Public Cloud Storage Solution

[bluemoon]

Hi,

I am trying to build a cloud storage solution for a small company. People are using Mac and Windows in the company and few of them use both Mac and Windows. I tried to configure CIFS and AFP services and I have two problems what I am facing.

1) If I create two users in CIFS and when one of them map network drive in windows then first user can also see the folder and content of second user. I followed this link . Can anyone please help me to understand what I am missing.

2) Few company employees are using Mac and Windows so how can I configure one single folder for them so they can access/map their folder from both OS.

 

[cyberjock]

1. There is no "good" way to hide the shares themselves. As for user1 accessing the share of user2, that's simply a permissions problem you'll have to sort out on your own.

2. Simple, have them use CIFS/SMB. It is cross-compatible and works very well on both platforms. Apple is in the process of deprecating AFP anyway, so you're just making the move as Apple intended anyway.

Keep in mind that if you are planning to make the CIFS shares available directly to the internet (vice using a VPN or something) you're just *asking* to be pwned. Samba has vulnerabilities, and you can expect to be pwned the first time one of them gets public and you aren't able to immediately upgrade. We've seen several people do this, and its foolish, and it ends badly for them. ;)

 

[jgreco]

What you're describing isn't a "public cloud storage solution." What you've described is a local network fileserver. It's like saying you want to build an airplane but then talking about making a bus.

"Public" implies that it is accessible to the Internet. This isn't a good match for FreeNAS; about the only safe way to make some data accessible to users out on the Internet is via something like OwnCloud, which FreeNAS does support.

"Cloud" implies multi-tenancy, which you don't have if it is for a single company. I'd also say that "Cloud" usually implies outsourcing the problem to some other company and usually also not worrying yourself over the technical implementation (and perhaps competence of the implementation).

Please be careful about buzzwords. I know the cool thing is for everything these days to be called "cloud", but that just waters down an already watered-down term further. The idea of running your own server and managing it yourself is fairly anti-"cloud."

 

[bluemoon]

@cyberjock thanks for your prompt feedback. I don't know where to the set the permission either on user account or in share dataset. I tried to change the permission but after apply changes it doesn't make any effect and remain the same when you check dataset premission again.

@jgreco I was assuming that FreeNAS will be a good choice to start a storage solution both for public and local users. ownCloud is a good choice but ownCloud Enterprise Edition licenses/subscription for 50 user for $9000 or €7200 per year which is expensive for us because branding is also an issue and you can't remove ownCloud signature from GPL software. We will run our FreeNAS servers but in real cloud infrastructure. :)

 

[jgreco]

Running FreeNAS in "real cloud infrastructure" is potentially a showstopper problem; both from the virtualization aspect and also that your options for protecting the NAS instance from the Internet are constrained.

Exposing CIFS to the Internet would probably be catastrophic. If you dislike OwnCloud, then you still need to find some sort of engine to handle file access over the Internet.

 

[bluemoon]

Thank you for your valuable and fair suggestion. There is no reason to dislike ownCloud, budget and yearly subscription for limited users are our problem.

I never tested NAS in virtualization but I really like to run and test FreeNAS as a VPS in cloud.

 

[tvsjr]

Thank you for your valuable and fair suggestion. There is no reason to dislike ownCloud, budget and yearly subscription for limited users are our problem.

I never tested NAS in virtualization but I really like to run and test FreeNAS as a VPS in cloud.

FreeNAS on a VPS? Why? Most VPSs sit on underlying RAID arrays... part of the great thing about VPS/managed hosting is you don't have to worry about the underlying storage - that's part of what you're paying for.

Please, please tell me you aren't trying to expose CIFS and AFP over the public Internet. No one would do that... right?

 

[pirateghost]

Thank you for your valuable and fair suggestion. There is no reason to dislike ownCloud, budget and yearly subscription for limited users are our problem.

I never tested NAS in virtualization but I really like to run and test FreeNAS as a VPS in cloud.

I don't think you understand how freenas works or what a cloud service is.

 

[bluemoon]

@tvsjr I had same intention (expose CIFS AFP to public ) but after first two comments I doped my idea now looking for something else.

 

[cyberjock]

Yeah, FreeNAS is not for you (at least not what you are hoping to do).

 

[jgreco]

In a VPS environment, it isn't clear that adding complexity in the form of something like FreeNAS adds value; a more obvious configuration would seem to be just using FreeBSD or Linux to create a private NFS server using the VPS storage offering, and then having an Internet-facing server in the DMZ running something like OwnCloud, Pydio, or Tonido FileCloud. Done properly, the private NFS server gives you an isolated datastore that isn't totally at risk if there's a vulnerability in the Internet-facing service. Or you could do it all as a single server, much easier but also less safe.