Cloud Server and Collaborative Tools

[akirk]

we use a mixture
O365 for email (even though we own our own data centre based email server for clients)
internal Synology system for files (can sync across theinternet to another and gives fast local file access), synced also to dropbox and backed up with crashplan

[randlemarcus]

buggalugs said:

Why?

Because SharePoint isn't a fileserver, and needs careful backup from an On-Prem server, never mind one where you don't have access to the backend like SPO. Because you'll find the meaning of the data import and export charges quite quickly. Because restoration from a local copy to a SaaS instance will not be something that they practice, so they'll cock it up when it is needed.

Applying SBS/onPrem thinking to O365 and Azure things is a great way to make them overly complex and cause pain later on.

There are ways to backup mail and files in the Cloud, but they need a little thought, not just the same backup tool you used when it was a lovely snazzy pizza box in that room that nobody else had keys to

[Craikeybaby]

There's a lot of mention of O365 in this thread - what are peoples experiences with Google Suite?

[randlemarcus]

Craikeybaby said:

There's a lot of mention of O365 in this thread - what are peoples experiences with Google Suite?

Very competent online collaboration suite. Does what the online bits of the MSFT stack do.

If your users like Office though, you will be paying for both bits. And the ecosystem around the GSuite is not as developed as the MSFT side, especially when you bring EMS and Win 10 E5 capabilities into it.

Although it is a most amusing thing when you are sitting with the CTO, discussing a move away from GSuite to 365, and someone forgot to pay the Google bill, and the entire workforce gets that message, and up it pops on the CTO's mail browser screen

[eliot]

Another vote for O365.

[rossmc88]

Your IT guy will be crapping himself because Office 365 has just made him obsolete

Another vote for Office 365, it's great, the future has arrived and it's great for a growing company

[randlemarcus]

rossmc88 said:

Your IT guy will be crapping himself because Office 365 has just made him obsolete

Depends. If he is smart, then he just moved up the value chain, and is responsible for delivering services to the business, not just servers. Job for life that one, because Microsoft /Google just deliver to their Service Description, not to the business needs.

[plasticpig]

swerni said:

^^^^^^
I'm with stoopid.
O365 is more resilient than anything you could build yourself.

Also to the comments on"what if someone cut the cable". I'm at an airport, I'm doing my mail, I don't have a cable.
Must be magic
Or maybe cellular.

Try costing out 100gb+ a day with 30 users at mobile data rates...

[rossmc88]

Wanting to use QNAP to build his own cloud sounds like he's just clinging on to the old ways of doing things and hasn't realised he can move up the value chain

[buggalugs]

randlemarcus said:

buggalugs said:

Why?

Because SharePoint isn't a fileserver, and needs careful backup from an On-Prem server, never mind one where you don't have access to the backend like SPO. Because you'll find the meaning of the data import and export charges quite quickly. Because restoration from a local copy to a SaaS instance will not be something that they practice, so they'll cock it up when it is needed.

Applying SBS/onPrem thinking to O365 and Azure things is a great way to make them overly complex and cause pain later on.

There are ways to backup mail and files in the Cloud, but they need a little thought, not just the same backup tool you used when it was a lovely snazzy pizza box in that room that nobody else had keys to

As someone who recently had to wait 4 days for a restore of a cloud crm system which was finally provided as a CSV file I think there's still a lot to be said for just having files on a hard disk on your desk.

[Vaud]

rossmc88 said:

Wanting to use QNAP to build his own cloud sounds like he's just clinging on to the old ways of doing things and hasn't realised he can move up the value chain

This.

Old school IT spod - design something bespoke and highly customised so that it makes me indispensable. That fact that it is nearly completely unsupportable is not relevant... and woe betide if it breaks while he is on holiday...

IT guy should be app focused and adding value to the apps layer, not piddling about with custom infrastructure. Maybe a 3rd copy locally for emergency use.

Off the shelf O365 fits the bill. I quite like Google, but their account management/business teams are still useless.

Edited by Vaud on Friday 17th February 20:53

[Bikerjon]

I use both 365 and G Suite and have also set them up for several small business customers. Out of the two 365 is the safe option, but don’t forget that with 40 machines you will still need to have some kind of PC management too - something that your server is probably doing currently. MS do have cloud tools for this but many people think of 365 as just Onedrive, Office and Exchange - job done!

In my opinion G suite is a much more radical solution, but I can think of a couple of advantages over 365. It integrates with a lot of 3rd party apps and if you eventually went the whole way and replaced your windows PC’s with cheap chromebooks then device management is built-in too. I think real-time document editing is easier with Google Docs too, although MS has improved matters a lot in that area.

These days I tend to spend a lot of my time working within a web browser. If I had to create a quick spreadsheet I'm actually more likely to use Google Sheets than load up Excel.

[plasticpig]

swerni said:

That's just what the Australian tax office thought as well.

What makes cloud storage immune to failure? The tax office were using HPE 3PAR which is a Tier 1 storage solution.

[buggalugs]

swerni said:

buggalugs said:

randlemarcus said:

buggalugs said:

Why?

Because SharePoint isn't a fileserver, and needs careful backup from an On-Prem server, never mind one where you don't have access to the backend like SPO. Because you'll find the meaning of the data import and export charges quite quickly. Because restoration from a local copy to a SaaS instance will not be something that they practice, so they'll cock it up when it is needed.

