Transfer Large Files to Multiple Remote Sites in Hybrid Cloud Environment

How to Send and Transfer Large Files

Large files can present significant challenges to any organization, particularly if those files frequently need to be transferred between collaborating teams, to other locations, or to external partners. That’s because, in addition to the additional storage space required for these files, slow transfer speeds and high bandwidth requirements can take their toll on network performance. Additionally, if the files are stored in the cloud, egress costs – the fees many cloud providers charge from you to download files to other locations – can be exorbitant. This may not be a big deal if you only occasionally deal with large files or if your idea of a “large file” is 10’s of gigabytes. But what if you routinely deal with files or sets of files that are 100’s of gigabytes or even a terabyte or more in size? And what if you work with hundreds of such files every week?

The IT Challenges for AEC Firms

A few industries come to mind where large files are the norm. One affected industry is biotech, where a single study can generate as much as a terabyte of raw data. Other affected industries are architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) and media and entertainment, where an average of 100 minutes of raw footage video is required to produce a single minute of production video. But it’s not just size that matters, industries such as these also regularly collaborate with multiple external partners. Files are continuously moved back and forth and synchronized amongst multiple locations to avoid version conflicts. The cost of bandwidth challenges and egress expenses are compounded since they are incurred each time the file moves. As a result, the organization’s bandwidth can easily be completely consumed, and the egress charges can run well into the thousands of dollars each month!

The cost of moving large files is associated with the way the files are transferred in these industries. Files have traditionally been transferred using FTP. The overhead of managing large file sets and the inefficiency of FTP protocol for large files has led to the advent of specialist companies that developed proprietary algorithms for file transfer. Unfortunately, while effective, these companies charge 100’s of dollars per TB for a file transfer, well beyond the budget of many companies.

Cloud NAS Storage in 2023

Now, more workloads are moving to cloud adding a requirement to store files in the cloud. File transfer has evolved from point-to-point to store-and-fetch, i.e. save files in cloud and download as needed. With the shift to hybrid cloud storage and workloads and the advent of zero egress cloud storage by providers like Wasabi, Morro Data CloudNAS is disrupting the large file transfer market with two new offerings – zero egress and replicate. As its name implies, zero egress means that there are no egress fees, so you’re free to move files of any size in and out of the cloud, as often as you want at no additional cost. No ingress fees, no egress fees, no other hidden fees of any kind; the monthly storage cost covers it all, giving you the freedom to run your enterprise with Revit or some other design applications as you see fit without incurring additional costs.

Replicate is a new kind of share that provides an alternative to real-time sync. Real-time sync is extremely beneficial to teams that are spread across multiple locations yet collaborate using the same files throughout the day. For them, changes made to the file in one location must immediately be reflected in all other locations. And when file sizes are smaller, this is easily done without consuming much of the organization’s network bandwidth. Replicate is beneficial for organizations that need to perform one-way file transfers. While the file may move back and forth between teams, locations, or partners, they don’t require multi-office simultaneous access. Instead, the replication can be scheduled at a convenient time when network traffic is low, such as after business hours. As a result, bandwidth utilization is optimized and transfer speeds are much faster. Replicate is also much more cost-efficient than using large-scale data transfer alternatives.

The cost and bandwidth savings, in addition to the ease of use and convenience associated with replicate with zero egress, are poised to disrupt the file transfer industry. Visit www.morrodata.com to learn how zero egress and replicate can help you store, manage, and collaborate with large files without the associated high costs.