Forum Moderators: phranque
Sarah
I'm not sure why you think you need FTP. If the server is located at work, and you are going to be accessing it from work, why not just make the machine a part of your Windows network, and access it like you would access any other machine on the network - from your Windows browser?
FTP would be *a* way of accessing the machine from home, if you need to, but is not a very secure way. And not one likely to garner support from your IT department, which is probably why you were quoted a 2-4 week wait while they "think about it". (More likely while they think of some good reasons they can give for why they can't do it, and worry about any political toes they might be stepping on in denying the request.) In any case, if they are reluctant, there is good reason for their reluctance.
Rather than requesting something outside of the norm that isn't a very good idea anyway, why not ask your IT department how they provide remote access to other employees who need to access an on-site system, and go along with that? I'd imagine that the approved method is NOT FTP, but that doesn't matter to you - what matters is that you can get at the files when you need to.
(Most companies would typically use VPN software to allow employees working from home to connect to an internal network. Alternately, they might like you to use SFTP to connect to the test machine, omitting access to the overall network.)
I guess I could just connect it as another machine on our main server and access it that way.
Not sure what you mean by this. I'm also not sure if you're talking here about using the laptop at home, or at work?
Windows networking doesn't work this way. There's no need to "connect" your laptop to "the main server". It just needs to be connected to your network, and made part of your workgroup or Windows domain.
You need help from your IT department. You need to tell them what you *really need*, not what you think the solution is. What you need is to be able to have read/write access to the files on the test machine from whatever location you are working from (office only? home and office?)
I am the IT department.
Most of the hardware and servers are taken care of by an outside company. The company is the one that we purchase our software from that runs scheduling/billing/inventory/accounting and database. That company actually contracts the hardware out to a 3rd company. There is no server for employees and no workgroups set up.... If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes I would doubt they even had a windows server.
And as for the Test Machine.... That's my laptop. And it technically does not exist yet cause I haven't gotten around to putting it together yet. I still am not sure what to do with it once it gets built.
I'm not sure why you think you need FTP. If the server is located at work, and you are going to be accessing it from work, why not just make the machine a part of your Windows network, and access it like you would access any other machine on the network - from your Windows browser?
The machine I needed to FTP to isn't at work. It's our (well my) Crystal Tech web host.
And the FTP issue have been resolved.
I guess I could just connect it as another machine on our main server and access it that way.Not sure what you mean by this. I'm also not sure if you're talking here about using the laptop at home, or at work?
I haven't tried a laptop out as a webserver, would work but I wonder about slower disk access and possible overheating.
