NAS Drive with Security - Backup - Remote Access

Scream

Scream

Scream

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A local business has asked me to get them a NAS drive and I was looking for suggestions as its an area I don't know much about. They want to store business files on the drive which will work in real time and accessed by several machines on the network.

Whats the best way to backup a NAS drive? They want to do daily backups and would prefer it to be automatic and carried out at the end of each working day.

I hear a lot about various forms of RAID and one that allows mirroring so if you had two drives and one fails, things can carry on at work with the one drive and you just replace the damaged drive. I thought this would be ideal so the company would never really suffer from downtime unless both drives died.

Is there a better method or another form of Raid worth considering? Do the drives have to be the same spec or say in a years time, one drive packs up, can you stick any size of drive into the machine and it will carry on? i.e One 500Gb drive needs replaced and you stick a 2TB drive in a year later to replace the damaged drive. Will a 500Gb drive work ok in Raid with a 2Tb drive?

Remote access is important to files from home so how good is the security for remote access and is it a case of setting up port forwarding on the router to redirect to the NAS drive?

Most importantly, if the NAS went bang in the morning, can you plug the drives into your desktop for example, and still be able to read the contents or do they use some other form of a filing system?

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
 
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How much space do they realistically need? How big is your budget? If it were me, I would have 3 x whatever size disk you need.

If you need 500GB of space, get 1TB disks so you have room for the future.

I would have a NAS with 2 x 'X'TB disk in Raid1 (mirrored - if one drive dies then the other takes over with no downtime)

I would then get an esata/USB case for another HDD the same and set up a daily back up to that. Then at the end of the night take the external home.
 
Look on the Synology home page for a good NAS. But I think it would be better to have a file server plus a backup system.

How much money have they got to spend? do you know how to setup/look after servers?
 
I use two Synology NAS's - one is primary the second is for offsite backups. The NAS comes with built in software that can schedule automatic backups at a time of your choosing. Works really well.
 
Cheers for info guys. I will look at the Synology drives and the Qnap.

deuse, you mentioned servers. Can you explain why you might think a fileserver would be better over a NAS? There seems to be a lot of interest in these HP Proliant Microserver's. Is that something you would consider as an alternative?
 
It all depends on how much money and time they have to set it all up and if they have a guy to look after a server.

Do they want\have a guy who can look after a server?
The HP is a great deal if the offer of £100 cash back is still going. But it will still need a OS and someone to look after it.

Find out how much cash they have first then work from there as 2 Synology 4 bay will set them back £800+HDs
But at least Synology have good support and software.

I would post in the Servers and Enterprise Solutions section see what they say.

EDIT=Thinking about it I would get them what Shine posted. Then at you won't get phone calls asking you to fix it ;)
 
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matthab said:
Id go for the small HP server in the Servers and Enterprise section of the Forums.
Click to expand...

And whats your reason for this choice?

deuse, you made a good point regarding the calls to come and fix it and thats something I wish to avoid since I am an hours drive or more away and I know the same people will torture me if the slightest thing is not going right so something that plugs in and needs little work to setup would be nice.

Now the small HP server thingy might be purchased for my own use after I read more about it.
 
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Scream said:
And whats your reason for this choice?

deuse, you made a good point regarding the calls to come and fix it and thats something I wish to avoid since I am an hours drive or more away and I know the same people will torture me if the slightest thing is not going right so something that plugs in and needs little work to setup would be nice.

Now the small HP server thingy might be purchased for my own use after I read more about it.
Click to expand...

I chose this because you can load it with freenas which has a lot of features and has a proven track record for reliability. It looks more professional. It can take 4 drives and using a raid card can give you raid 5.

Its just more flexible and is more aimed for this use. Also i forgot to mention its a great price.
 
Look in the server forum about the HP micro server. then as said in post #2 external at night and take it home. jobs a gooden
 
i got the hp microserver running unraid (runs from usb) got 3 *2TB drives in (giving 4tb of storage , 1 parity and 2 storage), files are backed up online to livedrive

Would look into that as well.
 
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