Diamond Posted October 5, 2016 Share Posted October 5, 2016 What I had not added was that Obviously Vectorworks 2017 has updated it's support for cloud, but how do you keep all of the files in one place without needing a massive hard drive attached to each workstation for all of the synchronised Dropbox/cloud files? PS In an ironic twist, only last weekend did I move all of my files into the cloud (iCloud). But I am the only one using my bandwidth at home. 🤓 But that is also backed up on at least two physical drives. Cheers. Quote Link to comment
Tom Klaber Posted October 5, 2016 Author Share Posted October 5, 2016 Just as a clarification, when I talk about a cloud server - I am not talking about Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, or One Drive. I think there is a difference between those cloud storage solutions and a true remote server. The Google or Onedrive sync will not work because - yes for the sync to work you need to download the content locally which will overload our machines. Dropbox I think released a system where that is not the case - you can have access to all your files as if they were local but they are not - do not really get how that works and apparently there are some security concerns. What I am talking about is a hosted server on AWS, Azure, or Google Web Services that would mirror our in-house functionality but simply be housed and maintained elsewhere. It will put more pressure on our internet connection, but our connection here is pretty good. Quote Link to comment
Diamond Posted October 5, 2016 Share Posted October 5, 2016 Hi Tom. 5 hours ago, Tom Klaber said: What I am talking about is a hosted server on AWS, Azure, or Google Web Services that would mirror our in-house functionality but simply be housed and maintained elsewhere. I welcome you to test l, but even with fibre in excess of 100MB/s, this is going to be slow going conpared with an in house server. How many people are in your studio? Do you have any studios in other locations? Quote Link to comment
Tom Klaber Posted October 5, 2016 Author Share Posted October 5, 2016 6 minutes ago, Diamond said: Hi Tom. I welcome you to test l, but even with fibre in excess of 100MB/s, this is going to be slow going conpared with an in house server. How many people are in your studio? Do you have any studios in other locations? We have 30 people. No satellite offices, though we have projects on both coasts, the Caribbean, Europe and soon maybe China. So we have traveling teams often - which right now can only travel with what they can fit on a thumb drive. Eventually, it could make sense for some of our larger projects to send a small team to site for a couple weeks to monitor construction, and it would be nice to think we could easily set up a temp office if need be. We also have people on maternity and paternity schedules, and people with sick kids who would I like to have the freedom to work from home when it makes sense for them. Our in-house Mac server sucks - something about open-directory - that we just spent 1.5 years and 20K putting in (apparently - this happened right before I got here). We have almost 10TB of data that is overloading our system - and its growing fast. We can survive for a few more years - but we need a scalable long term solution. So I figure I want to have an offsite option before we put any more money into this pit. Quote Link to comment
Diamond Posted October 5, 2016 Share Posted October 5, 2016 (edited) I can empathise with the challenge you face. I once assisted with IT across our studios in conjunction our IT consultants and a couple of our directors (who are tech savvy). I was the guy who spent three days repairing the server when a drive failed. The problem was that my architectural project duties went out the window. And so I handed it back. Now I stick to Vectorworks support. With all of the new features, I feel this is more that enough to keep me occupied. 😉 We have three studios. Two in Australia. One in Hong Kong. Our Sydney studio is the largest and about the same size as yours. Even if you go to cloud, not everyone is going to have a fibre speed connection. And even if they do, places like China have their Great (fire)Wall to contend with (where they can just turn certain pipes in the cloud off). My original suggestion still stands. I am not sure how much you have tested project sharing, but together with something like Dropbox, that may work for your remote projects. I don't know if you could mirror your server to them, and your remote team works off the cloud mirror? Hope that helps. Edited October 6, 2016 by Diamond Typos 1 Quote Link to comment
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