March MyWorkDrive Newsletter 2023

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Migrate to the Cloud with MyWorkDrive

Moving to the Cloud? Think MyWorkDrive First.

MyWorkDrive is a core component of many Cloud First or Cloud Migration strategies, owing to map drive functionality in the Windows/macOS Clients which uses HTTPS and doesn’t require insecure ports like 445 or complicated VPN connections; coupled with flexible storage sources like SMB/Windows Shares, non-windows CIFS shares, Azure File Shares with SMB, and now OneDrive and SharePoint with version 6.4 (currently in Preview). Users who’s file shares have been migrated to the cloud can still have their same share paths, without having any on-premise file servers.

MyWorkDrive Cloud Based File Server Benefits

  • Keep the same user experience with no training needed
  • No vendor Lock-in with storage that you control
  • Simple, Easy Setup with No Migration
  • No hardware to maintain on-premises
  • Unlimited Capacity and no file count limits
  • Reduce cost compared to cloud only services
  • Maintain Data Privacy, Control of files and storage location

Many new customers come to MyWorkDrive at the point they migrate to the cloud, discovering SMB ports blocked by their ISP, file limits, syncing issues or struggling under the user requests related to failed VPN connections. The deployment options for MyWorkDrive are flexible, to suit your organization’s preferences for scale, redundancy and reliably.

MyWorkDrive can work with any SMB file storage

MyWorkDrive now also connects to OneDrive and SharePoint Sites, folders, and Libraries in version 6.4 (currently in preview).

Active Directory

MyWorkDrive authenticates users using Active Directory (Active Directory Domain Services). What is commonly thought of as “on prem active directory”, this is also easy to run in the cloud.

  • It could be Domain Controllers moved to the cloud as VMs.
  • It could be a read only domain controller sync’d from On Prem via VPN
  • Or it could be Azure AD Domain Services (“Hosted Active Directory”) from Microsoft or Directory Services from AWS.

A sample configuration in Azure might include

  • Azure File Shares (Premium for daily work loads, Standard for archival data) with SMB Multi-Channel enabled
  • Azure AD Domain Services hosted AD
  • Domain Joined Windows Server with MyWorkDrive with Accelerated Networking enabled.

View SMB and OneDrive/SharePoint files in one interface

When clients initially size their file shares, they often include the user’s home folders that they’re migrating in their size estimates. Often, users with Microsoft or Office 365 licenses will have OneDrive storage included with their license, and user folders can be migrated to OneDrive, cutting back on enterprise storage needs.

With 6.4, those home folders and SharePoint sites can be mapped through MyWorkDrive, eliminating the need to deploy the OneDrive sync client, or retrain users – since the drive letter can still be “U:” for their user data, but now pointed to OneDrive instead of an SMB Path (or “h” or “j” or whatever letter is being used).

What’s coming next

MyWorkDrive was founded around the core value that organizations should have the option to retain ownership and control of their files – wherever they are stored. With that in mind, our future road map items include:

  • Broader support for file storage beyond SMB. You already see that with our introduction of OneDrive/SharePoint.
  • Azure File Shares and Azure Blob Storage via API Key with the possibility of other API Key integrations such as Amazon S3, Cloudflare R2, Google Cloud Storage, Back Blaze, etc.
  • AzureAD SSO for user validation without Active Directory Domain Services

In the future look for support for other SSOs and directory-less alternatives as likely possibilities.

Looking to migrates files or services to the cloud? Learn more..