Virtualising an office

[akirk]

I need to virtualise an office later this year, seems that there are two main technological considerations - phones and files.Phones are fine as we w\ill port the geographic number to IP, but files are perhaps a little more challenging, so I was wondering what others do...

c. 1TB of files, currently on a synology system in the office - backed up continually by being synced to dropbox professional.

3 users:
- windows 7 desktop & mac laptop (will have the synology box in their home office, but also works away on the mac laptop)
- windows 8 laptop
- windows 10 desktop & windows 8 laptop

all on office 365, several on Adobe CC

the synology box can be reached across the internet, however we seem to have an issue on the mac laptop in that it connects to remote servers with an ip address which gives dreamweaver grief...

dropbox can be connected to by all machines, however the mac laptop has only 128gb SDD so can’t sync more than about 20gb - the dropbox business account does give access to smart sync which in theory is ideal, but seems to have huge speed issues on the mac laptop (20 minutes to open a 6k txt file!)

what is the simplest, most intuitive, set and forget approach to centralised data which syncs to each machine? Dropbox is ideal, but the ability to easily sync to the mac is probably the main issue... is it worth just perservering with that and perhaps setting it up for selective sync and not syncing most of the content unless needed? Or should we be aiming to get the remote access to the synology box working better? or is there another option?

[Whoozit]

From a business owner's (non-techy) perspective, SharePoint does what you want it to, and acts more or less like networked Windows folders. If you all have O365 accounts then it's included. Ask your IT guy.

[surveyor]

Junk the Mac. Dropbox for Business is perfect for what you are doing..

[Mr Overheads]

Need a 1TB hard drive in all the machines then all sync'ed to dropbox.

[breamster]

Whoozit said:

From a business owner's (non-techy) perspective, SharePoint does what you want it to, and acts more or less like networked Windows folders. If you all have O365 accounts then it's included. Ask your IT guy.

Good suggestion.

[akirk]

Whoozit said:

From a business owner's (non-techy) perspective, SharePoint does what you want it to, and acts more or less like networked Windows folders. If you all have O365 accounts then it's included. Ask your IT guy.

Trouble is that I hate Sharepoint with a passion!
Might have to have another look, also not sure if the Synology will sync to it and we need a physical non-cloud secure version, so need to keep the synology box

surveyor said:

Junk the Mac. Dropbox for Business is perfect for what you are doing..

Need to keep the Mac- but it is only an occasional machine so perhaps selective sync is fine... and just sync down what’s needed over the next few days...

We are going through a big archival exercise so hopefully the 1TB can come down in size...

So current view is that Dropbox is good but also look at sharepoint... more exploring to do... thanks all!

[surveyor]

akirk said:

Need to keep the Mac- but it is only an occasional machine so perhaps selective sync is fine... and just sync down what’s needed over the next few days...

We are going through a big archival exercise so hopefully the 1TB can come down in size...

So current view is that Dropbox is good but also look at sharepoint... more exploring to do... thanks all!

I’d also look closer at the sync tool. Somethings not right there.

[Australiam]

If you can get over your dislike for Sharepoint, then I believe that it would do all you have asked. Sharepoint has become much more stable over the past couple of years, and is worth another look.

You should be able to work within the data allowances of Business Premium, and I would then flick your backup to a cloud to cloud solution, so you are not having to haul the traffic over your bandwidth.

We have implemented this for many customers, including a number of PH'ers. I'll PM you a little more info.

[Mr Pointy]

akirk said:

Need to keep the Mac- but it is only an occasional machine so perhaps selective sync is fine... and just sync down what’s needed over the next few days...

We are going through a big archival exercise so hopefully the 1TB can come down in size...

So current view is that Dropbox is good but also look at sharepoint... more exploring to do... thanks all!

Is upgrading the SSD on the Mac not an option? If not then maybe a new Mac needs to be added to the cost of the project. In terms of hours spent on fiddling with sync settings (both now & in the future) it might be more economic.

I'm sure you realise Dropbox isn't backup. You need an offline backup solution - maybe to a NAS.

[sjg]

You get loads of file space (sharepoint) in Office 365. Onedrive for Business syncs it to your machines like Dropbox does - you get a personal space (the sharepoint "my site"), or sync other Sharepoint libraries down too. We do the latter with things like a template library, or people working on a project will sync all the project files to their laptops.

