Which NAS/Cloud Solution should I choose?

Thanks for all the comments so far. I have been doing lots of thinking and feel like I have done nothing but research this for the past few days...getting a bit fed up with it now lol.

If I go with a prebuilt NAS solution, it appears Synology is the way to go - I've read that they respond to security issues much more quickly than anyone else, however, I have also read that there are some bugs in their software that's not been fixed for some time.

If I go with FreeNAS, it would take more investment time wise but I think it would be a better system once up and running. I sold my old PC last night (a core i5 2400 system) so have the money burning a whole already.

My question now is do I build a low power custom system or do I buy a HP Microserver? A Mini-ITX Pentium G3258 system is going to cost me about £250 (with 8GB Ram, no hard drives), whereas the Microserver will cost £130 (with 4GB Ram, 250GB Hdd).
 
Super-Spy said:
I have had a ReadyNas Duo for about 5 years now and it has worked impeccably. It was very easy and quick to setup and other than updating the firmware every now and then, it has just sat in a corner and done the business.

It is also synced/backed up into the Readynas cloud for additional peace of mind.

Given my experience with the above, I would much prefer going for a dedicated NAS device compared to faffing around with a PC based server like the HP even though you lose some flexibility.

I am now starting to run out of space and considering moving to a 4 bay NAS.
My initial inclination is to go for a newer, 4 bay ReadyNas but reading this thread has made me consider alternatives.

What would people recommend for a not too expensive 4 bay NAS out of ReadyNas, Synology, Qnap and Asustor ?
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When you say "not too expensive" what number does that relate to and does that include drives ?
 
lumencreative said:
Thanks for all the comments so far. I have been doing lots of thinking and feel like I have done nothing but research this for the past few days...getting a bit fed up with it now lol.

If I go with a prebuilt NAS solution, it appears Synology is the way to go - I've read that they respond to security issues much more quickly than anyone else, however, I have also read that there are some bugs in their software that's not been fixed for some time.

If I go with FreeNAS, it would take more investment time wise but I think it would be a better system once up and running. I sold my old PC last night (a core i5 2400 system) so have the money burning a whole already.

My question now is do I build a low power custom system or do I buy a HP Microserver? A Mini-ITX Pentium G3258 system is going to cost me about £250 (with 8GB Ram, no hard drives), whereas the Microserver will cost £130 (with 4GB Ram, 250GB Hdd).
Click to expand...

I have seen lots of good comments around the HP Micro Servers.
 
anthony566 said:
When you say "not too expensive" what number does that relate to and does that include drives ?
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Hi Anthony,

Ideally, I want to spend in the region of £150 to £300 for a 4 bay enclosure without the disks. Obviously, the cheaper the better and ensuring that if I spend more, I get something better (features, performance, stability, reliability, quiter, power efficiency etc) for the extra money.

I will then shop around for the best priced disks depending on which 2Tb or 3Tb disks people would recommend.
 
anthony566 said:
I have seen lots of good comments around the HP Micro Servers.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I bought two when the cashback offer was on last year but never used them so ended up selling them earlier this year.

I have further narrowed my options down to the following:

1) HP Microserver running Freenas @ £129.99 - Extremely good value for money with an ok CPU and 4GB ECC Ram. Also has an internal USB port so I can run FreeNas off a small USB drive. Downside is that it will take a lot of fiddling to get working but once up and running, should just work.

2) Synology DS414 @ £350 - Great software, works out of the box with no fiddling. Looks nice too which helps. Downside is that it only has 1GB ECC Ram and is a closed system so additional functionality is limited to what Synology want to allow.

I decided against doing a custom build (as much as I would like to) because to use ZFS on Freenas, I would be more comfortable with ECC ram and I don't feel that the price of the ECC compatible boards are worth it for what I want to achieve.
 
I moved from Google Apps to Office365 but I'm sure at the time, 3 months ago, only 25GB was available. I'm on the plan with Exchange only, no office applications, at around £4/month.

I've stuck with Google Drive at 1TB. Works great for me and I have all my domain users folders redirected to the Google Drive folder so documents, photos etc get backed up and available remotely if needed. This is for home / family users BTW before anyone says.
 
Mujja said:
I moved from Google Apps to Office365 but I'm sure at the time, 3 months ago, only 25GB was available. I'm on the plan with Exchange only, no office applications, at around £4/month.

