Moving your File Server to Google Drive

Google Drive is one of Google Apps’ core components. It allows you to sync and store your files in one secure place and to access them whenever you need them, without the boredom in opening a secured VPN tunnel or the risk of accidental data loss. Google Drive is also fully integrated with other core services like Gmail, Google Docs and Google Sites.

With a basic storage of 30GB that can grow to unlimited for only $10 per user per month (with min. of 5 users) I’m frequently asked if Google Drive can replace the organization’s on premise file server for gaining better functionality with lower costs. The simple answer is: yes, as long as you understand and carefully plan your deployment.

Google Drive was originally designed as an end user tool. As such, the end user is the owner of his files, he can upload and share his files and organize them as he wishes. In this self ownership approach there is no central hierarchy of folders that contain all of the company’s shared files and folders, instead there are personal files and folders managed by the end users who decide if and what should be shared with others.

While this approach is very intuitive and follows the way Google Drive was designed to be used, it might lead to duplicated content and difficulty for other users to reach and search for content that is relevant for the entire organization.

A hybrid approach is therefore more recommended. In this approach the admin own and manage the “public” folders and the end user manages his personal files and folders. In fact, in many file servers I saw there were “public” and “private” folders, where the private folders were used as a network backup folders for individual users, and the public folder was shared with everybody.

When implementing Google Drive as a “public” folder, the Google Drive account should be assigned to a dedicated Google Apps admin account. This account should be the only owner of all files and folders, and only edit or view sharing permissions should be granted to users or even better to groups of users, based on company policy.

Granting permissions to groups rather than users makes it easy to manage new user’s permissions; by adding a user to one of the groups he/she will inherit the group’s permissions. Removing a users from a group will remove the drive permissions. The groups should relate to roles, for example: sales managers, developers etc. or to departments, for example: marketing, sales, accounting etc.

It is important to know that folders that are shared from the central drive account will appear into the user’s “Shared with me” section of their Google Drive web interface, and users will need to “Add to my Drive” if they want to see the folders nested structure or to sync them to their local computer with Google Drive Sync application. Also, syncing the entire central drive folder will usually include too much data to be stored on the local hard drive so it is extremely important to educate the users to sync only the folders they really need locally.

Before migrating your files take some time to clean old staff and to reorganize the folders. The migration itself can be done by adding entire folders to Google Drive sync, through the web interface or with a 3rd party tool.

And finally, you don’t have to do it all alone, as a certified Google Apps for Work Partner SimplyApp can help you plan, deploy and support your entire Google Apps project environment. Contact us today for additional details.