Cloud storage - G Suite

[Bobbin]

be more specific ? You saying azure file services is not good enough ? Even through it can intergrate into your on premises / hybrid Active Directory ? What about using a mixture of sharepoint and AD security.Seems a perfect solution.

Ah no not file services. I think that is indeed intended as a solution for File Servers/Shares.

But the other cloud services (OneDrive/GDrive/Dropbox), they were never intended as a replacement for File Server Shares (particularly the centralized sharing aspect). They are designed for single user storage use and minimal sharing only AFAIK.

SharePoint Online is better than OneDrive/GDrive/Dropbox because of the permissions capabilities, but it still requires a robust backup solution. That's why products like Dropsuite exist. And off the top of my head it still has some inherent issues like a limitation on how large a sync'd library can get before it has some severe performance degradation, and a limitation on how many objects a library can have before permissions break. And 400gigs of centralized file server type data can easily hit those limits depending on the nature of the files/objects.

So if you're not hitting the SharePoint Library limits, then I'd say a combination of SharePoint Online (And AAD security as you implied) + Dropsuite or some other backup solution would be the best bet

 

[Bobbin]

SharePoint limits - Service Descriptions

Learn the SharePoint limits for Microsoft 365 and standalone plans.

docs.microsoft.com

So the gotcha here is even if you sync a portion of the library, the entire library object count including the portion you're not syncing seems to affect the performance. They don't seem to really word it obviously above, but I've run into it personally. And note they mention "Across All Libraries". So you can't even split it or use separate accounts to get around this issue. Basically, you will have users working on local sync'd files and waiting hours for their changes to sync/reflect in the library because it can't keep up.


See the 100 000 items limit breaking inheritance.

I've seen a file server of around 700 - 800GB data containing 500 000 - 600 000 items, so some of it's parent folders/shares hit over the 100k limit, so 400gigs could have that problem too or run into it soon. You then have to split these folders and keep them well under the 100k item limit each.

 

[ubercal]

SharePoint limits - Service Descriptions

Learn the SharePoint limits for Microsoft 365 and standalone plans.

docs.microsoft.com

View attachment 1132432

So the gotcha here is even if you sync a portion of the library, the entire library object count including the portion you're not syncing seems to affect the performance. They don't seem to really word it obviously above, but I've run into it personally. And note they mention "Across All Libraries". So you can't even split it or use separate accounts to get around this issue. Basically, you will have users working on local sync'd files and waiting hours for their changes to sync/reflect in the library because it can't keep up.

View attachment 1132434
See the 100 000 items limit breaking inheritance.

I've seen a file server of around 700 - 800GB data containing 500 000 - 600 000 items, so some of it's parent folders/shares hit over the 100k limit, so 400gigs could have that problem too or run into it soon. You then have to split these folders and keep them well under the 100k item limit each.

yeah my preferred method is the traditional "Shared" drive in Azure file services and then the users "h:\" drive is using sharepoint onedrive.Split it over the 2 systems , is the best of both.I always prefer Azure file services as there is no fluff and its been designed as a straight forward smb server.Sharepoint while it can function as a storage repository includes so many other things.