Runnings Dropbox / Google Drive on a server

[psherman]

Does anyone have any experience running Dropbox or Google Drive on a server and having it synched when it is logged out from the user?

[davidacland]

I've tested something similar in the past with pretty bad results. Could you expand on what you're trying to do?

Is it to sync data on a file server, or something else?

[psherman]

We would like to remove all instances of Drive and Dropbox off our client machines but can't really do so until we offer a solution that works for our Design / Editorial staff to collaborate with freelancers / external sources that can't access our network for shares. Some of these documents are 15-50gb of High res-images and attaching them in the browser isn't entirely functional. I thought that running Dropbox / Drive / as a service on either a Windows VM server or one of my Mac Mini Casper servers where internal staff could drop files and they would automatically sync to a cloud account where an admin would manage access would be a good solution. The only bottleneck is getting either type of service to sync when it is logged out of the account that syncs.

Open to any other ideas. FTP hasn't worked for us very well and other groups have tried a few other corporate services like Accellion / Box but have struggled with that too.

[davidacland]

The last time I tested something like this was with box.com. It got really confused with the different permissions on the folders and files and kept failing to sync.

This was a few years ago so could be worth testing again.

[jpilege]

My company has looked into Code42's solution for SharePlan.

This solution offers a way to send files to clients through a link that you can email them. The link can be encrypted with a separate password that you can provide them. The way that I've seen it done is you move a file to a folder on the computer and you can send a link to the client. The client then opens the link to download the file. There isn't an upload limit so the 50GB high res images will be ok.

They have good auditing tools to track where files go. They are also ISO-27001 certified. I don't know much more, but this may be a good solution for you.