Migrating GIS data off-site, a good idea?

[JohnPapageorgiou]

We currently house all of our GIS data (12 yrs worth) on a server in-house.  We do not have arcgis for server.  Our company at the suggestion of our IT contractor is considering moving all of our other files and GIS data off-site, so when working on .mxd files we will be accessing data from an off-site server.  The reason this transition is being considered is because our company has grown and has several branches in several cities and we have lag times with the DFS servers installed in each office.  When it comes to GIS, is this the direction we should go in?  Has anyone done this?  Any cautionary tales?  Any suggestions if we do proceed with this?  Should the GIS department not even entertain the thought?  Are there any additional software products we will need to invest in to make this happen?  I am interested in hearing your opinions and if you have any literature to direct me to that would be great. 

thanks,

John

[ChrisSmith7]

If you are really concerned about network speed, you should at least have a look into an MPLS:

Multiprotocol Label Switching - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

What is Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS)? - Definition from WhatIs.com

MPLS advantages and disadvantages for WAN connectivity

This is pricey though!

[WesMiller]

When you say your moving your data off-site do you mean just the data or are you going to a Citrix​ or a vmware​ cloud environment.

If your just moving the data the vector data does pretty good if you have the ability to keep raster information in-house you may want to consider it(I'm thinking commonly used aerials and the like that you'll access frequently).

If your moving to one of the cloud environments just the opposite you'll want the raster data with those virtual machines to keep speed.

We are using the Citrix environment here but i also have a pc to handle geoprocessing and to test with.

Hope this helps

[JohnPapageorgiou]

Hi Wes and everyone who responded,

first off, thank you for your responses.  I just got a little more information about what is going on.  The use of a service called Egnyte is being proposed.  Right now we are in a testing phase.  I guess the first thing I was having trouble with was was establishing a connection to the account locally which in turn keeps me from establishing a connection to it with ArcGIS.  I had a similar issue but managed to overcome it with sharepoint and even when I did connect, although the data was vector, it was painfully slow to work with in ArcMap. I ended up making a local copy and uploading the new products when complete.  Is this the workflow we would have to use if we went that direction?  Seems a little cumbersome and prone to duplication and errors.  Especially if there are multiple GIS users/editors.  If all the data gets migrated to Egnyte is there a way to trick arcmap into thinking it is seeing the former GIS drive to prevent broken links and a lot of red exclamation points?  Are these truly potential pitfalls, or do I have it all wrong?  I don't have a problem with the migration, I just want it to be as smooth as possible.  Anyone with experience using Egnyte with ArcGIS feel free to chime in.

thanks!