"Dropbox-like" service for the University of Vienna

<!--HTML-->The increasing popularity of dropbox and at the same time increasing awareness for data security did create the demand for an onsite "Dropbox-like" “sync and share” service at the University of Vienna. It has been decided that ownCloud would be a good start, since other academic institutions have been working on an ownCloud based solution as well. Based on ownCloud enterprise Version 6 the service is currently in test operation with campus wide availability for staff only planned for 12/2014. Major concerns were the scalability of the storage backend. So instead of using an enterprise storage solution we use Scality’s RING as backend. The RING is an object storage based solution using local storage nodes. Since the ownCloud architecture does so far not allow a RESTbased storage backend we use Scality’s FUSE connector to simulate a virtually limitless filesystem (POSIX). Based on the experiences reported by other academic facilities and our own, our main concerns have been database performance-scalability, storage backend architecture and general software design. Some of which might already have been addressed by ownCloud community version 7. It’s also noteworthy, that ownCloud’s support team responds properly to submitted bug reports. The admittedly limited user feedback has been quite positive so far. A other issue which have to be solved is the legal issue: What happened with the data, which are shared, after a stuff member leaves the University? We want to establish special terms of use for this service, which everybody who want to use the ownCloud service have to accept.