ALTO vs On-Site Infrastructure: When the Server Room Stops Being Enough

Home Solutions

By NexSysIT Editorial Team · Updated 23 Sept 2026

The servers and storage in the comms room are the most defensible IT most small practices own. It’s fast, it’s paid for, creating SMB shares is simple, its mobile apps let a director open a PDF on an iPhone from site, and a Revit central model on a local network is exactly what Autodesk designed worksharing for. So this isn’t a page that says the box is wrong. It’s about the three things that make it stop being enough, and what to do then.

We’re NexSys’s infrastructure team. Our senior engineers spent two decades on NetApp storage, Veeam and virtualised Autodesk platforms at Norman Disney & Young, NAB and Fujitsu before joining us, and between us we’ve retired more on-site servers and storage arrays than we’ve installed. Both were right at the time.

Start the Free ALTO Trial

Call 1300 733 010

What on-site infrastructure does well, and Autodesk agrees

One office, one network, one central model on a wired connection: that’s the environment Autodesk’s worksharing guidance describes, and a properly specified on-site file server or storage array delivers it. Autodesk’s advice is that the local copy and the central file belong in the same geographic location, and storage on the same switch as the workstations is that by definition. For a practice of eight to fifteen people in one office, with backups going somewhere else, on-site storage is hard to beat on cost per terabyte, the important features are all there, and there’s no shame in keeping it. Ten users, one office, files stored locally. Home ground.

The trouble is that “somewhere else” and “one office” are the two assumptions that quietly stop being true: a second office opens, or a site shed, or two people start working from home three days a week, and the on-site server is suddenly being reached over a VPN. Or the backup turns out to be a folder on the same box, or a Dropbox sync that copied the encrypted files as faithfully as the good ones. Nobody finds out until it matters.

Three things that end on-site infrastructure: the VPN, the ransomware, the second office

The VPN first: Revit worksharing over a VPN works badly and corrupts occasionally, and Autodesk says so, since the traffic between central and local was never designed for a tunnel across the internet. AutoCAD xrefs over VPN are slow rather than broken, which is worse, because people keep using them and blame the performance on the internet. Ransomware second. The Australian Signals Directorate’s 2024–25 report puts the average self-reported cost of a cybercrime for a medium business at $97,200, up 55 per cent in a year, and Synology’s own research puts backups as the first target in 94 per cent of ransomware attacks. On-site storage with the backup on the same server, or on a USB drive beside it, is the environment those numbers describe.

The second office third. On-site infrastructure is single-site by design, so a practice with two places to be either builds a second server room and syncs them, which breaks worksharing and creates a lot of duplicate-file issues, or points the second office at the first over a VPN, which is the first problem again. Every practice we’ve moved off on-site infrastructure hit one of the three. Most hit two.

A cloud platform built for the workloads the server room was carrying, not generic cloud storage solutions

ALTO is NexSys’s purpose-built cloud architecture for AEC environments, and the honest description is the on-site servers, storage and VPN replaced by one platform every office reaches the same way, with none of the downtime of a drive rebuild or a Sunday firmware update. Project storage sits on tiers chosen for modelling responsiveness, because Revit models, coordination files and rendering assets generate IOPS that general-purpose cloud storage was never sized for. Compute scales for render and analysis jobs running beside the storage, and each project is segmented and isolated with role-based access, so the contractor who finished in March can’t see the project that started in June.

The backup is where it differs most from the cupboard. It’s immutable and isolated from the primary workloads, so a compromised account on your network can’t modify or delete it, which is the control the Essential Eight asks for at Maturity Level Two. Capacity planning is done in advance rather than when the drive light goes amber, teams upload and open files at the speed of the office link, and the platform is watched around the clock. Security is the same for every office, because there’s one secure platform, and the benefits show up in the tender questionnaire. Data is held in Australian regions with the locations in writing, which the South Australian and Western Australian supplier frameworks now ask consultants to state.

On-site vs cloud: how to decide, and when to keep the server room

Here’s the view some hardware vendors would argue with: on-site file storage should be the last server a practice owns, and it should go the year the second office opens, not the year it dies. An on-site server that fails is a bad day, but one being reached over a VPN by half the practice is a bad year that nobody notices until the central model corrupts before a submission, so count the people who touch it from outside the office; more than two, and on-site is already the wrong tool. On cost: on-site infrastructure, meaning servers and storage, a UPS, an offsite backup subscription and the space and power to run them, is a capital cost replaced every five years, and the fair comparison with a per-user cloud platform is that five-year cost plus the hours.

A caveat we’d rather state than have you discover. If you’re one office, everyone’s on the wired network, the backup is offsite and immutable, and nobody works from home on the model, keep the on-site setup and put the money into workstations; this website has a guide for that. ALTO is for the practice that has outgrown one room, and the trial is four weeks with full access and no contracts, so move one live project and see. The ALTO page covers what’s included, and the disaster recovery page covers the backup side properly.

Questions practices ask about on-site infrastructure and cloud

Can you workshare a Revit central model over a VPN to an on-site server?

Autodesk’s guidance is that the local copy and the central file belong in the same geographic location, because that traffic wasn’t designed for a VPN. It works badly and corrupts occasionally. Cross-site worksharing needs Revit Server, Autodesk’s cloud worksharing, or a platform that serves the central model to every office from one place.

Is on-site storage a backup?

Not on its own. On-site storage is primary storage, and a backup on the same server or the same network is the first thing ransomware encrypts. Synology’s own research puts backups as the first target in 94 per cent of attacks. A backup has to be a separate, immutable copy that a compromised account can’t modify or delete.

Should a small practice invest in on-site infrastructure or go to the cloud first?

One office, everyone on the wired network, fewer than about fifteen people: keep or buy on-site storage, and buy the offsite immutable backup the same day. The step to a cloud file server comes when the second office or the third remote worker arrives, and it’s simpler before the on-site storage is full than after.

Can ALTO import the data from our existing servers and storage?

Yes. We copy the shares across with permissions intact. Your existing storage stays read-only through the trial, and we cut over one project at a time. The old box becomes a local cache or a doorstop.

NexSysIT Editorial Team

Editorial team, NexSys

Written and reviewed by the NexSys engineers, design technology specialists and consultants who build and support IT for architecture, engineering and construction firms across Australia. Every price, rule and vendor statement is checked against its source on the date shown.

Last updated 23 Sept 2026