What are others doing to provide cloud synch 'n access to servers shares

[YeOldeStonecat]

Just curious what others are doing for products out there.....that allow clients that have road warrior crews that need access to the big shares on the server at the office. Suppose cross platform is warranted these days with dang iPads everywhere.

What I mean is...at the offices there's typically a huge "Shared" folder that could be say 100 gigs in size. Lotsa stuff gets plopped in there at the office, including "scan to folder" stuff from some big Canon imageRunner or something like that.

Got a client asking for this...their server doesn't have a new enough Sharepoint to allow that, plus...iPad anyways....
And shouldn't really need terminal server for this..just need access to files (typically PDFs 'n MS Office files). No applications.

My first hunch was to go for JungleDisk "Workgroup Edition"....cheap enough, 4 bucks/user, first 10 gigs free, 15 cents a gig after that. Access to that cloud drive via HTTPS or a client.

 

[Frick]

I had a meeting with anchorworks.com
The product looks good, is marketed to MSPs, and fairly priced. I have not used them yet but am going to demo the product shortly.

If nothing else take a look as they offer what it sounds like you are needing.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I had a meeting with anchorworks.com

Hmmm...I recall their name a while ago when I was looking at entry level backup products. Would you mind PM'ing me what you recall their pricing was?

 

[Frick]

PM sent......filler......

 

[TenYardFight]

I hope we get a pretty good answer resulting from this discussion. I refuse to deploy Dropbox in this scenario for security reasons, but I have yet to secure an alternative.

 

[seedubya]

This is something I would like discuss also. I have a client currently using SugarSync but I think we need something better.

 

[drjones]

Easy; VPN to the network, then there are many different file browser/file explorer iOS apps (probably Android too) that will allow users to browse network shares, open & view common file types; word, excel, PDF, and use iOS's "open in" function if they need to make any edits to a file.

I've done this for several different clients, seems to work fairly well for them.

Heck, I use those apps to browse my NAS at home, works pretty well.

FileBrowser I think is the best iOS app I've found for this. There is a similar one called "File Explorer" and I can't recall why, but I don't like it.

 

[codegreen]

Have you looked at ownCloud? I'm evaluating it for this type of thing. You can host it on your own server, your client's server, or a VPS. It has syncing clients for for just about everything (including iPads). Plus, there all kinds of other functionality baked-in and available via plugins (calendar, task management, etc). It even integrates with LDAP and Active Directory for authentication.

It looks really good, on paper, at least. I haven't tested it enough to have a useful opinion on it yet.

 

[TenYardFight]

Easy; VPN to the network, then there are many different file browser/file explorer iOS apps (probably Android too) that will allow users to browse network shares, open & view common file types; word, excel, PDF, and use iOS's "open in" function if they need to make any edits to a file.

I've done this for several different clients, seems to work fairly well for them.

Heck, I use those apps to browse my NAS at home, works pretty well.

FileBrowser I think is the best iOS app I've found for this. There is a similar one called "File Explorer" and I can't recall why, but I don't like it.

What's your preferred method for implementing a VPN? Say there's no UTM at the edge...

 

[drjones]

What's your preferred method for implementing a VPN? Say there's no UTM at the edge...

Built in Windows server VPN/RAS.

But every business can afford a $500 Sonicwall....

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Have you looked at ownCloud? I'm evaluating it for this type of thing. You can host it on your own server, your client's server, or a VPS.

I've peeked at it....someone on these forums mentioned in recently in another thread. Looks interesting. I don't know how cost effective it would be...you'd want to "host" this on some pretty decent bandwidth on some reliable redundant hardware. It's difficult to start competing with cloud services price-wise. But very interesting product.....would be neat to implement for our own office.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What's your preferred method for implementing a VPN? Say there's no UTM at the edge...

I will only do VPN via hardware appliances...such as the edge firewall, or if it's a larger organization...a dedicated VPN appliance like a Juniper SA series SSL appliance.

I won't use the native VPN server service of a Windows server....poor performance, and most importantly....I against my "best practice list" to expose a DC service like that to the wild side.

 

[paristotle]

I ran into these guys at a tech infrastructure conference a couple of months back. Haven't tried them out yet, but it may fit your need. Looks like you can make a dropbox type share from existing server shares on your LAN. http://www.varonis.com/products/datanywhere/index.html

 

[silvano]

I ran into these guys at a tech infrastructure conference a couple of months back. Haven't tried them out yet, but it may fit your need. Looks like you can make a dropbox type share from existing server shares on your LAN. http://www.varonis.com/products/datanywhere/index.html

I actually just reached out to them about this product this weekend, looking for a similar solution, to replace a previously setup and insecure/ineffecient FTP server for a client. The few requirements I'm looking for is ability to leverage existing permissions/AD structure, existing file storage, not requiring a new repository or uploading of confidential client data, and the ability to share outside the organization, as well as allow for controlled, secure upload by clients' clients.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Bump....just to see if there's any new input.
I'm half thinking of adding a Synology unit to this client....and using it's cloud file service.

 

[paristotle]

I still think Varonis sounds like a good fit. I don't know about price, but for networks with a Windows server it seems to be the ticket.
For smaller customers with 3-10 users there is a new (beta) app from QNAP that I am watching called Qsynch. http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?lang=en-us&sn=8864#Qsync I'm going to give it a try to see how stable it is. This solution works well if the customer wants a one time cost without having to pay per seat or annual costs.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

I'll look into that Varonis some more.....

Odd timing...shortly after bumping this post....got a call and e-mail from
http://anchorworks.com/

 

[SAG]

I have a couple of clients using the ReadyNAS/Egnyte setup and it works out really well.

Egnyte is cloud storage.
ReadyNAS provides local storage.

Basically, the office has a supported ReadyNAS that all the local people connect to. It syncs to the Egnyte cloud. Which in turn syncs it to any ReadyNas at remote offices.
Road Warriors can use WebDAV for mapping or the web interface if need be.

All permissions are centrally managed and propagate properly. It works pretty well and is fairly inexpensive.

 

[dbdawn]

I briefly looked into Oxygen Cloud, but I couldn't easily get any pricing.

There is also Accellion and LiquidFiles. The product specs for Accellion look really nice but who knows what the pricing cost would be?