Project Profile
Peer Software Solution
- PeerGFS™️
Customer's Platform(s)
- Microsoft
Locations
- 2 Main locations
Industry
- Architecture
Applications
- Microsoft Office
The Company
We seek to create sustainable, innovative, valuable and positive architecture that improves lives, builds communities and enhances society, or as we put it – Life Touching Design.
The Practice has extensive experience of undertaking projects for clients of all types, including major contractors, commercial, public sector and private clients throughout the UK, with a particular focus on projects in the Education, Healthcare, Residential and Workplace sectors in London, Norfolk, Cambridge and the Eastern Region.
The Challenge
The main challenge for us is working across two offices. Our main office is based in Norwich city center, and our office in Clerkenwell in London.
As we have two sites geographically separated, we have a replica of our data over both sites for DR. Users local to the servers use their own source. To keep the data replicated between the sites, we used DFSR built in to Windows Server.
Our users collaborate regularly to deliver projects as teams, often based out of both offices to make the best use of individuals skills and strengths. The biggest issue we faced, was our users often ended up requiring to work on the same file at the same time. This led to replication errors, but more importantly, users losing their work due to conflicted files. We desperately needed a solution to this.
Solution
We were introduced to Peer Software’s PeerLink many years ago now. It was what we used due to its ability to handle file locks which DFSR handles very poorly. DFSR is also not very friendly when it comes to the file size, we can often opening CAD files in between 2-5gb in size. Also DFSR does have issues when it comes to sheer number of files too in a volume. There is now very little risk to users losing work due this now. This meant users knew if someone else was in the relevant file, and are unable to overwrite it.
Results
For us, the main result is having confidence in our data integrity. There is little chance now of people losing work. It also provides and additional level of security by being able to store a certain quantity of files that have been modified.
We have seen PeerLink evolve in to over the years in to PeerGFS. A recent migration from one data server to another used their Seeding Target system. It proved reliable, quick, but more importantly from a system admins view, easy. It was very easy to configure and use. The support that Peer Software provide too is excellent.
