i found vpn but what hosting provider supports that. i tried godaddy and others and its njet ..That I can't help you with off the top of my head. I don't use external providers for anything other than domain hosting. You'd have to do your own homework there. I run all my own servers.
i don't want to run my own server. it's gotta sit a some hosting provider, be backed up , duplicated and have 99.999% uptime ..
I used this a long time in the past and it worked well:
http://www.netdrive.net/ (http://www.netdrive.net/)
Also just found this too.
https://www.eldos.com/sftp-net-drive/download-release.php (https://www.eldos.com/sftp-net-drive/download-release.php)
growl... why are such simple things so damn hard.You are going the wrong way with this. What you need is a version control system. When working with multiple people on the same project you can't simply share files. You need a way to tell who changed what, merge files and go back to previous versions etc.
i am trying to get a group of people ,spread over different locations, work together just like as they were sitting in the same building / office and have a local fileserver. VPN tunnels seem to be made for that. but i got no clue if this can be set up at a provider ... i know amazon EC2 allows VPS virtual private servers where you can deploy a server image yadda yadda.. i don't want to do that for various reasons :
Version control system is useless. They are binary files... Not sourcecode. Cad drawings, mechanical ,electrical . Each person has a task assigned and owns filesets. I deliver the pcb files, and a step file. Our mechanical dude runs solidworks . We exhange drawings. It's not sourcecode. There are no two person working on the same file. Ownership is cut and dried.growl... why are such simple things so damn hard.You are going the wrong way with this. What you need is a version control system. When working with multiple people on the same project you can't simply share files. You need a way to tell who changed what, merge files and go back to previous versions etc.
i am trying to get a group of people ,spread over different locations, work together just like as they were sitting in the same building / office and have a local fileserver. VPN tunnels seem to be made for that. but i got no clue if this can be set up at a provider ... i know amazon EC2 allows VPS virtual private servers where you can deploy a server image yadda yadda.. i don't want to do that for various reasons :
Indeed. Version control systems also work perfectly for binary data. Deleted something from a drawing? Check-out the previous version and copy&paste.maybe i'm retarded when it comes to these things but explain me how a version control system would work betwween for example 2 schematic files. i can't see how it can tell me: you removed R3 and added C5 . not unless it understands the internal structure of those schematic files.
Indeed. Version control systems also work perfectly for binary data. Deleted something from a drawing? Check-out the previous version and copy&paste.maybe i'm retarded when it comes to these things but explain me how a version control system would work betwween for example 2 schematic files. i can't see how it can tell me: you removed R3 and added C5 . not unless it understands the internal structure of those schematic files.
all it can do is tell you they were different. it cannot tell you what was changed.
unless it can do the above ( tell me what parts were removed and or altered) it is useless for that kind of work.
It can't give you change information.maybe my understanding of a version control tool is wrong , but : if it can't do that then it is useless.
This is where you are wrong. It can still take the place of a distributed filesystem/shared drive, but will be much easier to set up, more reliable, and have better performance. And, you get versioning for free.explain this with an example. i have trouble grasping this concept. ( see above. )
here is my experience with this kind of stuff : we tried using google driv.e that supposedly has versioing built in. good effing luck. you got no cluse waht version you are opening, it messs up syncing and keeps converting my .pcbdoc or schdoc files to .doc extention when downloading them beacuse bloody google drive things any file ending in doc is a word document... they can't even properly parse file extensions. all they look for is the last 3 characters.. they should parse for the characters after the last dot in the filename. So i am very reluctant to go that path again ... too much hassleThat was the wrong tool, too bad you had a bad experience, but forget it. Look at git instead, or maybe someone else has a different suggestion.
anyway, we are deviating. the idea is to run SMB over the internet (wan) through vpn. i don't want intermediate storage, syncing or any other crap. it has to be transparent for the programs we use. so it needs to be visible as a filesystem. Hit save and the master copy on the fileserver is updated in realtime.I know that's the idea, unfortunately it's a bad idea. It seems attractive, but it will never be transparent, because the Internet is in the way. Take a step back and look at the real problem, which is distributed project development. This is not exactly new. The best solution that's available now is a version control system.
