Angus,
I've done quite a few projects extremely similar to this one. In many cases
what first appeared to be an expensive solution was actually cost effective
and justified after doing some back of the napkin math. Don't let the cost
scare you away from investigating this solution!
In each of these situations we had the following:
- Multiple Locations with varying user counts (1 User to 250+ Users)
- Limited IT Support Personnel at HQ and none at Remote Sites
- Users in multiple locations working on the same project
- Users working long hours to meet project deadlines
The solution that was used for almost all of these customers was a
combination of:
- Riverbed Steelhead Appliances
- Riverbed Steelhead Mobile
- NetApp Filers
Depending on the customer we either put the NetApp Filer at HQ or at a
Collocation facility. Many of the customers didn't have the infrastructure
to host their own Servers (Racks, Power, Cooling, etc) and since we are
centralizing all the data it made sense to put it somewhere with a higher
degree of availability. In a couple of cases we also deployed a 2nd NetApp
Filer at another location to handle replication and provide fault tolerance
in case of an outage.
The Riverbed Steelhead's enabled the entire project to work. One device
needs to be installed at each location or for very small sites the Steelhead
Mobile client can be used. In every case, we tested the performance and
users found that accessing files across the WAN was just as fast and in
*MANY* cases actually faster than opening them locally (In the cases where
it was faster across the WAN then the LAN the mitigating factor had to do
with disk speed. Coming across the WAN the data came from the faster NetApp
Filer and on the LAN it was either older SCSI disk or SATA). What made this
shine was the Steelhead Mobile component. This is where the actual Customer
really fell in love with the solution. By deploying the Steelhead Mobile
client on the end users PC/Laptop, the user could now work anywhere and have
access to the latest versions of the files.
The use cases for this are endless but for the Principle Architects /
Engineers they found this to be the most valuable because it gave them time
back. One customer really liked the idea of taking his laptop with him to
the customer site, make changes on the fly, coordinate with his team back in
the office on those changes and have a new set of prints made off his laptop
at the local Kinko's. Before he would make the changes on the actually
drawings, bring them back to the office to make changes on the computer,
have a new set of prints made and go back out to the customer. Since the
customers were usually far away (many hours by car or air travel) this meant
he could spend more time with his family instead of working. In most of the
companies I implemented this for it was the Principle Architects / Engineers
who this impacted the most and they were the ones who ultimately
justified/approved the purchases.
Pros:
- High Availability
- Centralized Data
- Reduces Backup Headaches
- Hourly snapshots to revert changes
- Simple to Replicate
- Improved performance for ALL data accessed not just for specific CAD file
access (I-Mail, Web, File Sharing, etc.)
- Improved business response time to customers
- Gave business users flexibility in how and where they worked
Cons:
- Expensive vs traditional IT methods
I've had great success doing this for many small, medium and large shops.
Let me know if you have any questions,
- David
----- Original Message -----
From: "Angus Scott-Fleming" <[email protected]>
To: "NT System Admin Issues" <[email protected]>
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 4:01 PM
Subject: Multiple engineering offices and sharing large files
Anybody here running a small-business network with multiple geographically-
remote (e.g. Arizona, Wyoming, Maine, Florida) offices for which the main
office and the remote office both need access to the same large files (e.g.
CAD
drawings, large scientific datasets, GIS data)? The files are way too large
to
process over a VPN as Internet latency would clobber processing performance,
but the home office needs to have the same data that the field office has so
they can both work on the data, if not simultaneously, then on the same day.
I
don't think a TS setup would be reliable enough for this situation as the
main=office's Internet connectivity isn't the most reliable.
Servers will probably be Windows SBS servers as I think SBS can handle the
number of users they have for Exchange (up to 250 users, right?).
I'm thinking some sort of 'rsync'. but I'd be interested in how others have
dealt with this.
Related to this, how do you deal with email in a situation like this? I'm
showing my ignrance about Exchange here, but is it possible to have a
primary
Exchange server in the main office and have each satellite office with its
own
mail server that draws from the main office but stores mail locally so local
users can continue to have access to their email when the main office's
lines
are down, or is this something that the SBS-version of Exchange can't
handle?
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~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
