Cloud based storage options

Do you have office 365? You could use sharepoint and sync with one drive.

You might actually be better served by getting a second circuit with a different ISP installed. If you get an SD-wan or load balancing device as well, you can even have both circuits active at the same time and traffic is spread out over the two. If one circuit goes down, the sd-wan device automatically knows not to send traffic over the failed circuit.

Cloud file storage is a great idea in theory. When it comes down to actual implementation though, you can run into some serious hurdles because most cloud storage simply does not work the same way that traditional file servers work. If you do insist on moving though and are a company largely based on Windows servers, make sure that whatever solution you do choose supports NTFS ACL's.

My former company was going down this road by eliminating the file server in favor of moving to box.com. It was a very slow and painful process because you can't just copy the files out there and be done. You have to take a multitude of things into consideration, like naming conventions, different access levels, differences in time that changes to cloud hosted files are reflected on the end user machines, etc.

be sure to compare the cost of your cloud options to moving your server to a local CoLo data center. Almost every metro has them these days.

A colo is a colocated data center where they provide the infrastructure (cooling, security, internet connection and critical power [UPS and redundant power]) and you just put your server on their floor and hook it up.

I am seeing huge increases in Colo companies coming to us to build new Colo sites. I assume business is good and that would also lead me to think that the colo option is getting quite a bit more affordable than cloud options.

I just moved our office hosted FTP to files.com. Couldn’t be happier. Pay 400 per month and we can store up to 5TB online and it’s very secure.

We have the ability to share files for a specific time period.

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I just moved our office hosted FTP to files.com. Couldn’t be happier. Pay 400 per month and we can store up to 5TB online and it’s very secure.

We have the ability to share files for a specific time period.

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How long did it take to upload all of the data?

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just a warning if you are using large files like Excel spreadsheets with data connections using them in SP can be tricky and slow!

The syncing works, but in my exprience, if it is a file that is used by multiple people often then the sync gets confused as it can't keep up with the changes.

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I cannot imagine how much technical debt has been built up in excel spreadsheets.

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The syncing works, but in my exprience, if it is a file that is used by multiple people often then the sync gets confused as it can't keep up with the changes.

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If you open an Excel file via your web browser, multiple people can work in it at once. It highlights what cells are selected in different colors.

You are spending a crap ton of money for 3TB (I had to re-read your $589 a month quote!). However, that has benefits, because I understand your budget.

The easiest way would be what other posters suggested, is to expand OneDrive/Sharepoint storage (it is essentially the same thing, but Sharepoint is biz focused, and it changes your licensing as far as I know.) Then, you're not managing anything, which is what software as a service is supposed to be. If you take that route, I would *still* buy a NAS to locally backup data, especially archival stuff from old projects.

Just to verify that I know what I'm talking about due to my low post count, I have 14TB of storage in my house for MP3s, document scans, etc. It cost me about $1200 to upgrade from my old setup, and is fully redundant for drive failures.

Broad strokes:

1) Buy two Synology NAS devices (I have a 1520+, which has been replaced by the 1522+ but is perfectly servicable LINK + )

2) Put three 4TB drives in each (or whatever capacity is most cost efficient, sometimes 4TB costs more than 6TB drives, and ALWAYS buy Networked Attached Storage -NAS- drives, they are less sensitive to vibration and heat, which is a thing when you pack drives together.)

3) Plug both units in at your office. One is primary, one is secondary. Copy all your cloud data to Primary. Once that is complete, configure Hyperbackup to replicate from Primary to secondary LINK .

4) Once initial replication is complete, take the secondary unit home and connect it to the Internet. You now have two hot backups for all of your data (configure HyperBackup to replicate the primary to the secondary, don't forget). I would advise you put both of them on a battery backup ($70) to permit them to write cached data before a power failure.

5) If you're super paranoid, you can also set up C2 for Business by BackBlaze within the Synology interface, which gives you yet another backup. I backup a small portion of my data to C2, and it costs me less than a dollar a month (you read that right) for 200GB or so, for triplicate backup. I don't need it, but it is cheap, and far less than my wife's Door Dash fees each month.

6) Depending on what your "server" does, the Synology line can probably do nearly all of it. It offers (geek warning) DNS, LDAP, SMTP server, logging, etc) downloadable as "packages." Synology is essentially the iOS of operating systems for storage/routing devices. It also has a VPN server as a package.

7)Caveat: I have not used any collaboration tools from Synology, but I suspect that if you're talking about CAD drawings and similar, none of that stuff seems to permit versioning, etc., anyway. Word docs and spreadsheets are relatively easy, any other document format not so much, but your folks are most likely editing MS formats, whereas the rest of the data is reference/archival.

Same tech, different adjectives, new consulting fees! And yet, I'm still fighting the exact same battles in Infosec that I was 20 years ago.