You might see that the Dropbox Community team have been busy working on some major updates to the Community itself! So, here is some info on what’s changed, what’s staying the same and what you can expect from the Dropbox Community overall.
Dropbox Connect 2019
Dropbox Connect is about to start. Today is all about redefining the digital workspace. We’ll hear from industry leaders who are shaping the future of work and discover the single workspace that unifies content, connects tools, and brings everyone together for improved clarity and control. Here you can discuss what's coming up at Dropbox Connect with others attending, or follow updates live from the event on the Community.Pete, an IT Consultant, shares his tips for new Dropbox users
Meet Pete, an IT Consultant and advanced Dropbox user. Take a look at Pete’s tips for those of you who are new to Dropbox… What brought me to Dropbox I was seeking a secure and collaborative, cloud based solution that was reliable and fast. I needed a way to always have my files available on any computer or device that I was working on and also needed to make sure that my files were safe and always up to date. Tips for new Dropbox users I like to use Dropbox for business and personal Dropbox, both available on the desktop platform. This allows for a better flow and separation for business and personal matters. I also appreciate the admin console for better understanding the big picture from a dashboard environment. Keep in mind API limits, file system limits, and the fact that data bloat is creating more difficulty with laptop hard drive (local) and cloud syncing. Online only has assisted in this process, however, be sure to brush up on what you need versus what you think you need. Consider directory structure and organization up front. Like any file system, the more objective and clear the structure, the easier it is to work with, especially when problems occur. Consider long term data growth trends. I recommend putting together archival strategies and user license forecasting into the 6 month, 12 month, and 36-48 month future. Do you use Dropbox in a similar way? Have questions forPete about their workflow? Reply below with your thoughts!Make the most of Movebot and Dropbox
If you do any kind of business online, chances are you use an online storage platform and sometimes, your needs change and you need to move your files. But don’t worry - moving from cloud storage platforms, or on-premise file servers to Dropbox couldn't be easier. The Data Migration Add-On, powered by Movebot, makes it simple, secure and affordable, without the need for software deployment or complex processes. Whether you are transferring a single drive, a team or an entire organization, Movebot's cloud migration tool has been built to make your Dropbox migration simple. Not only can you quickly and securely migrate files, you can also copy over all of the associated permissions from on-premise file servers and existing cloud storage solutions to Dropbox. So, what can I do with Movebot? Well, first of all, you can: Migrate home directories, folders, and personal shares to Dropbox Transfer sharing permissions from cloud and on-premises sources to Dropbox Monitor file transfer jobs in real-time with reporting, visualization, and event-logging Automate and expedite migrations with parallel loading, Dropbox API call optimization, and Movebot’s managed scalable technology Schedule migration jobs in advance — to run once or on a repeating schedule. But you don’t just have to take our word for it, Jack is a senior designer on the team over at Graphicks, a creative agency, who recently used Movebot to transfer their files over to Dropbox, and he said: Movebot and Dropbox have made our lives so much easier. We used Movebot to migrate around 2TB of data from a different cloud service to Dropbox and the process was very smooth. We work with a wide range of file formats and both platforms supported our every need. We deal with large design files on a daily basis, which makes the different sync options available on Dropbox vital to our workflow. Being able to collaborate easily as a team from different parts of the country is essential. As a creative agency we needed a more collaborative and cost-effective solution to managing our files. Dropbox was an easy choice as other solutions have fewer features and don’t handle larger files formats as well. The unlimited storage that Dropbox offers means that we can continue to grow as a team without the worry that we will run out of storage – something that our previous platform would constantly remind us of! Have you ever needed to transfer a large amount of files from one platform to Dropbox? Check out how the Dropbox Data Migration Add-On, powered by Movebot can benefit your business or talk to our team about using Movebot today.
How to Sync Two Business Accounts on the Same Computer
Requires two local users to be configured on the computer While logged in to the first local user, log in to business account #1 on the Dropbox app. Choose a shared location for the files to sync to. Log in to the second local user, then log in to business account #2 on the Dropbox app. Choose the same root folder for the files to sync to as you did in the first step. Ensure that both of the folders are shared to all local users and all local users have read/write permissions.
