How can I set up a low-latency shared filesystem between two or more computers?
My use case is that I have three computers (two Windows, one Mac) all on the same LAN on which I work on projects using different platform-dependent software. My hope is that I can press Ctrl+S on one computer and switch to another and have the files ready to use there with little delay. Using a physical storage device to unplug from one machine and plug into another machine is rather annoying to do frequently, especially when using more than two computers.
There are certainly traditional solutions, such as cloud-storage services like Google Drive or Dropbox, but those have to sync to a cloud, which is undesirable for the usual reasons (high-latency, low-throughput, hosted by a corporation, recurring costs for large amounts of data).
A better option would be to use Syncthing, which solves all of the aforementioned problems except latency.
However, it would seem that the tool best suited for my use-case is a local NFS, I think? The problem is that it seems to be very heavily entrenched in the *nix ecosystem, with which I'm completely unfamiliar. A lot of the information online regarding NFS is esoteric enough that it's unclear if it's actually the solution I'm looking for, and—even if it is—I don't know where I'd even begin with setting one up, as a server or otherwise.
Solution 1:
You have two options:
- NFS - the *nix way
- CIFS / Samba - the Windows way
For 1), you will be hosting the files on the Mac, and you will need to follow instructions similar to this for the server side: http://www.behanna.org/osx/nfs/howto1.html Unfortunately, you need Windows 10 Enterprise edition to get the NFS client feature. If that is what you have, here is one of many instructionals: https://graspingtech.com/mount-nfs-share-windows-10/
For 2), you will be hosting the files on one of the Windows servers. This explains how to create a network share in Windows: https://www.techbout.com/share-files-folders-windows-10-44386/ and this explains how to connect the share from a Mac: https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/21600/mount-a-windows-share-in-os-x-and-have-it-reconnect-at-login/