ArcGIS Pro and using Teams for File Storage

[LaurelWarner]

My company wants to transition to using Microsoft Teams for all of our file storage needs vs having all our files stored on a network drive. Has anyone else done this? We are currently testing various scenarios to see how this works with geodatabases and other geospatial files. If anyone has any feedback, tips, tricks, things to watch out for we would appreciate it. That way we can provide feedback so our company knows if the GIS files can be transitioned to Teams or if it needs to stay on a network drive for storage. Thanks!

[DanPatterson]

ArcGIS Pro 3.6 system requirements—ArcGIS Pro | Documentation

Cloud storage services, such as Microsoft OneDrive and Google Drive, are not supported unless stated otherwise in the documentation about specific tools and functionality. Learn more about ArcGIS Pro and cloud storage services.

Not sure if Teams fits into this category, but the link has options for virtualization

[MichaelVolz]

My experience with Teams for file storage is much clunkier and burdensome than network drive storage.

[JeromeHaaland]

I have done this relatively successfully with OneDrive for years.  Sharing about 400 GB of data.

ESRI states repeatedly that they don't support Cloud Storage.  However, it does work.

For quite a number of reasons, I would pick Dropbox over OneDrive.  OneDrive as an individual app is pretty much a piece of junk.  Mostly reliable, but super slow.  And the UI is ridiculous.  A full description would take a book.

I would highly recommend Dropbox over OneDrive.  Dropbox has been rewritten in the Rust language.  It is so much faster than OneDrive... and much more reliable.

Cloud business is Dropbox's bread and butter.  OneDrive is a laughable sideline for Microsoft.

I am not a Dropbox employee... or get paid by Dropbox in any way.  Just like their software.  🙂

[JeromeHaaland]

By the way, Teams / OneDrive / SharePoint all have similar cloud storage functionality.  Basically, they are different marketing names that Microsoft uses for the same thing.  Microsoft does build different functionality into each product... but the cloud storage part of each product is essentially the exact same thing.

[LindsayRaabe_FPCWA]

I'd recommend sticking to a local server if possible. We had our GIS data moved into a cloud hosted server a few years ago, and it's causing a lot of problems with slow loading and general latency issues when using ArcGIS Pro. A project saved on the network can take over 4 minutes to load. When all the network datasources are moved onto a hard drive and plugged into the same machine with the Drive Letter remapped to the hard drive, load times are down to 50 seconds. Menus (e.g. right click on a layer) load instantly (instead of after a period of time of thinking). About to make the case that we need to bring all out GIS data back to local network storage. Wish me luck!

[BarryNorthey]

We faced the 'what is convenient for IT' vs 'what works for GIS' dispute before cloud storage was a thing. Our IT people knew nothing about GIS, particularly file sizes but were empowered to call the shots. You seem to be on the right track setting up performance tests between the two environments before going all in but consider getting someone 'in the room' with the power to call the shots with IT.

I worked in an outfit that worked in remote locations doing emergency wildfire mapping where wireless connections were slow, unstable or unavailable. We developed a program to deliver centrally managed eGDB sourced feature classes in fGDB format for download to local disk thus eliminating bottlenecks to some of the necessary data. It was of course just one way and current to that download. The world has changed since then but I bet that the best performance still comes from locally sourced spatial data. 

[Robert_LeClair]

This may provide some additional information and considerations:  Best practices when integrating data from cloud data warehouses with ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Enterpris...