Looking for a good NAS for business

[Zratch]

Hi,

Like the title says, I am looking for a good NAS server for the business I work for currently. I've been a tech for about 4 years now, started my business recently but still full time employed by a big company in Quebec. I found this on Newegg http://www.newegg.caProductComboBundleDetails.aspx?ItemList=Combo.1172229
looks like it could do the job just fine, but wanted to make sure has I never configured a NAS before, so I have some questions.

First, I'm guessing this is plug and play, I just have to have the head office put in place a static IP for the server and then browse to it or do I have to configure freenas ?

Is freenas the best free OS for these devices or there are some better ? Looking mostly for free OS since, like all big company IT dept is left behind in the budget.

I read a little about freenas on their website but still looking for comments, AD support is easy to configure and use and working right away ?

I know this depends a lot of my network speeds, but do red WD disc really makes a difference in a NAS ? My users are all spread up accross the province of Quebec in 22 branches and about 150 users would need to backup daily to this device.

The backups would be made via a robocopy batch file, a task in the task scheduler or manual from the client. The batch would map the drive, users do the backup, remove the network drive and close itself, unless someone has a better idea. I do not want people working from the NAS as this could reduce backup speed for others.

Would this be a good solution ?

tl:dr I need a nas, nas OS and some questions about it works since I never installed one before.

Thank you

Dominic

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

FreeNAS is cool......dunno if I'd use it in a business though....great for home users, enthusiasts, IT people to use in their own scrapyards of fun stuff. But for a business I'd want to use something that has a backing/support.

I really like Synology units.
http://www.synology.com/us/index.php
Great features and performance.

As for what drives to use, I use enterprise rated drives in them...so that usually means WD Black Edition...or ideally....WD RE4 series. The Reds look interesting...I'll try some in a while, still a fairly new product so I'll give it another year or so to iron out the bugs.

As for what model/size/capacity to get....I'm not sure of your needs. You plopping a unit at each branch? Or having all 150 users that are spread around...copy through a VPN tunnel or something like that?

AD support...pretty easy...join the AD, and you'll now have a list of users that you can control just like on a regular Windows Server in AD.

Yes stuff like this on a network should be given a static IP.

 

[krtechsolutions]

Synology is what we use as well

Also have used QNAP in the best and they are great units.

 

[Martyn]

Synology for me as well. I'm just amazed at the features it has on top of the reasons I bought it for a client. I bought one with a raid 1 setup, backup to external USB to take offsite and backups to Amazon S3 online for a client. Once I dug into the features I bought one for home home for backups and I play my music through Pple TV.

 

[Zratch]

Yeah I took a look at synology and they look good, probably better than me having to get FreeNas up and running, with all there is to do here... I'll wait for my supplier to get me a quote for this, and might stay with black drive as there will be no backups, only 4x1tb hdd in raid5.

To answer your question StoneCat, it will be one NAS in the head office only.

Let me know if you have any more ideas, and I'll let you know if this gets approved and how things are going here

Thanks !

 

[coffee]

Yeah I took a look at synology and they look good, probably better than me having to get FreeNas up and running, with all there is to do here... I'll wait for my supplier to get me a quote for this, and might stay with black drive as there will be no backups, only 4x1tb hdd in raid5.

To answer your question StoneCat, it will be one NAS in the head office only.

Let me know if you have any more ideas, and I'll let you know if this gets approved and how things are going here

Thanks !

If I may interject here, Iam looking into these products also and would be really helpful to hear your experience with synology and the product. I guess kinda a mini-review of whatever model you buy.

Best Regards,

Coffee

 

[PBComputer]

I would go synology, I've used freenas and have a drobo, will post a review on each tomorrow.

 

[ArtemusComputerTechnology]

FreeNAS is good for a business depending on how many employees. You can go with building your own NAS. Purchasing a diskless case then buy the HDDs. It's your world.

 

[PBComputer]

To expand on last nights post.

I have used drobo, freenas, synology, and a linux installed as a file share to backup to.

Drobo

Expensive, but worth the extra cost if you what the best, only had a couple of problems one a hard drive failed but replaced and worked fine. and the drobo it's self failed but was replaced by drobo and all working well now.

Freenas

Always found it slow even on a gigabit network. - tried it a few times always ditched it.

Synology

This is the best option, keep finding new things it can do, and never failed. used daily in the office.

Ubuntu

If you a looking for a dead cheap solution, install ubuntu set a few file shares and your good to go, I have used this a few times for a temporary solution.

Paul

 

[Zratch]

To expand on last nights post.

I have used drobo, freenas, synology, and a linux installed as a file share to backup to.

Drobo

Expensive, but worth the extra cost if you what the best, only had a couple of problems one a hard drive failed but replaced and worked fine. and the drobo it's self failed but was replaced by drobo and all working well now.

Freenas

Always found it slow even on a gigabit network. - tried it a few times always ditched it.

Synology

This is the best option, keep finding new things it can do, and never failed. used daily in the office.

Ubuntu

If you a looking for a dead cheap solution, install ubuntu set a few file shares and your good to go, I have used this a few times for a temporary solution.