This is why you enter a remark during the commit. This would say: removed R3, added C5 to improve stability yadda yadda.Indeed. Version control systems also work perfectly for binary data. Deleted something from a drawing? Check-out the previous version and copy&paste.maybe i'm retarded when it comes to these things but explain me how a version control system would work betwween for example 2 schematic files. i can't see how it can tell me: you removed R3 and added C5 . not unless it understands the internal structure of those schematic files.
anyway, we are deviating. the idea is to run SMB over the internet (wan) through vpn. i don't want intermediate storage, syncing or any other crap. it has to be transparent for the programs we use. so it needs to be visible as a filesystem. Hit save and the master copy on the fileserver is updated in realtime.Holy fucking shit. I seriously laughed out loud. :-DD
It can't give you change information.maybe my understanding of a version control tool is wrong , but : if it can't do that then it is useless.
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.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".
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.
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 ...
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.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?
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.
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Where did you get that idea from? Internet has been optimised for low latency a long time ago due to online gaming.
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.
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.
Too bad their linked videos don't work, but check this lag just from your system to your eyes: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.
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.
But 3D CAD is not streaming video. A 3D drawing consists of vertices and textures. Send those over once and the only thing that needs to be send is the position and rotation of te viewport for the local GPU to render the image.Plus materials, shaders, UV coordinates, light and light types etc.
here is what i want :
- a fileserver that is stored somewhere. don't care where.
- connected to the internet with a static IP address
- password protectected with user accounts.
- automatic backup with daily and weekly snapshots.
- manageable ( meaning i can set up folders create users and assign permissions to folders for users. )
- mountable as a drive . No 3rd part software , no ftp , no synctoys. on windows : my computer -> map network drive -> done. from anywhere in the world <-tricky bit
There is a NAS box in a building somewhere in the world. The people working in that building are on the same LAN so there is no problem. They can mount shares as drive letters.
This building has an internet connection using a DYNAMIC ip
WITHOUT losing access to my local lan ( so VPN is ruled out as that blocks )
the problem with VPN is that the vpn server does not run on the NAS box. VPN is fine if you have a windows based server. we don't want a server. we want a hands-off NAS. A box that sits in a corner and we don't have to mess with. create a share, throw in some folders, add some users , set permissions and off we go. no other management needed. set up two of them and let them replicate amongst each other for backup
I can't find any complete guide with a solution. it's all bits and pieces. this is frustrating. anno 2015 this is still so difficult to do ? every computer has a unique mac address. why can't i simply tell the operating system : that mac address there has a samba session running. connect. then i type my username and password and i'm done. traffic is encrypted and the remote machine behaves just like it sits right next to me. i'm having a hard time to understand why this is not possible ? i dont need to see the entire network in the remote building. i only need to see 1 thing : the shared drive.
the problem with VPN is that the vpn server does not run on the NAS box. VPN is fine if you have a windows based server. we don't want a server. we want a hands-off NAS. A box that sits in a corner and we don't have to mess with. create a share, throw in some folders, add some users , set permissions and off we go. no other management needed. set up two of them and let them replicate amongst each other for backupSo get two boxes. One box is your nas. The other is a small box that does all the useful stuff that you need but is not provided by the NAS box.
set up two of them and let them replicate amongst each other for backupIncidentally, replication is not the same as backup. Replication also replicates user errors such as accidentally-wipe-this-entire-project. But maybe you already have taken that into account and your chosen NAS has some decent backup functionality.
right. time to revisit this. we got our own building now so we need a solution.Use Dropbox. It is a local synchronised folder on your computer. Does replication, backups and version control.
version control system : yes we will use that , but it does not solve the root problem.
