remote fileserver mountable as filesystem. how ?

[mrflibble]

Also, if you've never run a VPN, it can be absolutely fascinating. The amount of problems they can generate is hilarious.

No kidding. What I was wondering, don't you have people working over there that solve this sort of problem for a living? It's not exactly rocket science, but it's has enough snags that any random dude making guesses about what is a good idea (case in point: our local friendly problem owner ) can spend quite some time before getting it right. Or the other alternative, give it three goes, fsck 'm all up, and then revert to old school local files because "that is what I know".

[free_electron]

Also, if you've never run a VPN, it can be absolutely fascinating. The amount of problems they can generate is hilarious.

No kidding. What I was wondering, don't you have people working over there that solve this sort of problem for a living? It's not exactly rocket science, but it's has enough snags that any random dude making guesses about what is a good idea (case in point: our local friendly problem owner ) can spend quite some time before getting it right. Or the other alternative, give it three goes, fsck 'm all up, and then revert to old school local files because "that is what I know".

nope. this is a startup that does hardware. no web / it geeks in the puddle ... i myself am clueless about this as well.

Everywhere i worked so far we had a filer with user storage and shared folders. so this looked like the way to go.
everyone has his home acount on the filer that is read/write for the owner only and read only for everyone else.
Version control stuff for sorcecode was done using clearcase. All other design work was done using shared folders.

[mrflibble]

Well, all I can say is smb over vpn over semi-random internet pipes is going to be an interesting experience. But what the hell, give it a try and see if the level of performance & reliability is what you are looking for.

[nctnico]

Even over a local network SMB works mediocre at best (compare to the speed you get using FTP!). SMB over a VPN is asking for problems. Besides that a VPN comes with it's own set of problems. Because a VPN is a network adapter Windows may decide to use a different nameserver (for starters) or route network traffic in unexpected ways.

An alternative way could be setting up a terminal server which people use with Microsoft remote desktop. In that case everybody works on the same computer on which the files are shared.

[miguelvp]

In case it was missed:

sshfs

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-sshfs-to-mount-remote-file-systems-over-ssh

Edit: I never used it so I don't know how reliable it is.

[ovnr]

An alternative way could be setting up a terminal server which people use with Microsoft remote desktop. In that case everybody works on the same computer on which the files are shared.

lol no. So SMB latency and shittiness isn't enough, you want the whole experience to be laggy and prone to completely dropping out as opposed to having open/save fail in hilarious ways?


miguelvp's suggestion of sshfs looks somewhat promising if you absolutely must use a remote filesystem.

[apelly]

Remote file systems are a sack of crap. That's the nature of the game.

However, you haven't commented on Microsoft Sharepoint. It is their system for enterprise collaboration. They can provide hosting. It will be pricey.

Cheaper is ownCloud on a VPS. But that presents maintenance issues.

On the one hand you want a full service host, on the other you are short of capital and skills. I don't think you should attempt this yourself unless you have access to appropriate geeks. It will not work well, and you will never know if it's secure.

Version control on binary files is almost useless, so you need version control in your application. Hardly anything has that.

You are looking for a simple solution to a hard problem. Good luck.

Disclaimer: Microsoft suck balls, and can stick their software up their fat ass as far as I'm concerned. They may have this niche in the bag however. Especially if your OS is Windows.

[Psi]

vpn seems the solution. Dedicated vpn boxes.. Thats gonna cost money. Money we dont have .. Running in startup mode you know .. Pre investor ...
...
Looks like vpn routers are not that expensive... Hmm homework to do ...

1) Find any old useless computer that is worthless, eg Pentium 3 or AMD Athlon.
2) Insert 2 cheap old network cards (eg RTL8139)
3) Install router software, (eg monowall or smoothwall )
4) Log into the webgui and enable VPN mode and setup VPN connections.

Price range:  Very cheap  (free if you can find old computers and netcards)

Once the VPN is setup you can access SMB shares across it as if the PCs were all on the same network. (.. well, you would probably use different subnets for each site so broadcast traffic is blocked, but yeah)

[nctnico]

An alternative way could be setting up a terminal server which people use with Microsoft remote desktop. In that case everybody works on the same computer on which the files are shared.

lol no. So SMB latency and shittiness isn't enough, you want the whole experience to be laggy and prone to completely dropping out as opposed to having open/save fail in hilarious ways?

