Cloud Storage and file Transfer

Please post any tips or advice you have in general relating to laser scanning either whilst onsite or office based.
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jax120
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Cloud Storage and file Transfer

Post by jax120 »

Hi All

I wanted to know your thoughts and experiences of using cloud storage solutions such as Dropbox, ftp, Hightail, etc. Mainly by those who have used different solutions and for storing large files like pointclouds, databases, truviews, etc.

We use dropbox, ftp, hightail. to transfer these files, and any usb/hard drive delivery is out of the question due to a 2/3 day courier time scale. But I find uploading times can be too slow and this creates a backlog.

What is the best solution for speed and a reliable upload/download.
Andy Jackson
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danielgadowski
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Re: Cloud Storage and file Transfer

Post by danielgadowski »

Andy,
i use Dropbox and one thing is sure - the only ally in your fight against time is faster broadband access.
Fiber optic broadband would always be my choice, as long as you have got access to it.
Anything with a speed above 50 MB/s will help a lot.
some of the business deals additionally specify the uplink speed, which determines how fast you will be able to upload your data to the cloud.
Depending on whether you mainly download or upload uplink speed will make more or less impact.
Good luck
Daniel
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Re: Cloud Storage and file Transfer

Post by richard_m »

If I need to move many Gb's between countrys / continents then I have a generally good experience with our implementation of "Aspera" ( http://asperasoft.com/ ) its a bit of a hassle to setup "shares" and user rights etc but it is very fast, secure and reliable.

Dropbox and ftp I find don't really work with the amount of data I usually need to move, at least practically.

Recently started moving many Tb's into the cloud for which a "snowball" works well.

Richard.
jax120
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Re: Cloud Storage and file Transfer

Post by jax120 »

danielgadowski wrote:Andy,
i use Dropbox and one thing is sure - the only ally in your fight against time is faster broadband access.
Fiber optic broadband would always be my choice, as long as you have got access to it.
Anything with a speed above 50 MB/s will help a lot.
some of the business deals additionally specify the uplink speed, which determines how fast you will be able to upload your data to the cloud.
Depending on whether you mainly download or upload uplink speed will make more or less impact.
Good luck
Daniel
Thanks for your reply Daniel, totally agree with you on faster broadband and dropbox, back in the uk I had uploaded to dropbox on a regular speed of 7mb/sec and in another office that had 35mb/sec and it was a huge difference,.

And this is what I was hoping here in Sydney, But I am told that ultra fast broadband is not available in this area of my office.
Andy Jackson
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www.scanandmodel.co.uk
jax120
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Re: Cloud Storage and file Transfer

Post by jax120 »

richard_m wrote:If I need to move many Gb's between countrys / continents then I have a generally good experience with our implementation of "Aspera" ( http://asperasoft.com/ ) its a bit of a hassle to setup "shares" and user rights etc but it is very fast, secure and reliable.

Dropbox and ftp I find don't really work with the amount of data I usually need to move, at least practically.

Recently started moving many Tb's into the cloud for which a "snowball" works well.

Richard.
Thanks Richard

I will check that out.
Andy Jackson
Director
www.scanandmodel.co.uk
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Re: Cloud Storage and file Transfer

Post by jamesworrell »

Move offices .. :?

Notwithstanding the fact that our existing office complex is being demolished, we picked our next office almost purely on the fibre deal.

We are getting 500 megabits per second symmetrical .. unlimited data .. $499 a month and $2500 install .. with Vocus (their Internet Express product) in AU - had to be in an already "lit" building. TPG have a similar 400 megabit plan.
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Re: Cloud Storage and file Transfer

Post by lastools »

Hello from @LAStools,
jax120 wrote:[...] for storing large files like pointclouds [...] I find uploading times can be too slow and this creates a backlog. What is the best solution for speed and a reliable upload/download.
Independent from the upload/download technology you end up using for large files, some tiny considerations on how you store your data in the first place can sometimes make those huge files a lot smaller. This is in particular the case for point clouds. The "default" Cyclone PTS and PTX files that many people seem to use store each coordinate with 6 digits after the decimal point. This is micrometers and excessive resolution for most scanning applications. If you throw out the last 3 digits of each number you still have submillimeter resolution which will usually be sufficient. Also the gzipped PTS/PTX files will be a lot smaller then. Using a compressed point format such as LAZ can further reduce the size of your upload/download files.
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