NO ! We do NOT want file replication ! That is the root problem we want to solve. The files are 'live' .right. time to revisit this. we got our own building now so we need a solution.Use Dropbox. It is a local synchronised folder on your computer. Does replication, backups and version control.
version control system : yes we will use that , but it does not solve the root problem.
I can't find any complete guide with a solution. it's all bits and pieces. this is frustrating. anno 2015 this is still so difficult to do ? every computer has a unique mac address. why can't i simply tell the operating system : that mac address there has a samba session running. connect.
Ok , so i looks like i need another look at vpn
People suggest routers with vpn on board. Model numbers ? I found a bunch but they are invariably machines that were reflashed an openwrt installed. Thats a no-go. I want something from a 'real' manufacturer that has not been altered by 3rd party.
Suppose we find sich a beast, and we get a static ip. What client software do we need ? And how tonset it so it does not clash with the users local lan ?
I have a laptop from work. I connect from home use Juno Pulse (juniper networks). Works like a charm, but i cant see anything on my local lan. That is what i want to avoid. Other problem is that , once on vpn, the web access goes through the vpn. I dont want the remote users traffic to bounce through the corporate gateway.
So how is this solved ? Theres got to be a quick setup guide somewhere for such things. I just cant find it.
Dropbox does that. Try it!NO ! We do NOT want file replication ! That is the root problem we want to solve. The files are 'live' .right. time to revisit this. we got our own building now so we need a solution.Use Dropbox. It is a local synchronised folder on your computer. Does replication, backups and version control.
version control system : yes we will use that , but it does not solve the root problem.
Think of it this way : this is a database. You dont make a copy of the data in the database, you connect to it. This is what we want to do with a filesystem.
We dont need version control, we dont want replication. The files sit there, open in read mode. If a file updates i see it live. Just like if data in a database changes i see that live in the query.
I can't find any complete guide with a solution. it's all bits and pieces. this is frustrating. anno 2015 this is still so difficult to do ? every computer has a unique mac address.No, MAC addresses are not unique! When a manufacturer gets to the end of their assigned range they start from 0 in their range (again). Usually not a problem because the chance two devices with the same MAC address ending up in the same network segment is very small. But it does happen.
Using a VPN that way needs careful routing of IP traffic and configuring a smart DNS server on the other side of the VPN to tell where certain network traffic should go. Windows is pretty poor at routing IP so using a VPN is more or less like unplugging the local network.Ok , so i looks like i need another look at vpn
People suggest routers with vpn on board. Model numbers ? I found a bunch but they are invariably machines that were reflashed an openwrt installed. Thats a no-go. I want something from a 'real' manufacturer that has not been altered by 3rd party.
Suppose we find sich a beast, and we get a static ip. What client software do we need ? And how tonset it so it does not clash with the users local lan ?
I have a laptop from work. I connect from home use Juno Pulse (juniper networks). Works like a charm, but i cant see anything on my local lan. That is what i want to avoid. Other problem is that , once on vpn, the web access goes through the vpn. I dont want the remote users traffic to bounce through the corporate gateway.
So how is this solved ? Theres got to be a quick setup guide somewhere for such things. I just cant find it.
Your Juniper stuff is misconfigured.
I am not an expert on them, and have only used the client side (they provide the software, it's no problem, just beware you CANNOT download it without an account, so you'll have to distribute copies to users yourself), but I am presently connected to a Sonicwall provided VPN. My web-bound traffic does not pass through it, I am fully able to access all my local shares, and I have full access to the remote network as well.
Using a VPN that way needs careful routing of IP traffic and configuring a smart DNS server on the other side of the VPN to tell where certain network traffic should go. Windows is pretty poor at routing IP so using a VPN is more or less like unplugging the local network.
Install this and be done with it you can use webdav to connect to it and that is built into windows just map a drive and put in the http address. Just needs a basic lamp stack (linux webserver) to work nearly any webhosting provider can run owncloud.
https://owncloud.com/
And there is a open version too so you can be cheap if you need to.
