Recommendations for Remote Cloud Storage Drive Mapping

[Melbosa]

So I have an issue.  Clients have 1TB of storage on OneDrive, or GoogleDrive, or DropBox, etc, but locally they only have 128GB SSD HDs.  They want to map a drive to these locations but want it to act like it is local storage. Something that only caches a local copy of working files, and syncs them as time/bandwidth permits, then destroys the local copy when done the sync.

I can see the appeal to this request as you are extending your HD space to a remote site without the limitations of your Upload speed or having to use the Web Interface to upload your changed file when complete.  Or say you backup 4GB files to your 1TB of online space, but can really only work with 5/10 of them at a time locally.  I know NAS solutions that do this for you, but if you were a client with only a desktop, or an environment where NAS solutions with CloudSync software don't exist, how would you offer these solutions to say the desktop itself?

I've been looking around and found products like WebDrive or NetDrive, but am wondering if anyone here has any experience with a product like that?

[Tom]

Seagate wifi drive with cloud sync? Otherwise, I dunno really.

Linux has things like fuse, where you could potentially layer a cache under a fuse client for cloud storage.

[Melbosa]

Maybe I'm not explaining this correctly.  Think of the data that is hot and cold.

Data that is hot (active, in use, etc) would be local data to the workstation cached (with a copy in the cloud data store service like OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Drive), and data that is cold (not used very often or rarely) lives primarily in the cloud and becomes hot data when opened/edited.  This way a client doesn't have to have a local copy on their workstation or NAS or network anywhere, because only the hot data stays local.  The client themselves sees a folder or drive letter locally that represents a view at all the Data in the cloud storage service as if it was locally stored - like their workstation, NAS or network location.  They don't really know the difference until they try to access cold data and have to wait while it is synced locally for access.

Does that make more sense?

[Lazybones]

I don't know of anything that works are the workstation level like that. I have seen other variations of the network appliance that does it however.

A manual work around might be to use the selective sync features, and uncheck folders to not sync, then have them move completed work between folders online.

I should note that if we are talking office documents and the client is using office 2013 or 2016 they don't need to use the sync client unless they want offline copies of the files.. Both office 2013 and 2016 will mount onedrive directly (i think it works with dropbox directly as well now) where only the open file is pulled down and cached locally.

[Melbosa]

Actually the NetDrive and WedDrive software does work like that at a workstation level.  So I guess no one has used any software like this then.

But yeah if these were regular office people I'd say we are golden with just built in Sync technology for the Cloud Storage provider and such.  But as I said these clients don't have a lot of local storage nor are they just working with 5MB files.  They are instructions, course curriculum developers, software developers, video editors, multimedia content delivery personnel, etc that can have 2-4GB files by themselves.  Yes they have departmental shares they can rely on, but a lot of these people consider some of this stuff personal and would normally want to store this on a local hard drive, but now with SSDs in their area they are looking for a better way to store that "personal" data that they used to carry locally in the 200-500GB range.

And then comes the free 1TB of Cloud Storage everyone gets in the company... and how do we deliver access to that for these people at an easily used way without asking them to wait for individual uploads to happen or tell them to bulk sync when needed, etc.

No worries.  Thanks for the discussion.

[Tom]

Yeah, can't say really. I imagine whats what that NetDrive/WebDrive stuff you found was created for. And sortof similar to how a cached fuse setup could work. (linux also has fscache that can do caching for nfs, cifs and other share protocols).

If they are worried about storing their "personal" files on a "local" share, why aren't they worried about it being stored on the company cloud storage? Its about the same thing, just a different server rack.

[Melbosa]

Some people also use it to backup their personal data, like home movies and pictures.  They aren't policed on that stuff at the workstation level, but are at the department share level.  So rather than go down that rabbit hole, the company would rather just let them use the Cloud Storage for that stuff.

[Tom]

I'm just saying that it is still company stuff. Sometime in the future it could be monitored. I wouldnt put personal stuff on a work share of any kind.

[Lazybones]

We don't permit personally media files on our home drives or cloud storage.  If it doesn't fit locally and it isn't work related they should t have it on their workstation.

But that is actually in our policies for network and business systems use.