Paul

I talked with my supplier yesterday afternoon, and he recommended the asustor AS-606t, which his team installed in an hospital and couple of other businesses. It is a 6bay hot swappable that comes with it's own OS, linux based, look very simple to use, support raid 0/1/5/6/10/jbod, I'll go with raid 6 since there won't be any tape backups on this.

My new question is, anyone got any feedback on this ? Price is good, in my opinion, 988.99 CAD, plus each 1tb drive WD Red (which he tried and got feedback from his techs as very reliable) for 90$. If i remember correctly it was about 1500.

Anyway, anyone tried Asustor or got any feedback on them ??

Regards,

Edit : link to product : http://www.asustor.com/product?p_id=3

 

[MotzTech]

I'll go with raid 6 since there won't be any tape backups on this.
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You should probably still have a backup in place, unless the data isn't that important. Raid is great for availability but it is not an alternative to backups. Even something as simple as using a sync program to sync this to another nas or external hard drive would work.

 

[uprighttech]

We've used several brands of NAS and have settled on Synology. The combination of good performance and great software convinced us. We have not had any major issues with any of the Synology units we've installed. And Motztech is correct, RAID is not a substitute for a backup.

 

[KompuKare]

Anyway, anyone tried Asustor or got any feedback on them ??

Regards,

Edit : link to product : http://www.asustor.com/product?p_id=3

TPU did a review of that exact model.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Asustor/AS-606T/19.html

Asustor is a new Asus venture (2011 or so) and I'm surprised that one of the minus in the review was 'short warranty'. I would have though that a new entrant would have to offer longer warranty if they are serious about breaking into the market...

I would say if the client is willing to pay, you're better off with Synology.

 

[Zratch]

You should probably still have a backup in place, unless the data isn't that important. Raid is great for availability but it is not an alternative to backups. Even something as simple as using a sync program to sync this to another nas or external hard drive would work.

Yeah I know I should still have a tape backup solution, I do have one for my main server, but tapes are limited to 600gb... Unless I can convince the operations team to purchase tapes, and have the server filled in no time (about 1.5tb), and would need about 3 tapes per day, plus month...

Unless tapes for tl2000 dell tape library are cheap...

long story short, it will be users backup in case their hard drive dies, no one will have access to the NAS but me for restore. Well, that's the plan and we know it will never work out...

So it will be users hard drive backup and documents backup, which in my opinion won't need backup everyday. I might push to have more monthly tapes and do monthly backups of the NAS, but probably not daily.

If I am wrong, feel free to tell me there's always place for improvements in my opinion

 

[MotzTech]

Ahh I see, if this is going to be a backup device itself I would say your fine. The rule of thumb I follow is always have data on at least two completely separate devices. Since this is going to be a backup of other systems, then you will have the data on two devices, the original device and this.

Out of curiosity what backup solution are you using? If you have the space you may want to consider full image backups, it makes restores a snap.

Just today I had a clients computer crash and I had a virtual copy of their PC running within the hour.

 

[othersteve]

After experiencing many different types of NAS devices I am 100% in favor of Synology products. The quality is simply unmatched and the OS (DiskStation Manager) is awesome.

 

[Zratch]

Ahh I see, if this is going to be a backup device itself I would say your fine. The rule of thumb I follow is always have data on at least two completely separate devices. Since this is going to be a backup of other systems, then you will have the data on two devices, the original device and this.

Out of curiosity what backup solution are you using? If you have the space you may want to consider full image backups, it makes restores a snap.

Just today I had a clients computer crash and I had a virtual copy of their PC running within the hour.

What do you use as a backup system ? For now I am using a robocopy batch file to mirror the drive and relying on tape backups for restoration, but since there won't be tapes on the NAS, I'm not sure how I could follow.

Reminder : I'm in a business and a lot of documents get added/deleted everyday and sometime I need to get them back from a couple of days /weeks. If someone has any how I could script this or if there is a software that would keep image on my nas for let's say 30days them remove it, would be much appreciated.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Reminder : I'm in a business and a lot of documents get added/deleted everyday and sometime I need to get them back from a couple of days /weeks. If someone has any how I could script this or if there is a software that would keep image on my nas for let's say 30days them remove it, would be much appreciated.

Synology units come with a variety of backup options.....including a bundled backup agent....see following link for more details.
http://www.synology.com/us/solutions/backup/backup_office/bkp_office.php

From there...you can set them to backup "offsite" via several options.
*Backup to a cloud service like Amazon
*Pickup a matching Synology model...keep it some place else like your home or some other location with good bandwidth...and set to the two Synology units to "synch" with each other. So basically you're maintaining an offsite "clone" this way....like a long distance RAID 1 !

 

[Zratch]

That is a +1 for synology. Does all models have this function or only some ? Would be a good idea if I can get the head office involve, we could sync our NAS there and never loose anything, in case of fire and such.

thanks again !

 

[ShinyTech]

Have you looked at the IOsafe NAS devices. Fire proof, water proof, and can be bolted to the floor. The offer RAID setup and on top of that they come with a data garentee so if the device fails they will pay for 50,000 to 100,000 dollars worth of data recovery. Good pricing too. Check out thier website you can build the one you want and it will give you pricing options.