- Jul 26, 2016
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Hi all,
I've been researching the internet for a couple weeks now trying to get my head around building a small office server. I'm looking to build a file server for a community center where there are 2 full time staff & 2 part time staff.
At the moment the staff members just use dropbox to share files but as this grows they find that for the part time staff thier dropbox accounts are filling up too much and thier laptops don't have enough space for the files. They use a dropbox Pro account (1TB) but thier laptops are only 500GB each so can't hold all the files. Also it's less secure having all the files synced on the laptops incase they were ever stolen...
So i'm building a server and going to use Windows Server 2012 R2. The files will be kept on that and i'm hoping to set up user profiles so that anyone who comes down can use any of the 4 computers there and access the files on the server. And if they are down using a laptop they can just plug into the server switch via network cable.
However 1 or 2 of them do work from home sometimes and need to access the files from thier personal computers at home.
Is there any software/system that would let them access the files from thier computers, edit and work away on files and then sync them to the file server which is in the community center? So the files are only ever kept on the server which is safe in the center, and they don't have all the files saved on thier own laptops too (maybe they could save just a few documents the might need the most often)
I know Windows Server 2012 can let users remote desktop in and see files and work away, but I was hoping there would be an easier solution which doesn't make the server work as hard as the remote desktop would. They would also need to be able to use thier smartphones every so often to access the server and reference files/documents..
It needs to be a solution where the staff could either log into a website to see and edit the files or be able to map the server to thier computers and see the files, but not have to download the 1TB of data which is on the server... A solution that just downloads the file they are working on then syncs the changes...
Sorry it's a long winded question, but hope someone can help!!
Thanks!
I've been researching the internet for a couple weeks now trying to get my head around building a small office server. I'm looking to build a file server for a community center where there are 2 full time staff & 2 part time staff.
At the moment the staff members just use dropbox to share files but as this grows they find that for the part time staff thier dropbox accounts are filling up too much and thier laptops don't have enough space for the files. They use a dropbox Pro account (1TB) but thier laptops are only 500GB each so can't hold all the files. Also it's less secure having all the files synced on the laptops incase they were ever stolen...
So i'm building a server and going to use Windows Server 2012 R2. The files will be kept on that and i'm hoping to set up user profiles so that anyone who comes down can use any of the 4 computers there and access the files on the server. And if they are down using a laptop they can just plug into the server switch via network cable.
However 1 or 2 of them do work from home sometimes and need to access the files from thier personal computers at home.
Is there any software/system that would let them access the files from thier computers, edit and work away on files and then sync them to the file server which is in the community center? So the files are only ever kept on the server which is safe in the center, and they don't have all the files saved on thier own laptops too (maybe they could save just a few documents the might need the most often)
I know Windows Server 2012 can let users remote desktop in and see files and work away, but I was hoping there would be an easier solution which doesn't make the server work as hard as the remote desktop would. They would also need to be able to use thier smartphones every so often to access the server and reference files/documents..
It needs to be a solution where the staff could either log into a website to see and edit the files or be able to map the server to thier computers and see the files, but not have to download the 1TB of data which is on the server... A solution that just downloads the file they are working on then syncs the changes...
Sorry it's a long winded question, but hope someone can help!!
Thanks!
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