Dropbox issues with syncing and in house storage with VPN

By ACTIONpack
in Smart Home, Network & Security

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Grand Master

ACTIONpack

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I work for a small company that uses Dropbox Pro that 7 people access at once. We are at the point that the company will grow from 7 to 30 in the next year or two. The issue I have is that files are not syncing or it hangs and would have to restart the program to work again. It's not a really issues with small files but when I work with my graphic design stuff like InDesign and someone else is opening up an InDesign and make changes. I go back and the information is not the same because it has not been updated on my side. Would it be the best option is to get an internal hard drive for the company and use a VPN if they need to grab anything to that hard drive outside the company and use Dropbox to backup the hard drive?

 

What should I do and what hardware should I get? The company does have a network so it would be easy to set up one at the office.

Grand Master

+BudMan MVC

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and how big are these files... So all your users are local to the office and your using dropbox as your shared drive?  Or are they users remote to the office?  You mention vpn - so that kind of tells me they are remote..

 

How big is your pipe at the office, how big is the pipe the users have - and how big are the files??  Dropbox only sends changes to files..

 

So if user A updates file A, even if the file was 3GB, if he only changed it by 100KB then that is all that would have to get sent..  But sure if he has not uploaded his changes to the file yet, and you look at your copy it will not have the changes.  your going to have the same sort of problems even if the files are local on some disk in the office..  And you wouldn't be just uploading or downloading the changes to the file.. You would have to move the whole file every time... So if the file is 3GB and user A made even 10KB worth of changes to it, he would have to upload the whole 3GB back to the office... Not a big issue if your local on a fast lan.

 

But if he is on lowend inet connection going to be major problem..

 

You could use say something like rsync that can do block level changes to file for sync.. But this gets complicated very quickly if your users are not actual IT people, which from past experience with graphic designers is quite often the case... They can do some amazing things in the drawing and design applications, but when it comes down to network protocols might as well be any other typical user..

Grand Master

ACTIONpack

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  On 17/12/2015 at 21:49, BudMan said:

and how big are these files... So all your users are local to the office and your using dropbox as your shared drive?  Or are they users remote to the office?  You mention vpn - so that kind of tells me they are remote..

 

How big is your pipe at the office, how big is the pipe the users have - and how big are the files??  Dropbox only sends changes to files..

 

So if user A updates file A, even if the file was 3GB, if he only changed it by 100KB then that is all that would have to get sent..  But sure if he has not uploaded his changes to the file yet, and you look at your copy it will not have the changes.  your going to have the same sort of problems even if the files are local on some disk in the office..  And you wouldn't be just uploading or downloading the changes to the file.. You would have to move the whole file every time... So if the file is 3GB and user A made even 10KB worth of changes to it, he would have to upload the whole 3GB back to the office... Not a big issue if your local on a fast lan.

 

But if he is on lowend inet connection going to be major problem..

 

You could use say something like rsync that can do block level changes to file for sync.. But this gets complicated very quickly if your users are not actual IT people, which from past experience with graphic designers is quite often the case... They can do some amazing things in the drawing and design applications, but when it comes down to network protocols might as well be any other typical user..

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All but one will be working out of the office. A few other people will be too but it's not an issue because they will be working with docs and we don't have issues with that. It's more of me the only graphic designer and another co worker that works in Italy will grab my InDesign files at times. Files can be from 3MB to 10MB InDesign files.

 

Office bandwidth is 100MB download and 10MB upload. Comcast Business.

Grand Master

+BudMan MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

To be honest I would prob just look into what is going on with your files.. Setting up a vpn and maintain of a local store of the files just for everyone to remotely access them and then having to manually move files back and forth vs something as no brainer as dropbox..

 

Have you contacted dropbox about your issue?  They should be able to help you files that are not syncing, or taking long time to sync, etc. etc.

Grand Master

+BudMan MVC

Posted
  • MVC
Posted

yeah prob want you to move to business.. Is the pro even designed to be used like your using it?  Your prob just using 1 account, even though you have 7 users?  So 10$ a month total..  If you were paying for all 7 then the cost difference between pro and business in not that much.

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