyndns domain names and doing a vpn that way. But for instance:

    NAS:
    $1500 -- SBS NAS storage
    $100/mo/office -- Average price of business internet solutions with single or 5-block static IPs.
    $50/hr -- setup fee (3 hrs).
    $100/mo -- support fee (otherwise charged at $50 an hour if they decline). Edit [limit to 10 hours of work]

    Cloud solutions really shouldn't be used for "file systems" to be honest. They're for backing up, or for transferring between locations. Think of it more like a thumb drive. You really shouldn't "keep" stuff on them. If you need redundancy, that is a whooooole other ballgame. You should absolutely add a cloud solution for archiving your nas though, which would probably be another... $150+ a month.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    I called his direct cell and had a chat, going to get keys to their offices friday and while he didn't want to discuss it more on the phone. Going to get a static IP (it's only $8 a month extra to get a single static IP, but really that's all I need)

    Then the decision is a NAS storage solution or building a server, I've never touched a NAS in my life but I have plenty of (microsoft server 2003/2008) server experience, and part of my problem has been going with things I have no experience with to try and save a buck so I'm going to recommend just getting a server. Hosting about 750mb of files so a shitty used dell server would work. I'm seriously considering getting a new desktop though and using that as a server, since desktops are sooooooo cheap and the requirements are pretty low for our purposes.

    Proposal:

    - Server ~$400 (requirements are really low, we're dealing with glorified excel spreadsheets with no more than 8 accessed at any given time). Requirements: Enough ram to function properly, either a server operating system or windows X professional. I'm thinking a low end desktop (this is still considerably faster than their current server, which works fine) Random llenovo
    - Static IP Address: $8 a month through Charter, if we needed more than one it would be an additional $100 a month per IP, but one will do
    - VPN through charter: Charter will provide 2 routers and VPN them, this is hard to explain to the customer why I would want to have them pay for this, but I don't want to be tech support 24/7 for the rest of their life because AIM changed someone's homepage AND SINCE YOU DID THE NETWORK WHY DID YOU CHANGE MY HOME PAGE

    ...where was I
    - Would be nice column: reinstall windows on every machine, they all have 4 years of e-gunk and at least one quarantined trojan.

    override367 on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    That looks like a plan, be careful with shitty systems because they'll probably call you a lot and ask you why it's slow when it's fast locally. And if it ever breaks they'll want you to fix it, because if it breaks before any of the other computers it's absolutely your fault. Static IPs at all locations, VPN, make sure to charge for hours setting this up.

    Looks like a much better plan. Having it "accessible even if the main office loses power or internet" is ambitious, I work in a 4 practice doctor's office and we don't even do that, way too costly. Best to just work the day without it and catch up when it comes back on, paper still works.

    Don't get me wrong, you can absolutely sync between offices fairly easy with linux based servers and all that and samba shares, but concurrency issues are the biggest pain in the ass. Office 1 and Office 2 are both writing to the same excel file. Office 1 uses the copy it had from last night because the internet is down, makes changes to fields and reruns some reports based on it. Office 2 changes the same fields to different values based on their information. Which one is the right value? What do you do with that? It's just not feasible, each office should have their own data and join them together at a later point.

    bowen on
    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    Actually the way their tax software works I can set it to sync the local copy with the server at specified times (so it downloads everything) and they're never in the same office at the same time, so if they lose internet they'd require me to merge the data with the server once it came back up but they'd be able to continue working for that day, and it's something I could do in 10 minutes from my cell phone if I had to

    override367 on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Ah I had assumed this was a "we have x offices all running concurrently."

    That makes it a bit easier, so long as they're understanding if they ever do that, they're going to run in to a whole host of problems.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    Their employees have thus far completely ignored the printed instructions I've left that if they start using the software and get a "CANNOT CONNECT TO HOST" message, to close the software and try again because they've opened it before windows has connected the network drive and I've had to sync data to the server 3 times for them now

    It's an easy process for which I've made a handy guide on how to do themselves, when im in tomorrow im going to give a powerpoint demonstration, everyone loves powerpoint demonstrations - after this if I have to do it for them I'm charging $20. Even if we'd spent $20,000 on this project instead of $nothing there would still be times for whatever reason the software didn't immediately react to the network drive upon starting and if you hit "okay work locally", it doesn't check again for that session.

    I've considered setting the software's directories to be symbolic links to network locations so it simply cannot function without network access but that's an entire universe of different headaches, best bet is to wait until windows finishes loading to run the program

    override367 on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Sounds like they need a domain that maps drives before they even get logged in all the way.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    Can't do a domain on home operating systems, but we don't need one I'm 99% of the way there to being hammered out

    once tax season is over though I hope hell let me do a complete redo of all this, half the computers should be replaced and all need win 7 pro or xp pro and a domain

    override367 on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    I agree.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    Alright he gave me $400 to pick up a cheap server

    Now to decide between a low end desktop PC or a used dell poweredge or something

    My biggest concern is the maximum connection limit, which is a current nightmare, it's only 10 in vista, I believe it's 20 in win 7 which *should* be enough but should isn't something I want to go with. Server 2003 appears to be between $35 and $800 depending where I look

    Although I'm not sure how this could be legit

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Probably not very. Why not set up linux, it's free, and obviously budget is a concern here. The configuration side is a dick in the butt, but hey, better than spending 75% of your budget on an OS.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    http://www.freenas.org/ And there's this too.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    Thanks for the advice, since there's some urgency I'm going to grab an off the shelf desktop at Best buy (returnable with resocking fee that ill pay out of pocket if necessary), and just use win 7 - it should be fine. If it isn't I'll install linux and put win 7 on his office computer using the key from the new computer, since vista sucks anyway.