And it has a nice easy gui so you can download files in a pinch if needed as if it was dropbox/googledrive etc.
See the windows gui section:
https://doc.owncloud.org/server/6.0/user_manual/files/files.html
and the permissions for sharing between users.
https://forum.owncloud.org/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=10961
https://doc.owncloud.org/server/6.0/admin_manual/sharing_api/index.html
we dont have servers. we dont have linux we dont want any of that. what we have is a NAS. plain and simple.
so far i understand this can be done using a VPN router. my experience with VPN is that, once the tunnel goes open you lose access to the local stuff. so if people open a web browser at home, that goes through the tunnel , and uses the internet access of the remote site. we don't want that. we also don't want that people can't use their local printer. So far i understood this can be solved by making sure the individual clusters of networks have their own subnet. that is impractical. everyone uses 192.168.1.x at home , asking every of our users to alter that is intrusive. so we don't want that.
How about ExpanDrive:
http://www.expandrive.com/ (http://www.expandrive.com/)
It supports a lot of cloud services that you don't need (can just be ignored), but one thing it can do is connect to a server via SSH (SFTP) and map it to a drive letter. I just tried it out on my Win 7 VM at work and was able to map my home directory on my Linux server at home to a "Z:" drive within about 10 seconds.
I'm sure your NAS box supports SSH/SFTP connections? Just forward the necessary port (22 if default, or pick a custom one if you want) to the NAS and you're done.
OpenVPN also works on M$
/Bingo
*cough*This sounds exactly like what Fuse is doing under Linux: Map a remote disk on a local mountpoint. All in all it sounds like it is worth a try for FE.How about ExpanDrive:
http://www.expandrive.com/ (http://www.expandrive.com/)
It supports a lot of cloud services that you don't need (can just be ignored), but one thing it can do is connect to a server via SSH (SFTP) and map it to a drive letter. I just tried it out on my Win 7 VM at work and was able to map my home directory on my Linux server at home to a "Z:" drive within about 10 seconds.
I'm sure your NAS box supports SSH/SFTP connections? Just forward the necessary port (22 if default, or pick a custom one if you want) to the NAS and you're done.
Download the free 7 day trial, see if it works for you. If not, it would help to know why, because it seems like it offers exactly what you're looking for.
Aha, i misunderstood. So only the 'corporate network' needs a weird subnet. I can live with that.There are different flavours of VPN, with different protocols, suited to different scenarios.
Some of you probably are wondering why i am so 'difficult' : i don't want our users to have to make any changes to their systems. The reason : because they will ask how, and i am not an IT guru. I am not willing to offer that support.I am not sure about difficult but you are making a meal of it, in my opinion. What you are trying to achieve is specific, more than it is difficult.
So it really has to be made as simple as possible, both for the user and for me (corporate).
In the future , as we grow, we may seek a dedicated IT solution. Right now, we cant afford even a person that spends 50% of his time on that.50%, LOL. I provide '3rd line' server and network assistance to over a dozen small businesses. My contract cost is based on having to assist for one hour, per server, per month. Which still leaves me enough time to derive a decent income from project work. To be fair, keeping the intervention time down is based on getting the server configuration 'right' and avoiding unnecessary or unreliable features.
We can afford to buy 2K hardware and software to solve this problem 'temporarily' (read : until we are larger and can implement our own server and dedicated IT guru. )You should not need to spend 2K. You do need a bit of expertise.
Another solution could be to go to weirsdstuff warehouse and buy a couple of used servers.Stop thinking of servers as being huge, multi-processor, multi-terrabyte, do it all boxes. You are not trying to build a data-centre like Google.
So there : that's the 'why' of what i am trying to do.Say you get it working. Have you ever experienced using a mapped drive across a VPN? At the protocol level, file sharing is nothing like a database transaction. I could tell you why that is but this post is long enough.
ftp://myserver.homeip.net:88