Hi

Our company is looking for an internet (cloud, if you must) storage and sharing solution that works in China. Following requirements need to be met:

* accessible from the internet
* fast and reliable access inside China
* can store several TB of data
* must provide storage (where staff can get their required company data)
* must provide sharing option (where users can also upload large files they want to share with certain colleagues)
* must cost less than $10,000
* must be secure
* must auto-backup and be reasonably protected against data loss

We do have (reasonably managed) servers in-house. The unit could therefore be installed on the premises. Alternatively it could be a managed solution with a service provider.

Any ideas?

en fisk

what about an extranet?

I'm not sure what that means?

Try a Network Attached Storage (NAS) solution first. HOPEFULLY, you have a VPN enabled network device (aka router) in front of your intranet (intra meaning visible only from INSIDE your company, versus extranet, which means basically visible to the entire internet).

With a VPN and an NAS, your clients/users can use the VPN to tunnel in to your intranet, to access the NAS.

You can also put the NAS outside your intranet, so all can see - but then you have unsecured storage for anyone to hack. In theory, any evil person or organization could then use your NAS to store/host porn, gambling, and other things deemed public nuisances - leading to seriously NOT GOOD relations with the Public Security.

in house cloud severs are not that great, the speeds will be crazy slow. unless you have a t1 fiber setup.

check out hk cloud servers or taiwan.

my old company had extranet. we could log in from outside.we had secure log ins. so not visible to the entire world, and you could only log in to your areas you had permisions to see.

Hmm, yes. We're a research institute so our link may be relatively fast, but I'm not sure. I should investigate. Any experience with HK cloud servers?

SHORT ANSWER
Go talk to China Telecom/Mobile/Unicom about Data Center hosting of your dedicated cloud storage - regrets - I don't have direct contact info, but ask around. This is your best long-term solution - although it incurs a recurring cost in addition to training and initial setup costs. They might (highly doubtful) even know more about this stuff than me...

LONG VERBOSE ANSWERS FILLED WITH TECHNO-JARGON AND USELESS TRIVIA
T1 is predominantly copper at roughly 1.5 mbps dedicated. T1 Fiber is archaic and hasn't been around for decades. Most fiber runs at 100mbps to 1+gbps (1,000 x 1mbps) speeds - example - FTTH (fiber to the home). Current ADSL can achieve 8-10mbps in a shared environment (up to 250+ commercial/residential users - all watching IPTV/PPTV/youku, etc). My wife and kid BOTH watch their own respective videos on their own respective computers at the same time - making it difficult for me to shop on taboo and write idiotic verbose, nonsensical responses on gokm.

Bopping out to HK/TWN may require a dedicated line (ultra expensive - which obliterates your < USD 10k capital requirement. I'm assuming USD 10k is a capital (one time) expense, NOT a recurring (annual) expense. If not a dedicated line - you will DEFINITELY need to spring for a VPN - which seriously ramps up and down on speed depending on time of day (internet and IPTV/PPTV/youku/tudou etc traffic patterns) - however it allows you to host off-shore - but makes access from Kunming frequently hellish and frustrating, not to mention intermittent, temporal, inconsistent connectivity issues thanks to firewalls, blackholes (network term), and solar flares (yes, solar flares affect the internet).

You specified multiple TB - so you're in the realm of RAID systems (high availability, failure resistant, allegedly inexpensive - but that's a matter of perspective). A raw 4TB drive runs about CNY 1k these days - RAID 5 requires 3-5 of these drives (5 being better than 3 for various technical and operational reasons). Cloud storage basically means a certain amount of dedicated storage from a RAID farm, with dedicated or share IP addresses/domain names pointing at that storage carve-out....much easier just to say cloud...but it's a marketing word used to describe old tech, used in a novel, innovative, and cost-effective new way...so I go with it...

Your best bet is to go talk to a data center operator - China Telecom, Unicom, China Mobile, and ISPs, such as Great Wall, AIPU, etc. as noted above in SHORT ANSWER. This is also the optimal solution if no-one in your team knows doodle about network storage, cloud storage (same thing), routing, remote access, AAAs (authentication, authorization, and accounting), etc etc etc on high tech internet stuff (technical catch-all word). I haven't touched this stuff for over 10 years, so I'm really rusty and you can't afford to pay me anyway - my consulting fees will similarly obliterate your budget.

If your team isn't highly mobile - a local data center operator is best - traffic just moves so much faster when you operate within the borders of China...as per SHORT ANSWER.

Opting for online storage (along with a domain name, etc) comes with recurring costs - but they (allegedly) will also take care of maintenance and operations (daily, weekly, monthly backups) and network security (admin & operations). Anyone in China breaches your system - they'll have to deal with the government - and the government in China is REALLY REALLY REALLY good at nailing domestic cyber criminals.

If your team/clients need international access - then it depends on who are the traffic hogs/primary/frequent/VIP users and you should POP (Point of Presence) accordingly.

Not useless trivia at all, Laotou. And I'm very happy that you're willing to share your knowledge with us. We're not a for-profit so our budget is extremely limited.

Our team is highly mobile, mostly inside China's borders, but we've also just opened an office in Kyrgyzstan who would also need high-speed access to those files (by high-speed I mean 1 MB/s, that would do).

If we hosted it at say China Telecom, would the data be properly accessible from beyond the Wall?

And if we went with a NAS server, accessible through a VPN, is there any fool-friendly software that can run on it so people find it relatively easy to download and upload their data? I mean not having to set up rsync on their QQ-riddled Windows machines :)

@bluppfisk
Recently, several major vendors (western digital, samsung (whom I hate), la cie, etc have released consumerized versions of NAS. They're almost plug and play - with sufficient instructions to attach the device (via ethernet) either inside or outside your router. You'll need a fixed IP address and or domain name to access it - which is a somewhat non-trivial expense. Domain names outside China can be purchased for super cheap - less than USD 100 for a 3-5 year contract (roughly USD 10 per month - some as low as USD 12 a year if you can find the "special introductory rates").

Kyrgyzstan is an unknown to me - it's not on my list of VPN access points - so it's hit or miss whether you can connect - but I suspect their ISP management isn't terribly sophisticated - which has it's benefits and drawbacks, however if your Kstan staff can connect to the internet (example google.com and gmail.com) - you should have no problems connecting either directly or via reputable VPNs.

pcmag.com recently (June? 2014) did a review on consumer NAS devices. Dell, Lenovo, etc all have NAS devices and NAS RAID devices depending on your requirements and specs. Your capital (one-time) expense can be sub-USD 10k - although you'll need to spend some time installing and testing from all your client sites for accessibility, reliability, speed, etc...

Basically these are online storage. If you want version control - you'll have to explore painful server-based software such as microsoft sharepoint, or configuration/document management software such as...um...well - I forgot their names...getting senile - but that stuff's ludicrously complicated time-consuming task, if you don't have a full-time IT slave.

I used to use googledocs for file-sharing and version control/management - but google has been mucking around with it AND it now requires a VPN to access from within China...and it was kinda slow and painful to use...because of ISP speeds and traffic.

Hope that helps point you in the right direction...

If you have google.com access, just google (or BING or yahoo search) these keywords: consumer NAS devices. Should bring up plenty of hits on viable devices that don't require rocket science to implement.

If you're REALLY hard up for a tech geek - there's a guy who posted on gokm offering IT services. If you want to use my IT geek - let me know and I'll ask him if he's interested - he's a geek and loves tech - but has limited time and resource for free-lancing AND you'd have to pay him - although he might accept barter (some high-tech gizmo or gadget that he lusts after - maybe an iPhone 6 would wet his whistle...