Tip of the Week: Migrating Your On-Premise File Servers to the Cloud

Do you have an investment in NAS storage or file servers that you want to move to Syncplicity?  There are many reasons why you might want to do this:

• Access to files and folders without mapping drives, re-authenticating or requiring a VPN.
• Get automatic offline access to files and folders. Your users can work on files when they have no network connectivity and changes will be automatically synced back to the file server when the user goes online (no need to drag and drop!).
• Get automatic backup of every file every time a file changes, with the ability to recover those files as-needed. No need to rely on daily backups or cumbersome restore processes.

Here's how you set up Syncplicity to migrate your on-premise file servers to the cloud:

1. Create an "Corporate Share" Admin Account on Syncplicity Business Edition or Syncplicity Enterprise Edition specifically for "owning" the folders from the server. This account should be different from your primary Syncplicity Admin account.
2. Connect to the file server that owns the folder hierarchies you want to share using a Remote Desktop Connection.
3. Install Syncplicity on the file server and log on to using the "Corporate Share" Admin Account.
4. Find the folders on the file server you want to share using the Syncplicity client (Windows) or your Finder (Mac).
5. Right click on the top-level folders and select "Add to Syncplicity". 
6. Once this is done, the folders you selected will all be uploaded to Syncplicity.
7. Your folders are now migrated to Syncplicity! You can shut down Syncplicity on the remote server and even delete the folders. All of the files and folders are stored, accessible and backed up on Syncplicity. Simply use the new Admin Account to grant access to the folders to new users or remove access when users leave. Your corporate share folders are now completely in Syncplicity. 

To add new users to the new Syncplicity "Corporate Share":

1. Go to https://my.syncplicity.com and log on using the "Corporate Share" Admin Account that was set up to sync the on-premise file servers.
2. Go to the "Console" tab.
3. Select "Manage Users".
4. Select the user that you wish to add to the corporate shared folders.
5. Scroll down until you see "Joined Folders" and select "Manage".
6. You will now see a list of all shared folders in the Syncplicity Business Edition Account. From here, you can give your new user access to the shared corporate folders. Simply find the folders from the on-premise file server and set the permission level ("Collaborator" = Read/Write access, "Reader" = Read Only access).
7. The user will then receive an invitation to download the corporate shared folders. Once they are downloaded the user will have access to the files and folders stored on the on-premise file servers, even if offline or on a mobile device!

Questions? Contact us and we'll be happy to help you get set up.