Replacing server with NAS

jamoor

jamoor

jamoor

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We currently have a Windows 2012 server for our 5 user office.

After an incident last year where a power cut corrupted the windows installation, I'm looking to eliminate the server as it's wholly un-necessary. We only use it for file storage as everything else is in the cloud.

At the moment for backup we use crashplan, this backs up data to the cloud and versioning is included in case the server gets a cryptolocker virus or similar.

I was thinking to replace the server with a NAS, maybe by QNAP or Synology with 2 or 4 drives in Raid 1 configuration in case of hdd failure. The only thng I am struggling to find is a cloud based backup solution for these drives.
Synology offer hyper backup and cloud sync, will these have versioning in case the files become corrupted and then backed up? Does anyone have experience of these solutions?

Thanks!
 
Synology has good integration with BackBlaze B2 cloud storage. Good call on replacing the Windows machine -- supporting Windows pays all my bills, but for file servers, Windows is not the best thing out there, ironically enough.
 
After many years of building and configuring Windows Servers, I reached the end of my tether and started a project to eliminate all of our on-site Windows Servers.

I had already been using Synology NAS solutions for backups and decided to see how far I could take NAS to replace all of our Servers.

So far I use Synology NAS for the following:-

File Sharing
CCTV Live & Recording
On-site and off-site hyper backups
WordPress Websites ftp backups
iSCSI for Windows Virtual Hyper-V Servers (Virtual HDD Storage)

Currently working on moving the following from our Windows Servers to Synology NAS:-

Active Directory Server - which has just been released and I'm currently testing
DHCP Server
DNS Server
VPN Server

Eventually I hope to be left with a single Remote Desktop Windows Server that will be used for running Sage Accounts and I hope to move this to Azure in the next couple of years when our Server hardware needs to be replaced or if Sage create a package to run their software on a Synology NAS, I will move that over as well.
 
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Do
marin said:
After many years of building and configuring Windows Servers, I reached the end of my tether and started a project to eliminate all of our on-site Windows Servers.

I had already been using Synology NAS solutions for backups and decided to see how far I could take NAS to replace all of our Servers.

So far I use Synology NAS for the following:-

File Sharing
CCTV Live & Recording
On-site and off-site hyper backups
WordPress Websites ftp backups

Currently working on moving the following from our Windows Servers to Synology NAS:-

Active Directory Server - which has just been released and I'm currently testing
DHCP Server
DNS Server
VPN Server

Eventually I hope to be left with a single Remote Desktop Windows Server that will be used for running Sage Accounts and I hope to move this to Azure in the next couple of years when our Server hardware needs to be replaced or if Sage create a package to run their software on a Synology NAS, I will move that over as well.
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Do you have any information about backup versioning? I don't want to sync, rather a daily backup with versioning facilities.
 
jamoor said:
Do

Do you have any information about backup versioning? I don't want to sync, rather a daily backup with versioning facilities.
Click to expand...

Just use Synology Hyper Backup Vault to a local or remote NAS - this allows up to 65535 versions of each data file.

Its very easy to setup and there is lots of info on Synology's website.
 
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The thing I wonder then is what if that synology machine gets stolen or stops working after the data has been damaged say after a cyrptolocker or similar.

Can I restore the data to a previous version without a synology or do I need a machine running synology os?

With my current crash plan running on windows I can just install it on any Windows machine and get right back to business.

Can
marin said:
Just use Synology Hyper Backup Vault to a local or remote NAS - this allows up to 65535 versions of each data file.

Its very easy to setup and there is lost of info on Synology's website.
Click to expand...

I
 
jamoor said:
The thing I wonder then is what if that synology machine gets stolen or stops working after the data has been damaged say after a cyrptolocker or similar.

Can I restore the data to a previous version without a synology or do I need a machine running synology os?

With my current crash plan running on windows I can just install it on any Windows machine and get right back to business.

Can


I
Click to expand...

You can do it either with a Synology NAS or without, I also take secondary backup images using Macrium Reflect backup software on a rotational basis which protects against fire and theft or attack by a CryptoLocker worm.
 
How do you restore without a synology? I've run a backup to a dropbox account to test using Hyper backup, the files are just a bunch of synology data files, how can I turn these into usable data?
 
If the server broke after a power cut then a ups would be a solution.

Chances are a power cut with a nas will be just as bad.
 
All my Synology NAS devices are powered via a UPS - the Master NAS tells all the other NAS devices to shutdown when the UPS power gets to a alarm point, then it powers itself down.

NAS devices seem to be more resilient to a power cut than a Server, I have done this several times as a test with a NAS and had no problems starting it back or had any data loss.
 
You'd be playing with fire dropping the power from any spinning disk. One device is certainly no more resilient than another its just lucky if you got away with it.

My point was that the op is wrong to blame windows for the lack of ups.
 
neil_g said:
You'd be playing with fire dropping the power from any spinning disk. One device is certainly no more resilient than another its just lucky if you got away with it.

My point was that the op is wrong to blame windows for the lack of ups.
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That is true, but one of the benefits of a Synology NAS is that the DSM O/S is stored in flash memory and not on the disks, they can still boot even if the disks are removed.
 
Rather than dropping Windows Server entirely, how about changing the version to Windows Server Essentials? This will have the advantage that client desktops get backed up automatically (and can be restored from a bootable ISO). You can also install Windows Server Update Services which will cut your bandwidth requirements.
 
marin said:
That is true, but one of the benefits of a Synology NAS is that the DSM O/S is stored in flash memory and not on the disks, they can still boot even if the disks are removed.
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Fairly irrelevant if the nas os is there but the data on the disks are trashed which again is my point.

UPS for any 24/7 storage machine/appliance. And if necessary snapshot/image the OS.
 
neil_g said:
Fairly irrelevant if the nas os is there but the data on the disks are trashed which again is my point.

UPS for any 24/7 storage machine/appliance. And if necessary snapshot/image the OS.
Click to expand...

Again I agree with you, always use a UPS and have image backups of OS - all I'm trying to say is that having seen Windows Servers fail over the last twenty years, I have never had this issue with a Synology NAS in the last seven years that I have used them, have had a couple of RAID disks fail but a quick hot swap sorted that, but have never suffered any data loss, which is also backed up by several different methods on-site and off-site - our leased line does help with this as some of our data files are very large.
 
marin said:
That is true, but one of the benefits of a Synology NAS is that the DSM O/S is stored in flash memory and not on the disks, they can still boot even if the disks are removed.
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The only thing in flash on a Synology is the boot loader. The OS is stored on the disks, so if you remove all the disks, you lose the OS and you lose all the configuration. No different from Windows in that respect.
 
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