Hi everyone! I'm reaching out because I have a lot of questions about Azure and cloud services. My company operates in several Asia locations, including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and China. Right now, we only have one on-premise server in HK that's used for file storage and Active Directory, but it's not set up as efficiently as it could be. I'm considering moving our services to the cloud, but honestly, I'm feeling overwhelmed by all the options available. We're using a Business Standard license for Office 365, and I've thought about implementing Azure Active Directory Domain Services (AAD DS). However, I've noticed that the standard option doesn't support replicas, which worries me since the enterprise version is much pricier. I'm also looking into Azure Files, but some users have expressed concerns about latency, which could be an issue for our design and construction work, especially since we handle a lot of DWG files. Would it be better to stick with a VM for our file server and upgrade to Business Premium while skipping the AD server altogether? What kind of storage should I consider for our file server? I'm looking for solutions that won't break the bank, so any insights or ideas would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
2 Answers
Have you thought about whether you really need to rely solely on a classic file share, or is it possible for your team to use SharePoint Online? It might be worth discussing this with your service providers as well. Also, how much storage are you currently using and can you share the specs of your existing file server VMs?
If you plan on migrating your traditional VM file server, keep in mind that you might still need an Active Directory. I assume users connect to the network via a VPN to access the file share, right? Maintaining an Azure VM with AD and file sharing securely can be tricky. I think a cloud-only approach without VMs could actually work better, even though there are challenges, particularly with file shares and printing. Plus, with SharePoint, you’d gain benefits like co-authoring and better security, which you wouldn't get with a standard file share.
I'm not migrating my AD because the current permissions are a mess, and I plan to redo those. Plus, we have a Fortinet setup for the VPN. I hear SharePoint might not handle DWG files well. Is it really a good option for file storage?
We’re just using a basic file server setup right now with about 5TB of storage. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done for us.