And when the user that is assigning access (or, in OneDrive parlance, “Sharing”) does not control group membership, that user cannot be sure who has access to the data at any given time. Users can share content with others, but sharing via groups is more difficult. The storage is accessible via browser (where each user can sign into their own Office 365 portal), via mapped network drive, or with the OneDrive Sync client, which will sync content from OneDrive to your local workstation. This storage is allocated as part of a SharePoint Online MySite for each user, although a user need not go through SharePoint to access it. With OneDrive for Business, an appropriately licensed user is allocated storage by Microsoft. In this model, data is centrally stored, centrally accessed, and centrally managed. The point is that access to all firm data can be centrally controlled, through an IT administrator, by firm management. If access needs to be modified or removed for any reason, the administrator can do this by modifying the specific share, or removing the user from the group that has access. This access can be assigned individually to users’ accounts, or via membership in security groups that can be controlled and managed by the administrator.
There may also be a folder under that share that only HR Managers will have the ability to modify, while other users will only be able to read it. For example, the HR department may have a share for which only users in the HR department will have access. An administrator can manage access to that data by setting granular permissions. All data that needs to be accessed by users will exist on that storage.
SYNC SHARED FOLDERS ONEDRIVE FOR BUSINESS WINDOWS
The mechanism for sharing this to the network can vary (storage on one or more Windows servers shared via DFS, a CIFS share directly from a SAN or dedicate NAS device) but in either case, all end-users should be able to browse to a single namespace to access the file shares. In most cases, a typical network share consists of some unit of storage presented to the network and addressable by some unified name. So, it should be the perfect platform to offload my network file share to, right? OneDrive is a great tool for storing and sharing files that you want to keep so you don’t have to worry about a hardware failure or your computer getting infected with ransomware. I can’t remember the last time I had to pull out my USB flash drive to transfer files from one computer to another, or had to scrutinize the email file attachment limits when sending large files to other people. The idea is that if each user gets unlimited OneDrive storage (Office 365 Enterprise E3 and E5 plans both give 5 TB of initial storage per user, with the ability to request more from Microsoft) why should I pay thousands of dollars to purchase and maintain a paltry 20 TB of SAN storage? They are paying for these services as part of their subscription, so why continue to invest in a duplicate solution?Ĭlients often ask if OneDrive for Business can replace their firms network file shares. With an increasing number of firms opting for cloud services, especially Microsoft’s Office 365, IT administrators often try to find creative ways to substitute on-prem functionality with cloud resources.