When you're online it all stays in sync, if you're offline for some reason (travel, internet outage, etc) then it's all there too. You can more finely control exactly what files/folders get stored locally if you need.

Works well for us. It's sharepoint underneath but I hardly ever need to hit the sharepoint site in a browser - it just looks and feels like local storage or a fileserver.

[geeks]

Australiam said:

If you can get over your dislike for Sharepoint, then I believe that it would do all you have asked. Sharepoint has become much more stable over the past couple of years, and is worth another look.

You should be able to work within the data allowances of Business Premium, and I would then flick your backup to a cloud to cloud solution, so you are not having to haul the traffic over your bandwidth.

We have implemented this for many customers, including a number of PH'ers. I'll PM you a little more info.

This is pretty similar to how I would be reviewing it, maybe with Onedrive over the top too, or teams as that can make Sharepoint much more liveable.

[akirk]

surveyor said:

I’d also look closer at the sync tool. Somethings not right there.

I know - it doesn't seem right, but there are some suggestions that it doesn't always play happily with Macs, so possibly that is to blame...

Australiam said:

If you can get over your dislike for Sharepoint, then I believe that it would do all you have asked. Sharepoint has become much more stable over the past couple of years, and is worth another look.

You should be able to work within the data allowances of Business Premium, and I would then flick your backup to a cloud to cloud solution, so you are not having to haul the traffic over your bandwidth.

We have implemented this for many customers, including a number of PH'ers. I'll PM you a little more info.

Intrigued - and thank you for the PM (we live in the next villages, so will pm you back and have a chat!)

Mr Pointy said:

Is upgrading the SSD on the Mac not an option? If not then maybe a new Mac needs to be added to the cost of the project. In terms of hours spent on fiddling with sync settings (both now & in the future) it might be more economic.

I'm sure you realise Dropbox isn't backup. You need an offline backup solution - maybe to a NAS.

The upgrade options all seem to be quite expensive and come with a mixture of reviews as to quality, so while we could do that - not convinced...
Sadly the cost of a new laptop with appropriate space is around the £3k figure which is a cost I don't need at the moment (wedding this year / moving house / and in true PH style, running an M5 and restoring a classic RR!!!)

totally get the backup thing - our data is also on a synology system locally / and backed up to crashplan / and in dropbox / and all our client websites are also backed up and live on hosting servers - so up to 5 copies around the country!

sjg said:

You get loads of file space (sharepoint) in Office 365. Onedrive for Business syncs it to your machines like Dropbox does - you get a personal space (the sharepoint "my site"), or sync other Sharepoint libraries down too. We do the latter with things like a template library, or people working on a project will sync all the project files to their laptops.

When you're online it all stays in sync, if you're offline for some reason (travel, internet outage, etc) then it's all there too. You can more finely control exactly what files/folders get stored locally if you need.

Works well for us. It's sharepoint underneath but I hardly ever need to hit the sharepoint site in a browser - it just looks and feels like local storage or a fileserver.

good to hear - I have just disliked earlier implementations of sharepoint - all I want is a file system, I don't want to be setting up complex settings / having to check files in and out / using a web interface etc. - sharepoint has always been traditionally overkill for what we need - there are only 3 of us.

geeks said:

This is pretty similar to how I would be reviewing it, maybe with Onedrive over the top too, or teams as that can make Sharepoint much more liveable.

thanks - useful - though I am still slightly unsure about the need to use sharepoint as well as one drive - it does seem still overly complex for what is basically a need for synchronised file storage no more, no less...

[NorthDave]

The other option - which we do is to continue using the Synology and buy another one to run at some one elses house. That means you always have two copies (one is set to never delete). I then also upload important company stuff (invoices etc not work) to Dropbox standard.

The above works well for us.

[akirk]

NorthDave said:

The other option - which we do is to continue using the Synology and buy another one to run at some one elses house. That means you always have two copies (one is set to never delete). I then also upload important company stuff (invoices etc not work) to Dropbox standard.

The above works well for us.

good thinking and we do have a spare synology box - another thing to look into...

[andyb28]

The Sharepoint suggestion is a good one. I think you have misunderstood what it does.

This is not using the web based sharepoint system at all. You get 1tb of Sharepoint space (a bit like drop box) included in your 365 subscription, whats great about it is that you can map drives to it without it needing to sync all the files locally. So you use it just like a traditional server. Works on Macs too.

We have migrated loads of our customers to this system and everyone has been very happy with the results.