Massive Data Upload and Sync Process - 20TB
Hi everyone, I am writing here to explain the process of our most recent data upload of 20TB to Dropbox via a 2019 Mac Pro connected to a 10Gbps Fiber line. The goal is to help those understand some of the issues we experienced as well as setting expectations to those who plan on uploading massive amounts of data at once. Below are the steps: Procure a 10Gb fiber PCIe card for the 2019 Mac Pro -Solo10G SFP+ 10GbE PCIe Card with SFP+ Module- after working closely with our Apple business rep, we found the this card which would work for our requirements. Yes, the 2019 Mac Pro has 10Gb ethernet ports, but we only had Fiber lines in our setup, not Ethernet. Not to mention adapters usually have 1Gb limits so this was not an acceptable solution either. We wanted to experience max speeds so we opted for a dedicated 10GbE fiber card. Speed Tests - we conducted speed tests after card installation and confirmed the speeds were around 4.5Gbps to 5Gbps upload and download. We could not figure out if the 50% falloff was on the 2019 Mac Pro side or on the ISP side. Still however, 5Gbps is no joke so we continued onward. (PS: We could not conduct speed tests via the Speedtest.net when on 4GB+ fiber. We had to download software to the PC/Mac to get true internet speeds.) Upload - We already had 20TB on the Dropbox Folder moved and was paused & ready to sync. We simply turned the computer on, ensured it had a good connection, and then turned Sync on via the Dropbox for Mac application. Thats it. The data automatically began to upload just as it would any other sync. Realized Speeds - Even with the 4.5 to 5Gbps up|down speeds, we only saw between 600Mbps to 900Mbps being uploaded to the Dropbox cloud. We hoped to see at least 2Gbps or 3Gbps being sent to Dropbox but this was not the case unfortunately. Still however, the ~750Mbps speed was enough to upload the 20TB in about three days which we were ok with. Note: At the beginning of the sync, the speeds were extremely slow which we contributed to the initial file indexing. About 3 hours in to the main sync is when the speeds started to get to their highest levels. Also, we checked our ISP speeds twice per day and at its LOWEST point we saw internet speeds of 3.5Gbps. Online-Only (Spoiler Warning - massive bottleneck!)- After about 70 hours of upload time, the full 20TB was on the cloud. Our Dropbox account confirmed the newly uploaded data storage amount. Our next step was to get this 20TB off of our 2019 Mac Pro external RAID (Pegasus R4i). Again, the process was just like any other file(s). We simply highlighted thew newly uploaded files and right-clicked, then selected "Make online-only". Simple right? Yeah, not so much. This is where we noticed lots of issues with our system. Essentially this 20TB "indexing?" caused us to essentially have to run Dropbox completely via the browser. There was no possibility of doing other things like downloading files via the Dropbox Mac application or Double clicking and a small JPEG opening up. The application simply said, "NO" and only had one task in mind, get these 20TB worth of files OFF of this hard drive. The good news? It did so, only taking a whopping 500 hours to remove these files off of the drive. A few notes: We were able to pause syncing during the "file-removal" / online-only process), restart the computer, resume syncing all without any error messages which was very impressive. I expected the application to crash, hang up, etc. Not at all. Note:We did NOT pause syncing during the main 20TB upload. Why did it take so long? I am not a software engineer but clearly it did not enjoy this task and it could be due to a number of reasons. Maybe simply the application was not built to handle 20TB? Maybe our computer did not have the power? Maybe it was due to the main Dropbox drive being on a RAID array? Who knows. Thats about all I wanted to say here. Again, the purpose of this small write up is to show how the software/cloud performed under extreme tasking. I would say overall very well considering. Hopefully this helps someone out there who's considering uploading massive amounts of data at once. TLDR: Uploading massive amounts of data via fiber internet = quick and easy. Removing this data off the drive / Making files "Online-only" = very time-consuming and not for the faint of heart. 2019 Mac Pro specs:
