How to share files remotely? (Danny, Pete?)

[JMann2380]

I am moving to a new office Oct 1st and hiring an employee.  Obviously to share files inside the office I can create a workgroup and share a folder on my computer or on a dedicated computer, er server bla bla blah.  But if I work out of the office a lot and need to share files with my employee back at the office how would I accomplish that?

Is there a gui interface I can put on my offsite server (that my website is hosted on) for us to be able to drag and drop files etc?  Or would having a server in the office that we can VPN into or something work?  I am lost here, so any help would be great!

-Josh

[Pete]

I am moving to a new office Oct 1st and hiring an employee.  Obviously to share files inside the office I can create a workgroup and share a folder on my computer or on a dedicated computer, er server bla bla blah.  But if I work out of the office a lot and need to share files with my employee back at the office how would I accomplish that?

Is there a gui interface I can put on my offsite server (that my website is hosted on) for us to be able to drag and drop files etc?  Or would having a server in the office that we can VPN into or something work?  I am lost here, so any help would be great!

-Josh

the easiest and cheapest solution would be some sort of SSH connection, which works sort of like FTP on steroids (and is very secure).  You could do straight FTP but passwords and data are transferred in open text so it is very non secure.

Other options like you mentioned are a server + VPN into the office network, a web site, or even Sharepoint (pretty over kill!)

[JMann2380]

Hmm, so what would you do if you were me?  Is there a way to utilize my Site5 server that all my websites are hosted on?  I know we could upload and download files from the server via ftp like you said but that is kind of a pain.  I am looking for a shared folder where we can create folders, drag and drop etc with a gui interface right inside windows explorer etc?  Possible?  Or is that moving more towards a server in the office and VPN'ing into it?

[Pete]

if it were me, I'd setup a server in the office (on business class dsl or cable) and put VPN on it and share the directories you want.  FTP isn't secure, and I'm guessing Site5 would be douches about any other solution on their servers anyways.

[JMann2380]

I have business class DSL so that isn't a problem.  Do I need anything powerful for a server or will a 2-3 year old desktop work?  Will I need Windows Server on it?

[Pete]

a desktop will work to get you going, as long as you know that if the hard disk dies, you lose all your stuff.  You will need Windows Server, or you can look into using OpenVPN too (great product and free)

[JMann2380]

hmm hmm hmm, can I throw a second hard drive in it and run raid whatever it is that has redundancy?  Or I guess I could just back it up to a thumb drive once a week, no biggie I guess.  The stuff we need to share doesn't take up a lot of space... word files, excel files, etc.

[Pete]

software raid 1 is relatively easy to setup and would save you from reloading the OS and re configuring anything should a drive die.  Caveat, they have to be the same size.  I have a pci express sata raid card I would give you a deal on if you were interested that does hardware raid.

[JMann2380]

Just talked to one of the kids at KSU I know and he said I can create a folder in the root directory of my Site5 server (a directory above public_html) and then map a network drive to it inside windows explorer?  He is gonna try it for me and make sure it works but that sounds promising!

[Pete]

you can do that using either FTP or by using WebDAV

[JMann2380]

oh I gotcha, but you said FTP isn't secure so that is the drawback!  I got it now.

[Pete]

FTP isn't secure, but you can also use webdav (a feature of http) with a secure website (https) and be much better off than using FTP.  Site5 would have to support it though and I don't recall if they do or not.

[JMann2380]

Not looking good... from one of the Site5 admins:

Also, due to security issues (I.e., the directory you upload/sync files/data to (or into), must be writable by the web server user) since mod_dav (being a module API) will run as the global web server user, the ownership of files will not be correct and would cause errors on PHP and CGI scripts on servers running the wrapper program, and would cause other insecurities.

Not to mention WebDav is vulnerable to denial of service attacks by a user submitting various payloads that would eat up all the system's memory (one example). As stated above, it requires specific and special configurations that Cpanel doesn't support by default, which would make this a real chore to keep up to date and maintain it. Sorry.

[Pete]

I figured as much.  I would setup a cheap file server at your office and do it that way.  FYI entry level Dell servers start as low as $299.

[DannyBoy]

What type of files are you going to be sharing?