Applying SBS/onPrem thinking to O365 and Azure things is a great way to make them overly complex and cause pain later on.

There are ways to backup mail and files in the Cloud, but they need a little thought, not just the same backup tool you used when it was a lovely snazzy pizza box in that room that nobody else had keys to

As someone who recently had to wait 4 days for a restore of a cloud crm system which was finally provided as a CSV file I think there's still a lot to be said for just having files on a hard disk on your desk.

That's just what the Australian tax office thought as well.

I'm not saying don't use Cloud. I'm saying take responsibility for backups.

[plasticpig]

swerni said:

As Tin sats, nothing is immune to failure, but AWS is architected such that, if a component fails, it doesn't matter.
Disk drives ( of any type) have only ever done three things, read, write and fail.

A typical highly available platform will consist of two sites replicated if the company is very concerned, the replication is synchronous, ( double edge sword) also either an online backup at a third or offsite tape.

In AWS your data will resided ( by default) in multiple availability zones in any region.
Vendors will quote between 99.999 and 99.9999 availability, no one will ever quote 100% as it's impossible.
AWS will quote 99.99 availability but 99.999999999 sustainability.

Having spent nearly 30 years in the storage market, I now question why anyone would build stuff themselves.
Unless it's a very bespoke platform or there is some propitiatory IP involved, why do it yourself?

As Tin also points out, automation is key, the vast majority of issues are caused by humans, remove them from the equation and you are suddenly for more resilient.
It's why so many IT people are against it, they just aren't needed anymore, though they will protest until cows come home.

Does it take any less knowledge to configure and maintain a VM on an AWS VPC than it does to configure and maintain one on a local VMware ESXi server? The IT people will still need to configure and maintain IP address ranges, subnets and gateways. The will still need to configure and maintain a UTM solution etc.

[buggalugs]

swerni said:

buggalugs said:

swerni said:

buggalugs said:

randlemarcus said:

buggalugs said:

Why?

Because SharePoint isn't a fileserver, and needs careful backup from an On-Prem server, never mind one where you don't have access to the backend like SPO. Because you'll find the meaning of the data import and export charges quite quickly. Because restoration from a local copy to a SaaS instance will not be something that they practice, so they'll cock it up when it is needed.

Applying SBS/onPrem thinking to O365 and Azure things is a great way to make them overly complex and cause pain later on.

There are ways to backup mail and files in the Cloud, but they need a little thought, not just the same backup tool you used when it was a lovely snazzy pizza box in that room that nobody else had keys to

As someone who recently had to wait 4 days for a restore of a cloud crm system which was finally provided as a CSV file I think there's still a lot to be said for just having files on a hard disk on your desk.

That's just what the Australian tax office thought as well.

I'm not saying don't use Cloud. I'm saying take responsibility for backups.

I agree 100%, but having a copy on the desk is not a backup or a backup strategy, it's just a point in time copy.

Having holding a separate copy of the data in a different location very much is a backup thanks, I think we all understand about history, redundancy and having a tested restore plan. I only jumped in because people were pissing on the OP's IT guy for not just buying Veeam or whatever. We don't even know what the fk he actually was going to do anyway but people love to jump in waving akronyms around and being more enterprise-y than thou. No wonder people want rid of IT, jesus.

[plasticpig]

swerni said:

I hope you aren't reliant on consulting on infrastructure or advising anyone on back up strategy for a living.

not sure how you think going for a cloud based solution is "enterprise"

For a lot of small companies it still is. There are still plenty of locations where FTTC is still not available and ADSL speeds are 3-5mbps down and 1mbps up. It's difficult to make the business case for spending £300+ a month on a leased line with a 3 year commitment when a LTO5 tape drive is £1k; particularly when fast internet speeds are not a requirement for your core business.

[AClownsPocket]

plasticpig said:

Does it take any less knowledge to configure and maintain a VM on an AWS VPC than it does to configure and maintain one on a local VMware ESXi server? The IT people will still need to configure and maintain IP address ranges, subnets and gateways. The will still need to configure and maintain a UTM solution etc.

No, it doesn't take less or more, just different knowledge.

swerni said:

It's why so many IT people are against it, they just aren't needed anymore, though they will protest until cows come home.

If you have a person willing to reskill, then they'll always be needed.

[eliot]

DELETED: Comment made by a member who's account has been deleted.

Have a look at Talon Cloudfast. A little bit like windows dfs where you have a common but distributed windows file share. The bulk of the data can be stored anywhere such as Azure blob storage (via an IaaS vm) then you can have multiple branch offices with an agent running which caches all the hot data and also deals with file locking etc. So you get a single view of your file system globally, but with lan speed access in the offices (once cached).

[AClownsPocket]

swerni said:

We will always need people with specific skills, just a lot less.

We used to have people who's whole job was to exchange tapes in robotic libraries.
People used to buy, configure and maintain Exchange servers, you'd have to be mad now.
Why buy and maintain a server infrastructure, for many it's now pointless.

IT has changed and will continue to do so, people either need to evolve ( where they can) or die.
But the fact is, a lot will continue to go to the cloud and be automated, so by definition, the industry needs less people.

Agreed to a certain extent. But, taking your Exchange example, yes its in the cloud, but you still need those people with skills to maintain the backend infrastructure. The skills aren't redundant, they've just moved out of the visible arena behind a 'service'.