Ghetto web-access "server" needed

[Elmojo]

Hi all,

Been enjoying LTT videos for a while now, and nearly every one urges me to come join the forums, so here I am!

I have what I hope is a fairly simple issue that I think you folks can help out with.

 

At my office, we use a dedicated Windows 7 Pro desktop as a simple file 'server'.

It's worked fine for our needs for several years now. We do online and offline backups continuously, and so far have had zero issues.

Recently, a couple of us have started working from home a bit more, so it would be nice to be able to directly access the 'server' at work from home, preferably through a mapped drive.

Is there any fairly simple, secure, way to accomplish this with the hardware and software we have?

Currently, we're just manually lugging stuff around with flash drives or copy/pasting via Teamviewer, but that's tedious, and prone to unintentional overwrites.

I'm not opposed to some additional helper software, as long as it's clean and not bloaty.

I'm the sysadmin for our office, so I can configure things however I want, as long as it improves the working situation.

Thanks in advance for any advice. Please let me know what additional details you might need from me.

-E

[KuJoe]

You have a lot of options: OwnCloud, SyncThing, Google Drive, Dropbox, and countless others I can't even remember. Alternatively you can setup RDP which allows you to map local drives to the server if you don't want to configure anything. 

[Votivee]

There is a couple of ways of accomplishing this.

1. Setting up a private VPN that you can sign into at home to access your accounts at work
2. Setting up an ftp server and then using an application like Filezilla to access the files.
3. This option is probably the easiest but most expensive, but if you have the IT budget for it just switch to a cloud based service such as microsoft one drive, dropbox, or google drive

There's also self-hosted solutions like Nextcloud and Owncloud but they can be a little tricky to set up.

[Elmojo]

Thanks for the replies, but none of the 'cloud'-type solutions will work for us. I need direct access to our physical machine, similar to how I can log in via Teamviewer, except I don't need to directly manipulate the server desktop, I just need access to the drives. Basically, I need an easy way to set up a web server for what's on our primary data drive, if such a thing exists. We do government contract work, so all cloud services are disallowed. VPN is an option, but too much of a hassle to set up and generally too slow, I've used it before.
I was hoping there was some new magic option that I wasn't aware of....doesn't sound like it.

 

EDIT: Actually, ownCloud seems like it might be an option, but I'm not clear on where "server" is. Is it my machine, with the server-side software installed, or is there still an off-site 'cloud server' in the middle somewhere. Anyone know?

Edited July 13, 2019 by Elmojo
added question

[kirashi]

2 hours ago, Elmojo said:

We do government contract work, so all cloud services are disallowed. VPN is an option, but too much of a hassle to set up and generally too slow, I've used it before.
I was hoping there was some new magic option that I wasn't aware of....doesn't sound like it.

If you do government contract work, I would highly advise against anything other than a secured VPN. Data security is a must when dealing with any company work, especially if the government is involved. Not sure where you're located, but in Canada, privacy breaches open a company up to fines in excess of $150,000 per instance/violation. I definitely advise contacting your company's IT department, or if you are the IT department, contacting an MSP for assistance setting this up.

[DevBlox]

Set up a secure VPN that allows you to see the internal network. Then mount drive as usual. Do not expose such a system directly over the internet.

[Elmojo]

Seems reasonable. Any VPNs that are fairly simple to set up, and don't have horrific overhead?

Pricing is also an issue of course.

We have fairly slow (~20Mb DSL) internet on both ends of this connection, so especially the upstream is going to be a problem I suspect.