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File Shares vs. SharePoint

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I had a series of interesting conversations over the last few days with a storage server colleague about hosted file shares. He and his team hypothesized that a hosted share service would “cannibalize” our hosted SharePoint offering. Here’s my response to his notion that file shares and SharePoint compete against each other:

“It’s not about how SharePoint and File Shares compete, but about how SharePoint is not the right mechanism for certain scenarios and file shares fill that gap. File Shares are all about storing data, but SharePoint is all about connecting people to information. SharePoint is not the replacement for file shares. SharePoint is the UI that makes data accessible and useful no matter where it’s stored. In the future, SharePoint will store some amount of data, maybe all of it on file shares, but in the end SharePoint is not concerned with how data is stored. Rather, it exposes data to users in logical ways and helps those users interpret data to formulate information.”

So what are the scenarios where file shares make more sense than SharePoint as a storage technology, you ask? There are really only a few I can think of:

  • Databases and concurrently accessed application files – I’m not sure why you would store databases or application files on SharePoint. They have no collaborative value and any application using these files would likely connect to these files using a LAN protocol and not http.
  • Backups and dumps – Again, these have no collaborative value. I guess it’s possible that you may want a list of these files. In that case, you could store these files on a file share and use one of the share view web parts or build an application that indexes the share and stores the metadata in a list.
  • Files larger than 100MB – While it’s possible to store large files on SharePoint, I think File Shares are better at it. Often bandwidth constraints prevent users from completing uploads and downloads of really large files over the net. Again, you can store large files on shares and link to these files using SharePoint.
  • Large sets of files – The scenario here is that you want to store lots of related files in the same SharePoint folder. For example, maybe your organization creates an hourly report and wants to store many years worth of these reports in the same SharePoint folder. If they absolutely refused to organize this data in a hierarchal fashion, it would be best to store this data on a file share. While technically you could store this data on SharePoint, best practice suggests that you should limit any single folder to less than 2000 items. This is because management of large lists can become cumbersome and upgrades can be a challenge. Not that large file shares perform much better IMHO J

Comments

  • Anonymous
    December 11, 2006
    Hi Michael, Great post and informations about how Sharepoint Tecnologies can be used (and not) as corporate file share´s replacement ... making colaborative file share´s! :) Best Regards Hélio Sá - SPS MVP

  • Anonymous
    January 07, 2007
    I have seen a number of threads that have passed by suggesting that file servers are dead with others

  • Anonymous
    January 09, 2007
    Nice post! Informative! SSA http://sharepointblogs.com/ssa

  • Anonymous
    February 20, 2007
    Hi Michael, You are recommending the following for storing large files in MOSS: "you can store large files on shares and link to these files using SharePoint" Could you please provide more information on how it could be done, so we can still take advantage of all Document Center features but only store 'link' Vs BLOB. Apriciate your help Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    May 13, 2007
    Hi all, Many times I follow and participate of discussions on " File Servers versus Sharepoint ", and

  • Anonymous
    September 04, 2007
    It's a shame that the recommendation is holding back on files > 100MB.  Multiple locations for files defeats the purpose of centralizing information.

  • Anonymous
    September 30, 2007
    Body: One of the topics that routinely comes up with many of the clients I work with is the capability

  • Anonymous
    March 12, 2008
    I read this now (it's never too late:)) and i want to know if this considerations are always in course or if the evolution of SharePoint (MOSS2007/WSS3) made it better than file share ? Thanks (and excuse for my language if nerver...)

  • Anonymous
    April 08, 2008
    I'm sometimes reminded that there is still a lot of debate over how to position file shares and SharePoint

  • Anonymous
    May 06, 2008
    Common questions I still encounter very frequently is "Should I use SharePoint to replace my file shares?

  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2008
    Is there any easy way to migrate thousands of files from my file server to Windows Share Point Services? Note: I would't like to migrate manually.

  • Anonymous
    June 16, 2008
    Is there any easy way to migrate thousands of files from my file server to Windows Share Point Services? Note: I would't like to migrate manually.

  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2008
    i have issues with spp 2003 when linking cells in two excel files both on sharepoint, especially using "import external data" -> "new database query" menu. it does not support the links as it starts with http: and you don't want to make "new web querry" as it is not a web page but excel document. any comments?

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2008
    Dear Sir I am currently implementing Sharepoint at our office. We are using a File Server and was wondering if there are possible synergy between File server and Sharepoint.

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2008
    Does using SharePoint Explorer view be equivalent to the normal file server usage

  • Anonymous
    December 27, 2009
    Hi Michael The Windows 2003 is much more better to match file storage. However, we still plan to migrate file storage to sharepoint. is there any limitation for sharepoint, such as the maximum file size? the maximum storage size?

  • Anonymous
    March 01, 2012
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