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built my own using iFolder from Novell and then open sourced, works great, and yes I did it myself.... http://ifolder.com/

If you're willing to pay, you could use Dropbox. If you keep it under 2 GB, it's free. Anything you drag into your dropbox gets synced to their servers and then synced back down to your other PCs you have linked to your dropbox account.

If you would prefer a roll your own solution, and are willing to build a server, then go look at Novell's iFolder http://www.ifolder.com./

Andy

It's open source and cross platform. Works great!! http://www.ifolder.com/ifolder

Novell has never abandoned iFolder, it's part of the Open Workgoup Suite offering. http://www.novell.com/products/openenterpriseserver/ifolder.html We have been actively using it in our company for several years and I installed version 3.8 a few days ago as part of OES2 SP3. It's a great product, I can highly recommended. The Open Source version can be found here: http://ifolder.com/ifolder

I was gonna say: "Why, oh dear Novel, why did you abandon iFolder?!", but it appears it has been granted a third life:

http://ifolder.com/ifolder

Whatever happened to iFolder ? iFolder

As previous posters have said, this is a tricky problem to solve. iFolder probably handles it the best out of most of the products I've tried. You can create folders easily, the background task is very lightweight to transmit changes, and best of all is the SSL web interface to the folders, which was simple, polished, and easy to use. It's multi platform too. When Novell released the code, I figured there would be significant development of it because this was such a common problem, especially as Novell has put a small group of developers onto the project as well. But that never materialized. Community support was non-existent and Novell retasked the iFolder team and development hit a wall. It's sad because of how well laid out it was. The backend was pretty scary in terms of what it ran on, but v3.6 was trying to fix that. I've been running v3.4 to sync around a dozen different folders across probably 25 users, with granular permissions. It's been great, but I really was hoping 3.6 would see the light of day... SVN shows some churn, but not a whole lot. Looks mostly like bug fixes, but the build system is completely broken - builds used to post daily.

This looks quite similar to Novell's iFolder but with you running the server yourselves instead of having your users set up an iFolder server. Last I used iFolder was in the 1.x or 2.x days and it frankly wasn't anywhere near the polished product you have here. Now it seems that iFolder 3.x is open source and looks a lot more polished.

Still, I think you surely have a great service market here even though the polished front-end app seems to now be done open source. Best of luck to you on your new venture!

That sounds exactly like what Novell's iFolder is made for:

http://www.ifolder.com/index.php/Home

Do the laptops ever make it back to the home office and connect to the network? If so, how often?

Do the laptop users have the option of creating a VPN tunnel back to the home network?

If they're coming in via VPN, how fast is the uplink speed of that connection? Does it vary?

How much data are we talking about?

Is there an in-house server available at the home office to replicate this data to?

Are you working within a specific budget?

One thing he OP did point out is that they're backing up data to an MSDE database and that there are also files that should be backed up. That said, it would be safe to assume that a database is live and running and, as such, would require backup software that can handle open files and/or SQL databases. SQL servers, themselves, have the ability to replicate data from one server to another. This should probably be the first thing you check and try.

Assuming that the laptop users know how to stop the database services so that the database files are not locked, you can use just about any backup software you want. iFolder works really well. It makes copies like rsync so only the deltas are uploaded, not the whole file that has changed. It can also encrypt the data once it's on the server, but I don't think it encrypts the data before it's sent over the wire.

The amount of data can be an issue as well. Making a copy of a customers' database while on their network can be quite fast. However, taking that copied data and replicating it over a WAN link, depending on how much data there is, can take a long time. Perhaps having them keep an external hard disk and making another backup to it would be beneficial until the data can be backed up at the HQ.

An external drive isn't always a viable solution, either. The road warrior will, most likely, keep the external drive in the same bag as his laptop. If one is lost/stolen, chances are the other will be lost/stolen at the same time, thus making that type of data protection useless. It will only be useful for the road warrior in the event that his laptop hard disk crashes or the OS will not boot. I would highly suggest staying away from the built-in Windows "Make available offline" feature. I had a handful of users using this feature at a past company I worked for. The original file server crashed. We were in the process of bringing up a new file server. Rather than reviving the old server, we restored data from tape to the new server. The new server had a new hostname and the built-in Windows "Make available offline" didn't know how to handle it. Data that users modified offline could not sync up. Another thing to note is Microsoft doesn't support making network data (data on a file server) available offline, especially if more than one person makes the same folder available offline. It also flat-files all data making it next to impossible to know where the original file resided. This was back in Windows 2000. I'm not sure if Windows XP is any different. There are plenty of options out there. You just need to consider what is best given what you have to work with. Lay out what you have, what you can get, and what your limitations are... then build upon that.

iFfolder works great for us.

http://www.ifolder.com/

Hi,

I serve many small local business, many who have some employees that work from from regularly or permenantly.

For telephone, the cell phone makes the most sense. Works anywhere and if you get all employees on the same carrier, you can get free mobile-to-mobile calls, thus reducing the amount of minutes everyone needs. See if you can put them all on a large family plan or something.

For data, DSL/cable at people's homes is great, but a step further would be internet via cell phone/Treo/Blackberry when they are mobile. If you get Blackberry's on one of the above plans, the tethering internet access is often included (some carriers). Depends if they will be sitting at their home "desks" all day or running around more.