If you have an ADSL or similar/better internet connection then remote desktop works OK. I have been using that for a similar situation free_electron is in: to work on the same project with other people in a shared environment. With remote desktop you can also attach your local hard drive as a share so you can exchange data between the remote server and your own PC. The only crappy thing about remote desktop is the way the profiles are handled.

I thought of sshfs but I'm not sure there is a WIndows client for that and even then it would take setting up users on the Linux/Unix side.

edit: typo

[Psi]

I thought of sshfs but I'm not sure there is a WIndows client for that and even then is would take setting up users on the Linux/Unix side.

yes, there is a few working windows clients that will make a drive letter from a sshfs/sftp server.  I seem to remember one worked ok and the other worked but had major issues to do with large files. Cant remember which was which.
"win-sshfs" is one of them

[free_electron]

it's not like we will be sending massive amounts of data over continuously. these fileset is a few hundred megs distributed between 5 users.
i found a couple of VPN routers from cisco for 80$ (used).  everyone in the group has 150 megabit cable connections (comcast)

i'm going to set up a vpn , hook up a Seagate or WD nas appliance with redundant disks and see how it works. this will be the cheapest solution for now. no servers needed, no hosting needed , i have a static ip address , no it guru needed and it is secure.

thanks for all the input. wow that stuff really is a can of worms. i thought media 2014 stuff like that would be easier. simply go to some cloud storage provider tell em i want 500 gig , here are the users, here are the privileges and mount it as a drive letter. that simply doesn;t seem to be there. maybe a hole in the market.

[Jeroen3]

Why don't you get a few synology's, put one on each site, ans set to the constantly synchronize?

[free_electron]

Why don't you get a few synology's, put one on each site, ans set to the constantly synchronize?

sync programs are flawed. most of em can't even handle files coming from different time zones ...
i create a file on the west coast. someone on the east coast edits it. Last time of edit is now 3 hours ahead of me. i alter it back on west coast. ... sync program fucks up considers mine outdated as me editing it rolls the clock back on last file edit time.

i've seen all kinds of weird stuff happen.  syncing programs work fine if you are in the same time zone. across the world ? trouble ... i've seen it happen. don't trust em anymore, not for that kind of work.

[nctnico]

thanks for all the input. wow that stuff really is a can of worms. i thought media 2014 stuff like that would be easier. simply go to some cloud storage provider tell em i want 500 gig , here are the users, here are the privileges and mount it as a drive letter. that simply doesn;t seem to be there. maybe a hole in the market.

I really suggest to go the remote desktop route. There a lots of providers who offer Windows terminal server out of the box. If you all have good internet connections this is by far the best & easiest solution for what you are trying to achieve.

[free_electron]

thanks for all the input. wow that stuff really is a can of worms. i thought media 2014 stuff like that would be easier. simply go to some cloud storage provider tell em i want 500 gig , here are the users, here are the privileges and mount it as a drive letter. that simply doesn;t seem to be there. maybe a hole in the market.

I really suggest to go the remote desktop route. There a lots of providers who offer Windows terminal server out of the box. If you all have good internet connections this is by far the best & easiest solution for what you are trying to achieve.

i don't think that would work. we'd have to install software on the server.. good luck running altium or solidworks over a remote terminal especially with setus requireing dual or triple head monitors.... like is said : this ain't a bunch of code slingers that only need vi ...

[nctnico]

Multiple monitors is not a problem. It is supported by remote desktop. You should give it a try before dismissing it on forehand because I'm really sure a terminal server is by far the easiest solution for you. The internet bandwidth you stated is more than enough to use Altium remotely. I have designed chips using Xwindows over ISDN (64kbit).

[free_electron]

Multiple monitors is not a problem. It is supported by remote desktop. You should give it a try before dismissing it on forehand because I'm really sure a terminal server is by far the easiest solution for you. The internet bandwidth you stated is more than enough to use Altium remotely. I have designed chips using Xwindows over ISDN (64kbit).

3d ? that'll get chopy i guess.  no need to complicate stuff or frustrate people with lagging response times. fileserver is all i need.

[nctnico]

3D is also supported. Using a graphic desktop remotely is 30 year old technology so all the problems have been ironed out long ago. By the time you have setup a fileserver and remote access over a VPN you can have the terminal server up and running 10 times over.

