Small office NAS

Limenote

Limenote

Limenote

Associate
Joined
21 Jul 2005
Posts
1,688
Hi Guys,

I'm currently in the market for a really small office NAS, on a low budget so it needs to be entry level in the 1-3 TB range, I don't have much experience with these types of storage solutions so any additional tips are appreciated.

Many thanks,
 
I've found Welshdragon is the go to guy for NAS drive advice (given out some really good advice) and he champions the Synology NAS drives, he even does reviews on them so he does know what he's talking about
 
I also review other nas solutions too, but so far nothing has beaten the Synology. Qnap have come close mind and I am currently writing up a Qnap unit review. Cheers for the big up Maundie ! :)

@Limenote - what is your budget and how many users will be accessing? Also, what types of things will be stored?
 
Thanks for the response, to be honest my budget is as little as possible I would say £300 absolute max, more in the sub £200 range if this is possible? Id rather reliability over capacity, its mostly office related files like spreadsheets, word docs, graphics, there might be some data but we already have secure storage for most of that stuff.

What is so good about synology? what are your thoughts on iomega?
 
A HP Microserver might be an alternative if you're not dead set on a NAS, can be had for £150+£40 for Home Server 2011. Synology NAS's offer very good performance, are value for money and have a very feature rich firmware.
 
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I have an Iomega unit here as it goes. So far, I have yet to see anything come close to Synology and Qnap in terms of quality/design/ease/reliability of use and richness of features. In the long run, especially in a business environment these things are key.

Synology enclosures are just so user friendly whilst at the same time offering a comprehensive feature set. They are dearer and you only get what you pay for.

I would say for a small office with a handful of users then a Synology DS212 with a matching pair of hard drives in Raid 1 offers you the best solution. The drives in Raid 1 offer redundancy. So if one drive fails the other is a mirror copy and so service continues uninterrupted. You then just slot in a replacement drive, it rebuilds the volume and your away. You can set up individual users and/or groups. Set quota's etc if necessary and also there are good ios apps for remote access on the go or you can remote in from home all very easy to setup.

As diablo mentioned it is worth also looking at the microserver. With the cashback offer it is priced the same as the DS212j roughly with the small added expense of some software. This solution has additional bays so you can expand in the future. However setup is a bit more involved and it is best to think of the microserver as a small server as the name suggests.

I would not consider anything else personally for a business. Those other units often perform poorly, have quite frankly horrific interfaces and in worst ones the drives arent user serviceable so for a failiure one has to return the whole unit which is quite frankly unnacceptable, especially in a business environment. I think whichever option you choose is pushing it for £300 max depending on how much storage you need any whether you already have hard drives or are budgeting more for the drives seperately? However that old addage 'you get what you pay for' is quite applicable with th exception of the microserver!

I've reviewed the Synology unit here

Any questions just ask or email me if you want a faster response.
 
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