Employees should still have company-provided computers. A huge huge problem is the kids of the employees getting on their home computers and messing things up (spyware, consumer apps, not running updates, etc). Kids have their computer, Mom and Dad have another password protected computer that kids do not use even if just for a second.

I would also recommend still having a server somewhere for backup and to ensure all of the company files are stored in one place. Novell's iFolder product is an excellent choice for getting files synced back to a server with little to no user interaction. It comes in their Open Workgroup Suite package (along with GroupWise for e-mail, etc, etc, the works.) They also have an open-sourced version of iFolder at http://www.ifolder.com/ but last I looked it was somewhat unstable.

You still will have to deal with tech support of everyone's PC (printing, drive crashes, all the regular stuff) so a remote control package that will traverse NAT would be helpful. UltraVNC has a reverse-VNC mode that will work in this way with the user just kicking off the connection and you taking it from there. Also, a software management type app would be nice for patching and software distrribution. Don't want to have to run to everyone's house to install a new program, etc, if possible. Novell's ZENWorks is aaaa decent general purpose management app and something like Shavlik is good for patching Windows boxes.

As others have mentioned, communication is key between employees. Encourage them to meet and/or use those cells phones a lot, especially if they have free mobile-t0-mobile calls they have no reason not to pick up the phone regularly.

The benefits can be great if done right. There's nothing like getting up and walking into the next room to be at work!

-m

Perhaps you mean iFolder

Sounds a lot like Novell's iFolder which is a really neat application. Sync files from a central store to multiple computers using a thin client, or access then via a web browser. You can have any number of folders and control who can access what in each folder. Well except iFolder will run on all platforms (mono), not just Windows. And it's free.

http://www.ifolder.com/

This is an open source groupware/colaberation software for your corporate network (*breath out*) . On a serious note; this is a pretty good software suite to help manage shared documents and such. Its compatible with both M$ and Linux. It is owned and developed by Novell and they have released it under an OpenLincense (i believe GPL but don't qoute me just yet.). I have seen this to be very successfull in a wide variety of applications. Try it out. http://www.ifolder.com/

Check it out http://www.ifolder.com/index.php/HowTo:Configure_i Folder_Enterprise_Server_on_Fedora_Core_4

You may still have some difficulty getting binaries for the client on Fedora, but I have suspicions that will change shortly as well.

iFolder

According to http://www.ifolder.com/: " iFolder is a simple and secure storage solution that can increase your productivity by enabling you to back up, access and manage your personal files-from anywhere, at any time. Once you have installed iFolder, you simply save your files locally-as you have always done-and iFolder automatically updates the files on a network server and delivers them to the other machines you use. Sponsored by Novell, the iFolder project is built on the Mono/.Net framework to integrate seamlessly into existing desktop environments. "

• iFolder - http://www.ifolder.com/
• openSUSE - http://www.opensuse.org/
• Mono - http://www.mono-project.com/
• Hula - http://www.hula-project.org/
• Diva - http://www.diva-project.org/
• Tango - http://www.tango-project.org/
• Beagle - http://www.beaglewiki.org/
• Better Desktop - http://www.betterdesktop.org/

sound like ifolder.. Is there an idea MS hasn't ripped off yet?

iFolder rocks. I haven't used 3, and it's a very different product from the version we use at our office (in version 3 storage isn't encrypted and its designed to work with groups as well as with individuals), but the basic idea is the same. You have an ifolder server, and the clients stay synchronized to it.

The benefit is that my desktop at home has all the same files as my computer at work. Change a file on one, and it replicates to the other. It only replicates changes and presumably it uses rsync at its core.

Server goes down? Who cares. Your files are on your computer. Computer goes down? Grab files from the server with a java applet on any computer with a browser.

If you want to run something like this without spending money buying Novell Open Enterprise Server check out http://www.ifolder.com/index.php/Simple_Server and download Simias Simple Server.

Again, iFolder rocks.

The entire "proposal" seems to me is an attempt bump the stock price up so they can sell off. I seriously doubt they have the best interests of the corporation in mind. Their proposal has shades of recent HP management -- hitting short term goals (Profit!!), while ignoring the long term health of the company.

As for Novell R&D, they've got iFolder, Hula mail and calendar server, and Mono. There's a few other things on Novell's Forge site, but they're not as "sexy" or even as useful as those other projects.

Novell has GPLed their file sharing system and renamed it iFolder:

http://www.ifolder.com/


iFolder is a file sharing application for Linux, Windows, and Mac.

Using iFolder workgroup features, you can easily:

* Share files across multiple computers
* Share files with other users

Used with an iFolder server, you can:

* Maintain a backup of your files on an iFolder Enterprise server
* Share files with other users and computers
* Restore deleted files from Backup

Look at iFolder. I think this is Netstorage repackaged and _GPLed_.

http://www.ifolder.com/

Novell iFolder is the best, most secure I've ever seen. And, it's GPL. Here's the URL:

http://www.ifolder.com/

Kinda like iFolder?

As soon as your copy of XP can keep two folders auto-sync'd over a network, then you give me a call. Longhorn can do that, and it's one of the big features I'm waiting for.

You mean like iFolder?

This would be my prediction for the big Apple "risk". I would love to see this happen :)

It has already started:

iFolder from Novell http://www.ifolder.com/

They have already started using the "i" :p

Check out http://www.ifolder.com/ . It's a half open source / half proprietary software piece that lets directories sync between computers, regardless of the OS. Lin to Win, Win to Lin, Lin to Lin, etc...

Enjoy!

Tim