[Monkeh]

3D is also supported. Using a graphic desktop remotely is 30 year old technology so all the problems have been ironed out long ago. By the time you have setup a fileserver and remote access over a VPN you can have the terminal server up and running 10 times over.

All the problems except the substantial latency.

[nctnico]

Where did you get that idea from? Internet has been optimised for low latency a long time ago due to online gaming, video conferencing, etc.

[Monkeh]

Where did you get that idea from? Internet has been optimised for low latency a long time ago due to online gaming.

Uhm, I got it from reality, using both text shells and various types of remote desktop (including RDP) on machines both in my country and internationally. It simply is not the same as working locally. A LAN is another matter entirely (sub-ms latency compared to say, around 30ms to go to France, 100ms bare minimum to get to the US..)

[miguelvp]

If you are in the US you can try how quick NVidia's GRID virtual GPUs perform, this is not X windows, pretty much they encode the video in H.264 or something similar, within the GPU early enough that the latency is reduced greatly.

I haven't tried it yet because I want to make full use of my time evaluating it, I would recommend you download the manual within the page and read it before starting your 24 hour test drive.

http://test-drive-grid.com/

Yup, the cloud delivering on demand GPUs for your more demanding visualization applications.

But it's too pricey for now. Specially if you pair it up with a module that NVidia is trying monitor manufacturers to adopt that will decode the stream faster eating away even more latency.

Carmack when talking about the Oculus rift a year before he decided to join them, was collaborating to some extent with them and on his GDC interview (I bet available in YouTube or at least in game developers website) stated that you can send data faster from the US to Europe than from your PC to your eye due to all the processing time TVs take (Of course monitors don't have that latency, well maybe some DHCP processing).

Say you run a software program at 60Hz, you have 16.6ms between frames, 33.333ms at 30Hz. I can send packets in less than 7ms to/from a server if the server is well connected to Tier 1 backbones. So the perceived latency will be almost non measurable unless you are a professional gamer that can tell because they trained their muscle memory to react at high frame rates and a little latency will be noticeable because their input sequences won't work due to the lag.

But this is way better than your typical windows remote desktops.

Still I would give win-sshfp a try or if you use Linux/OSx I think they have native sshfp support as described in the link I posted earlier.

[Monkeh]

Say you run a software program at 60Hz, you have 16.6ms between frames, 33.333ms at 30Hz. I can send packets in less than 7ms to/from a server if the server is well connected to Tier 1 backbones.

It'll be far more measurable if you're on a realistic connection and aren't practically sat on top of the datacentre.

[nctnico]

Say you run a software program at 60Hz, you have 16.6ms between frames, 33.333ms at 30Hz. I can send packets in less than 7ms to/from a server if the server is well connected to Tier 1 backbones.

Proper remote desktop (IOW not screen graphics copying like VNC) doesn't work that way. What gets send over the line are higher level graphics commands. Put a rectangle here, draw a polygon there, etc.

[miguelvp]

Say you run a software program at 60Hz, you have 16.6ms between frames, 33.333ms at 30Hz. I can send packets in less than 7ms to/from a server if the server is well connected to Tier 1 backbones.

It'll be far more measurable if you're on a realistic connection and aren't practically sat on top of the datacentre.

Too bad their linked videos don't work, but check this lag just from your system to your eyes:

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/166-lcd-flat-panel-displays/1131464-input-lag-wars-post-your-input-lag-results-your-lcd-display-here-reference.html

LG 37LH4000 50 ms 50 ms (LH40)
Samsung 40 LED 6000 130 ms 50 ms (B6000)
Samsung 46 LED 6000 70 ms 50 ms (B6000)
Samsung LE40B750 110 ms 50 ms (B750)
Samsung LE40B650 100 ms 50 ms (B650)
Samsung 46 LED 7000 100 ms 60 ms (B7000)
Samsung 40 LED 7000 110 ms 70 ms (B7000)
Samsung LE46B650 100 ms 70 ms (B650)
Samsung 40 LED 8000 90 ms 60 ms (B8000)
Sharp LC52XS1 110 ms 80 ms (super expensive TV lol)
Sony KDL-32W5500 50 ms 50 ms (?? no us eq.)
Sony KDL-40ZX1* 120 ms 70 ms (another super expensive TV)

I have 60ms latency to speedzilla in France, but less than 10 to US servers

Still I can send data to France faster than to a TV hooked to my computer.