Cloud file system for small business

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MN Finance
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Cloud file system for small business

Post by MN Finance »

We have a small business with fairly light technology needs. All of our software and services are web-based, so we have very little work that happens on our local computers. To align with this and the fact that we work remotely we started using the Microsoft skydrive platform to hold our files. The program also gives us office software for our computers, which we needed anyway. We have 3-4 employees and about 7 computers. It seems to me that virtually daily one of the computers fails to sync to the drive, we have to stop syncing, restart or do something manual. I am not very techy, but can figure out some of these basics. To have to spend 20 minutes on one of the machines a couple times a week is no acceptable. Are there alternatives someone can recommend?
jebmke
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by jebmke »

I use SkyDrive (now OneDrive) as well as Google Drive and Amazon Cloud. They all seem to work the same as far as I can tell. I have had no issues with reconnect and sync on any of them.
Don't trust me, look it up. https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions-and-publications
Topic Author
MN Finance
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by MN Finance »

Multiple skydrives on multiple computers?
lazyday
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by lazyday »

It would seem to me that with the potential of multiple people trying to make changes at the same time, the Microsoft cloud product might offer more flexibility and reliability for sharing Microsoft documents. For example, two different parts of a document might be changed at the same time by two different people, if Skydrive offers that capability. Where documents automatically refer to each other, like linked spreadsheets, this also might apply.
Maybe someone knows if this is realistic... I don't know how smart Skydrive is.

Other options to research:
-Google Docs, free or paid
-NAS (Network Attached Storage) for file sharing instead of cloud.
OatmealAddict
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by OatmealAddict »

I'll vouch whole-heartedly for Google Drive. Both my wife and I use it to sync nearly 100GB across three laptops, running both Windows and OS X. Both laptops have a local Google Drive client that instantly syncs any and all changes made on the local file systems. It's performed flawlessly for us.
Topic Author
MN Finance
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by MN Finance »

On Google drive, do you sign in under the same user so that all files are immediately available, or do you each have your own sign in and then share documents? I would like a system where we don't have to deal with sharing and different logins. You just get full access to all docs in the drive. Part of our current problem, I assume, is that my drive holds everything, then it's shared with other users. So when another user logs in their drive is empty and then they have to go to the shared drive. This may be fine, but I'm trying to eliminate variables to figure out why we keep getting errors. I'd pay a Microsoft guy good money to come out and fix this, but I don't know how they handle local support.
Last edited by MN Finance on Thu Feb 20, 2014 7:46 pm, edited 2 times in total.
MathWizard
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by MathWizard »

How about one fileserver that shares out documents, and have that one fileserver sync with SkyDrive, or other
cloud service.

For Windows you could use CIFS (aka SAMBA), or NFS4 for Linux or Macs for the network file system.

If you are the business owner, your time is too valuable to waste on this, pay a professional to diagnose what is
causing the sync to fail, and set up the computer to fix itself. Flaky network connections could also be causing the
syncs to time out.
Topic Author
MN Finance
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by MN Finance »

MathWizard wrote:How about one fileserver that shares out documents, and have that one fileserver sync with SkyDrive, or other
cloud service.

For Windows you could use CIFS (aka SAMBA), or NFS4 for Linux or Macs for the network file system.

If you are the business owner, your time is too valuable to waste on this, pay a professional to diagnose what is
causing the sync to fail, and set up the computer to fix itself. Flaky network connections could also be causing the
syncs to time out.
I don't know what any of that means, but you're right I don't have time for this. That was the appeal of skydrive over a local network server - no maintenance needed to share a bunch of office files. I messaged a couple people in my network for a tech referral, but when I asked about this a year ago nobody had much experience with skydrive.
jebmke
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by jebmke »

MN Finance wrote:On Google drive, do you sign in under the same user so that all files are immediately available, or do you each have your own sign in and then share documents? I would like a system where we don't have to deal with sharing and different logins. You just get full access to all docs in the drive. Part of our current problem, I assume, is that my drive holds everything, then it's shared with other users. So when another user logs in their drive is empty and then they have to go to the shared drive. This may be fine, but I'm trying to eliminate variables to figure out why we keep getting errors. I'd pay a Microsoft guy good money to come out and fix this, but I don't know how they handle local support.
I manage a "fleet" of 40 laptops. All of them have the Google Drive synch app which I have set up with a common login (one Google account) - they all sync off the same file system. The Google sync utility starts at bootup and syncs all the files to their local drive.
Don't trust me, look it up. https://www.irs.gov/forms-instructions-and-publications
dsanders79
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by dsanders79 »

I don't have any experience with using any of these services with as many simultaneous users as you're trying to do, but I would give Dropbox a try. I believe if 2 computers are on the same local network they will sync without going out to Dropbox. It will eventually get synced to Dropbox, but the local syncs should happen much faster. Pure speculation on my part, but I am wondering if your issues are related to syncs not being able to commit fast enough or two people modifying the same file at the same time.

I also like the other recommendation of getting a small file server to access files while in the office which in turn syncs to the Internet. However, that may become confusing to users trying to remember where to access files from (local server while in the office, cloud drive while out of the office).

I think MS may now have a competing product, but I also really like Google Docs as well. The ability to have multiple people view and edit documents at the same time is fantastic.
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Eric
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by Eric »

jimday1982 wrote:I'll vouch whole-heartedly for Google Drive. Both my wife and I use it to sync nearly 100GB across three laptops, running both Windows and OS X. Both laptops have a local Google Drive client that instantly syncs any and all changes made on the local file systems. It's performed flawlessly for us.
Does Google Drive now preserve Mac OS X metadata? Accordingly to this tester, early versions did not. (But that was a while ago.)
MathWizard
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Re: Cloud file system for small business

Post by MathWizard »

MN Finance wrote:
MathWizard wrote:How about one fileserver that shares out documents, and have that one fileserver sync with SkyDrive, or other
cloud service.

For Windows you could use CIFS (aka SAMBA), or NFS4 for Linux or Macs for the network file system.

If you are the business owner, your time is too valuable to waste on this, pay a professional to diagnose what is
causing the sync to fail, and set up the computer to fix itself. Flaky network connections could also be causing the
syncs to time out.
I don't know what any of that means, but you're right I don't have time for this. That was the appeal of skydrive over a local network server - no maintenance needed to share a bunch of office files. I messaged a couple people in my network for a tech referral, but when I asked about this a year ago nobody had much experience with skydrive.
I have used DropBox and have not had any problems. I even helped set it up at my church.
I just started using Box which has a few more features.

This site mentions those service as their coice for the top 10 such services, but does not mention SkyDrive or Google Drive,

http://www.thetop10bestonlinebackup.com ... on?start=0

You might give one of them a try.

I would also see if the problem is your local network, or your network connection.
If data is being mis-routed or corrupted, that could explain why syncs woould either fail
due to taking too long, or gettng confused.

This isn't a wireless network by chance? I've used dropbox on wireless, but not with large files.
Wireless, especially before wireless-N , had lots of problems when under load.
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