    I was just going to build a system but there's no way I could hope to match the price of a prebuilt one

    override367 on
  • WeretacoWeretaco Cubicle Gangster Registered User regular
    bowen wrote:
    http://www.freenas.org/ And there's this too.

    Second that. Other option would be http://www.openfiler.com/

    Unofficial PA IRC chat: #paforums at irc.slashnet.org
  • ueanuean Registered User regular
    FreeNAS is config headache, and pretty resource intensive from what I can read. Never used it though.

    I'm scared about you bumping your head into the wall of the max connection limit. XP Pro = 10 btw.

    And by the way, you can (kinda) do logon scripts with XP Home by creating a folder with sharename NETLOGON. Since none of the machines are technically on a domain they all look to their own shares for the netlogon folder when a logon script is defined in the Profile section of user management. So you could, sorta, call "net use k: \\192.168.0.2\sharedfiles" at logon that way. But then you'll basically need all the HOME users logging in as Administrator accounts, with the identical username/password on the box you're connecting to. More trouble than its worth but I've done it. Updating the scripts on all the various machines becomes messy, but manageable with the PSTools suite.

    But yeah, headaches galore as soon as we start talking about anything HOME. And I make sure and roll my eyes a full 360* if I ever hear someone asking to buy them XP. Ugh....

    Guys? Hay guys?
    PSN - sumowot
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    I flat out refuse to do any work for any business if they're not serious about their computers. If you don't want to invest in it, good luck. It will absolutely bite you in the ass at least 20 times before it completely fucks you.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • BuddiesBuddies Registered User regular
    bowen wrote:
    I flat out refuse to do any work for any business if they're not serious about their computers. If you don't want to invest in it, good luck. It will absolutely bite you in the ass at least 20 times before it completely fucks you.

    This is a good lesson to learn when dealing with small businesses. They always want you to do shit the cheapest way possible. You just need to have the balls and the charisma to tell them "Hey. You want to do this stuff. This is what it's going to take. This is how much it will cost. It will take this long to set up. My Fees for setting it up are this much. Your bottom line is this."

    You don't need to get all technical. If they don't want to pay that much for a solution that will work 100% of the time, then you can give them other solutions that won't be exactly what they need but will fulfill most of their requirements and is a little cheaper. Sometimes you have to explain it to people in terms they can understand, because for some reason they think all computer shit is magic and if it has a processor then it can do anything any computer can do.

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Yeah, something to that effect. Actually I'd flat out "this is the minimum you need to do to get this to work." and flatout refuse to work with them if they want to just "use that xp machine over there."

    Cheapest way is pick up a cheap ass PC and slap free nas on there, dig into the guts and switch it to domain server mode and windows 2003 domain mode (PAM + LDAP) and go to town. That is wayyyyyy more work than paying the initial $1000 in licenses from MS for windows server 2008 though. Plus a dick in the butt to try and repair.

    But yeah if they flat out refused to go with a domain and nas of some sort and wanted me to finangle some dropbox solution because of $$ I'd tell them good luck with the other guys. Then charge them $face when they came back because the other solution didn't work. Because it work... well, it will but the other guys will frustrate them so hey. If they don't and it does work and the other guys can save face long enough. Good on them, not my freaking headache.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    edited January 2012
    I've had the server (its just a lenovo PC) running for a few days, everything's going well, windows 7 on there (I decided against using it strictly as a NAS, as the tax software applies updates automatically to the files in the database and has pretty robust automatic backup settings in its own right).

    Time to load a record went from 11 seconds to 3 seconds, increasing my suspicion that the hard drive is on its way to being kaput in the computer we were using as a server, but hey I warned em and they don't want to replace any hardware, if it fails it fails (if it was me I'd spring the hundred bucks + $50 for data transferring for the hard drive rather than risk losing a machine in the middle of tax season, but not my call), the server backs up on an external as well as its own hard drive so its pretty safe barring a fire though.

    Could set it up to backup on dropbox or something, since cloud is good for that, but Im not doing anything for free anymore

    override367 on
  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    Good man.

    It could also have been a 5400 RPM hard drive in the other machine vs a 7200 in this one (or even higher!).

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    nah the hard drive in the other one is 7200, but it's very, very loud and windows takes ~5 minutes to load

    it could just be bogged down with malware even after I scanned it, but I'm not reinstalling windows on it to find out for free

  • bowenbowen How you doin'? Registered User regular
    IDE vs SATA maybe?

    I know the IDE bus was terribly slow and 7200 RPM was pretty much more than it could really handle. IIRC.

    not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
  • override367override367 ALL minions Registered User regular
    maybe I'd have to check, almost positive its SATA though

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