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I need to setup a company dropbox-like service. We can't use dropbox because we need to share large files (10+gb) which causes a few problems...

1) Bandwidth costs would skyrock
2) Performance would suck, compared to running it internally
3) Each user would need a premium DP account
4) Rather run service interally

What are some popular dropbox-like / collaborative file-sharing software?

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    err what's wrong with ... a file server?
    – Zypher
    May 4, 2011 at 21:11
  • @Zypher Lack of desktop integration (drag&drop like DP), notification emails, user & group settings, resource conflict management, etc... Ftp is great, but its not the best solution, especially for non-technical users. May 4, 2011 at 21:15
  • I said 'File Server' your standard SMB/NFS/etc not FTP.
    – Zypher
    May 4, 2011 at 21:23
  • @Zypher Ah, didn't mean to say FTP. I'm looking for something with a client interface as similar to DB as possible. May 4, 2011 at 21:30

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I would highly suggest placing FreeNAS on a machine with several TB of disk space. The network I managed has two large FreeNAS machines; one is the active server that everybody uses, the other is a backup mirror that is synced daily using the built in rsync features.

FreeNAS will allow you to mount/access the devices several ways: Samba, NFS, SSH, FTP. It will also allow you do granular user privileges.

FreeNAS is also easy to setup and everything can be configured through it's web interface.

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  • We have a similar setup for our file storage. But we'd like it for users to be able to access/modify data using the same method internally/externally (and be a similar to DB as possible, esp. important for non-technical users). May 4, 2011 at 21:18
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    I am not sure how an Internet accessible Samba/NFS/UDP mount is any different than Dropbox. Can you share what the difference to you is? It would be trivial for a user to setup a mount on their Windows/Mac/Linux machine that pointed to a NAS outside of a firewall. It would also be easy for an admin to create a sync daemon to deploy that would sync a particular folder with the remote server. There are several pieces of free software that will do that.
    – Chad
    May 4, 2011 at 21:31
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    @John You may want to take a look at this thread...superuser.com/questions/128590/…
    – Chad
    May 4, 2011 at 21:36
  • @Chad Technically they're very similar, but their managed from different ends. Unlike samba, dropbox, users perform the share/access management (eg. any user can share a folder with a select group of people that they define). May 4, 2011 at 21:38
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    @John You are welcome. If I am not mistaking the FreeNAS web interface can be configured to allow any user to login and see particular items. It may be that you could allow users to login there and set the own sharing preferences. Just a thought. Good luck with your setup.
    – Chad
    May 5, 2011 at 11:55

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