file server

[jigraptor]

I am looking to implement a file server, in a small office

we have users in 3 different continents, Europe(Ireland), USA and Asia(China)

with 3 main offices , 2 in Ireland and 1 in China

We currently have 1 file server in Europe synched to another in Asia office using unison

Our USA staff and roadwarriors connect over vpn to the fileserver in Ireland



Users indicate that access the files in the fileserver from outside the office is prohibitively slow....its served by a 12Mb/2Mb broadband line, which is used for all office traffic




We have hosted servers where we could setup a file server as an alternative to setting up in the offices...

Can anyone recommend a good, free/opensource solution to this problem

[HROAdmin26]

Your question is far too broad...

Offhand:

Linux OS
OpenVPN (VPN services)
rsync (To sync data between these systems?)

[johnlafl]

Looking to implement or have implemented?

As you have described it sounds like a valid system for sharing of relatively small files non-concurrently due to unison being the sharing method.

So the problem is essentially people on the road, "roadwarriors" are too slow?


Are they getting slower then the line speed? That would be your limit with the system as described. Again, assuming concurrent access isn't needed.

[shaywalters]

I am presently working to resolve a similar situation. There are a some good free packages for file servers: FreeNAS and Turnkey Linux File Server are two that come to mind. Also, it's not too difficult to just enable samba with your distribution of choice and roll your own. But the two mentioned above have some good GUI tools included for configuration. I'm sure there are other options here. These are the ones that I've looked at.

I agree with the recommendation of rsync. I'm sure there are other options, but rsync seems like a pretty good solution for keeping the files synchronized between locations, assuming you don't run into problems with more than one location modifying the same file at the same time. If that's a concern, you may need to look to some sort of remote desktop access and have them access a single live dataset.

I'm just beginning my project, so I don't have much experience to offer yet, but this is what I'm planning so far.

[jigraptor]

I am presently working to resolve a similar situation. There are a some good free packages for file servers: FreeNAS and Turnkey Linux File Server are two that come to mind. Also, it's not too difficult to just enable samba with your distribution of choice and roll your own. But the two mentioned above have some good GUI tools included for configuration. I'm sure there are other options here. These are the ones that I've looked at.

I agree with the recommendation of rsync. I'm sure there are other options, but rsync seems like a pretty good solution for keeping the files synchronized between locations, assuming you don't run into problems with more than one location modifying the same file at the same time. If that's a concern, you may need to look to some sort of remote desktop access and have them access a single live dataset.

I'm just beginning my project, so I don't have much experience to offer yet, but this is what I'm planning so far.

Thanks for the suggestions I'll look into those two anyway.

In the current implementation I went with unison over rsync as it provides you with tools for dealing with conflicted files....you can configure it to use merge tools, to merge conflicted files...or you can just choose which copy you want to keep etc.

I guess the first main question I have is should I keep local file servers in the 3 offices and synch them...or should I just use one central fileserver in the cloud?
If its one hosted system then everyone should have pretty much similar experience with speeds etc and I dont need to worry about conflicts.

People in the two offices would experience slower speeds for reads and writes over the internet rather than Gb local network, but staff outside those two offices would experience much better speeds.

I'm thinking it might be less admin overheads too.



I'm kind of answering my own question regarding cloud vs local I guess....but would like to know what people would recommend anyway.


But I probably need to answer that question first then look at different file server solutions to suit the chosen implementation