ifolder as an replacement for home directories?
Mirko Guldner
directories. While I feel enthusiastic about the former, I'm sceptic
about the latter.
Until now I had only little time to take a look at ifolder. But as far
as I unterstand, ifolder has quite a different scope as home
directories: While a home directory is a _central_ personal file storage
which can be accessed directly via different protocols (ncp, cifs, afp,
http, ftp), ifolder is a synchronisation mechanism for _local_ files. Am
I right?
So I think, ifolder is not desigend to access single files? One has to
synchronize the whole ifolder to the local disk before accessing a file?
On the other hand, if both is available, it will probably generate
additional help desk activity, to explain users wether they should use
the one or the other.
What are the experiences: Does it make sense to completely replace home
directories by ifolder? Or is ifolder in fact an optimal complement?
Thanks,
Mirko
Mirko Guldner
Thanks for answering.
Yes, I perfectly understand the benefit in your use case; and yes, some
of our users will benefit in exactly that way you describe it - I'm
looking forward to provide those people with this service! But I think
the overall situation here is quite different: we are a university of
applied science, about 3000 users, most of them students.
As far as I understand, ifolder is great if a user uses 2 or 3 (or some)
personal computers, for example office PC, notebook, home office. I
doubt this is true for the students; I guess most of them have their
notebook and they are using PCs in our PC rooms. But a PC in a PC room
is quite different from an office PC: there is not *one* personal PC,
but there is a choice of about 100 PCs, and they are not personal; and
we are using Zenworks Dynamic Local User on this PCs, localy saved data
will vanish. Using ifolder instead of home directories means downloading
the complete ifolder before starting to work; student attends a lecture,
returns to PC room, takes another PC... same procedure again, download
the complete ifolder.
Other students might never use our PCs, they use their own notebooks;
*one* device - nothing to synchronize; some situation for most of the
staff: *one* office PC - nothing to synchronize.
So I still doubt ifolder is a replacement for home directories - or do I
missunderstand something?
Three questions about the details:
You mentioned "access files from any computer using the web interface":
does that mean, I can download/edit/upload a single file, without using
iFolder client, without doing the whole sychronization? Just like using
Netstorage to access a file on my home directory?
Does ifolder have a undelete feature, like Novell Client and Netstorage?
What about backup: Does the backup agent/client on the ifolder server
see single files, or something like a "container"? Am I able to restore
different versions of a single file, like with a filesystem on a volume?
Thanks,
Mirko
Am 12.07.2010 02:06, schrieb agt499:
> Hi Mirko.
> I'm fairly new to iFolder myself, but my use case of 1-2 users over 3
> PCs might clear your question up -depending on the size& nature of your
> user base.
> The way we use iFolder is very similar to what you describe:
> -Once iFolder server is set up, accounts created etc the user's client
> is used to 'Create' iFolders for files on their local machine.
> -My sole iFolder is the one I store everything *except* user settings:
> the equivalent of My Documents on Windows without the other Documents
> and Settings stuff, or a *nix Home folder with the ./ missing. This is
> 33GB and syncs without noticeable performance hit even though memory use
> is high (I think pegged @ 15% of total for caching)
> -This means that all the files on my laptop are exactly where they
> always were (i.e. set this up for a user and they won't need to look in
> funny places). and available whether I have network connectivity or
> not.
> -But because I've made this an iFolder, everything is mirrored on the
> iFolder server, meaning that I can Download the iFolder to other PCs,
> access files from any computer using the web interface etc.
> -Any changes I make while away from the network, or on a different
> machine with the iFolder set up are transparently mirrored in the
> background. i.e. your users don't even need to know about iFolder at all
> unless they want some of the fancy extras.
>
> Great solution if you have users working with laptops both on and
> offsite.
>
>