IV.

LESSON PROPER

File Services

In this lesson, we're going to run down some of the file services we can use that will allow us to be
productive as an organization.

Employees need to be able to share files with each other, whether that's to collaborate or exchange
information. We’ve also talked about shared folders in Windows in the last course, but in this lesson I'm
going to talk more about scalable and efficient ways to share data, enter file storage services.

File storage services allow us to centrally store files and manage access between files and groups. You
can set up a file storage server that will let users access a shared directory to modify or add files and much,
much more. In the next lesson, we'll go in depth on two of the more popular ways you can use to manage,
store, and share files over a network.

The other way to maintain a file storage service is by using a Cloud file storage provider. There are lots of
providers that offer secure and easily managed file storage. You can read about some of the more popular
ones in the supplemental reading. For now, let's see how to manage a file storage service ourselves.

Network File Storage

FAT32 is a popular FAT system that's compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac OSes. But it has severe
limitations on the amount of data you can store on a volume. What happens if you have multiple users that
want to share files between each other? Well, they need to store the files somewhere and they need to be
able to retrieve the files over a network. Network file system, or NFS allows us to do this. 

It's a protocol that enables files to be shared over a network. The FAT system is compatible on all major
operating systems. The easiest way to setup an NFS server is by using a Linux environment.  You can
install NFS server software that modifies the configuration files for the directories that you want to allow
shared access with. Once you do that, the NFS service will be running in the background of the server.
 
On each client machine that wants to access a server, you just mount the file system the way you would
any other file system except that you'd use the host name instead of a physical disk device.  From there,
you can access the shared directory like you would any other folder in a computer. Check out the next
supplementary reading for some examples of NFS server software you can configure for Linux. 

NFS is a good solution to file sharing within the network, but with a network heavy usage will slow down the
file system. While NFS works with all major operating systems there are still interoperability issues with
Windows. If your fleet consists mostly Windows machines you might want to look at using something like
Samba. 

Samba services are similar to NFS since she can centrally share and manage files services. Also, all major
operating systems can use a Samba file sharing. The only reason you might want to consider Samba over
NFS is because it works better with Windows operating systems. It also includes other services that can be
integrated with your organization like printer services. We'll talk about it in an upcoming lesson.  One thing
to note is that, you may hear the term Samba or SMB. These two are different. SMB is a protocol that
Samba implements. You can read more about SMB in the supplemental reading. 

Fun fact, when you create a Windows shared folder it's actually using the SMB protocol,  Samba itself is a
software service suite used for file services which you can also read more about in the supplemental
reading. There are lots of other file storage services that you can use and you can read more about them
in, wait for it, the supplemental readings. A relatively affordable solution for FAT storage hardware is to use
a network attached storage or NAS, pronounced NAS. Instead of setting up a dedicated server like you
would other services. NASes are computers that are optimized for file storage. They usually come with an
operating system best stripped down in order just to serve files over a network. They also come with lots of
storage space. Whatever method you choose, central file storage and management are an important part
of I.T. infrastructure for any organization.

Mobile Synchronization

The great thing about mobile devices is that you can take them almost anywhere, but the risk is that they
contain all kinds of information that will be hard to replace. Let's admit it, mobile devices can sometimes be
pretty easy to lose. Think about all that data, personal information like emails, photos, videos, calendars,
health data, location data, and your Candy Crush high score. It's also that you don't want to lose. So in this
lesson we are going to check out some ways that you can protect your valuable data even if your mobile
device is damaged lost or stolen. How are we going to do this? For each type of important data on your
mobile device, you want to make sure that the data is synchronized or synced with another location. 

When you synchronize data, you make sure that it is the same in two or more places. How does this
work? If a calendar appointment is only stored on your device, then you need your device with you to view
the appointment, plus if you lose access to the device, you lose all the appointment details. Now, you have
no idea what time you are supposed to be meeting your friends for coffee. But if you use a calendar that
syncs your data, you are all good. A calendar that signed into an online account will sync any schedule
changes or new appointments to a central location in the Cloud. If you sign into the calendar on another
device but using the same account, you will see the same set of appointments. 

As an IT support specialist, it's important that you understand what data and which apps are critical to your
organization and also what's critical to the end users that you support. Most organizations will care
about business data like email, calendars, and contact information. You might also have apps that manage
documents, photos, videos and so on. Your challenge is to make sure that if the device is lost, you can still
recover the data. The best way to do this in which you might be responsible for in your IT support role, is to
make sure business-critical data is synced in at least two places. Lucky for us many mobile apps
automatically sync. In some cases mobile apps already used the Cloud as their canonical data source. For
example, if you sign into an account for your email and calendar apps, they will probably get all of their data
from servers in the Cloud, or your organization's local IT infrastructure. If you lose your phone, you could
just sign into the same account on a different device and get the exact same data. With an app like
this, you won't lose any data if the device is damaged, lost or stolen. It's pretty cool, right?

 Some apps can be configured to every so often automatically sync or back up data to a Cloud storage
service. This means that you might lose some data if you lose access to a mobile device, but the loss will
be limited to the time since the last backup. Other apps might store their data only on the local device and
not be able to back up their data to the Cloud. In that case you might want to synchronize your data
to another location. Maybe you remember from an earlier video how each app on your mobile device has a
specific location where it's allowed to store data. Well IOS and Android both support backing up this app
data to the Cloud. Not only that these mobile OSs backup app data but also your devices' accounts and
settings, too. Want to know more about how to set up device backup to the Cloud? Then check out the
supplemental reading for details.

We have just finished the discussion on File Services. Let’s move on to the
next higher level of activity/ies or exercise/s that demonstrate your potential
skills/knowledge of what you have learned.