I've stuck with Google Drive at 1TB. Works great for me and I have all my domain users folders redirected to the Google Drive folder so documents, photos etc get backed up and available remotely if needed. This is for home / family users BTW before anyone says.
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Thanks Mujja, my issue isn't so much with having files hosted elsewhere as such as I did consider Dropbox Pro with 1TB storage, it's more to do with scalability. I want everything in one central location. Be it work files, music, photo's, etc, so 1TB could quickly fill up :)
 
Trying to price the cost of a DIY server and you can get a reasonable system for around £300 with a couple of HDs. Surely this will last a lot longer and be much more flexible. You'll be able to add lots more drives with this option too.

Gigabyte B85M-DS3H Intel B85 (Socket 1150) DDR3 Micro ATX Motherboard £53.99
(£44.99) £53.99
(£44.99)
Intel Pentium G3220 3.0GHz (Haswell) Socket LGA1150 Processor - Retail £41.99
(£34.99) £41.99
(£34.99)
Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache WD10EZEX - OEM ** Single Platter ** HDD £41.98
(£34.98) £83.96
(£69.96)
Kingston 60GB SSDNow V300 Drive SATA 6Gb/s 3 2.5" (7mm height) Solid State Hard Drive - (SV300S37A/60G) £34.99
(£29.16) £34.99
(£29.16)
TeamGroup Elite 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Single Channel Module (TED34GM1600C1101) £31.99
(£26.66) £31.99
(£26.66)
BitFenix Neos ATX Tower Black/Silver £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
Corsair Builder Series CX 430W V2 '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020046-UK) £29.99
(£24.99) £29.99
(£24.99)
 
Thanks for your efforts neocon, however, my issue is the ram isn't going to be ECC ram which would mean I can't use the ZFS file system. This isn't by any means a dealbreaker and I wouldn't need the drives as I would be running FreeNas off a USB pen drive and I already have 2 x 2TB WD Reds raring to go.
 
lumencreative said:
Thanks for this comment but it's not a route I want to go down.
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Seems odd if you are looking at synology devices and microservers as that's what you get if you put xpenology on a microserver - a 4 bay nas running synology for £130. It's a piece of cake to install and as stable as any other OS you would put on there.
 
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james.miller said:
Seems odd if you are looking at synology devices and microservers as that's what you get if you put xpenology on a microserver - a 4 bay nas running synology for £130. It's a piece of cake to install and as stable as any other OS you would put on there.
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To be honest James, it's not something I've looked into and only heard bits and bats about it. It's just that I went through the phase of installing OSX on a self built hackintosh and got so fed up with trying to get things worked that I just ended up buying a Mac, so I'm always a bit weary of doing this kind of thing.

Also, Synology tend to update their software quite regularly from what I've read and it would take time for those updates to filter down to a 'hack' version and I'd constantly be concerned that installing an update would break the whole thing.

With this being a central repository for all my data that I need to just 'work', I can't risk anything that could break it.
 
Just to update the thread, I decided to opt for a Synology NAS and went with the Synology Rackstation RS814 as I found it somewhere online for £460. It should be arriving today along with 2 x 2TB WD Reds so can't wait to give it a go.

The only reason I went for a Rackmount option was because I am putting it in my studio rack so it will be tucked away. I am also going to build a cheap(ish) HTPC to stream movies, etc from the NAS to TV.
 
lumencreative said:
Yeah, I bought two when the cashback offer was on last year but never used them so ended up selling them earlier this year.

I have further narrowed my options down to the following:

1) HP Microserver running Freenas @ £129.99 - Extremely good value for money with an ok CPU and 4GB ECC Ram. Also has an internal USB port so I can run FreeNas off a small USB drive. Downside is that it will take a lot of fiddling to get working but once up and running, should just work.

2) Synology DS414 @ £350 - Great software, works out of the box with no fiddling. Looks nice too which helps. Downside is that it only has 1GB ECC Ram and is a closed system so additional functionality is limited to what Synology want to allow.

I decided against doing a custom build (as much as I would like to) because to use ZFS on Freenas, I would be more comfortable with ECC ram and I don't feel that the price of the ECC compatible boards are worth it for what I want to achieve.
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sorry if this has been covered but reading through this post but i have just bought this week a Hp microserver N54l and not having much experience of building servers i was a bit worried, let me tell you it took like 10 mins to set up from opening the box unbelievable value, i just put freenas on a usb and slotted it into the internal usb space front left on opening the door booted it up and away we go , and have you seen you can run synology software on it without hacking ect the software is not pirated and is supplied via synology just google xpenology and away you go , the specs wipe the floor with synology cpu,ram, upgradeability oh and did i mention all this for £129 !!! ordering 2 wd 2tb reds to go in it then another 2 later on , simples even for a noob like me nothing is as good spec or as good value i am well chufted
 
Jackboo89 said:
sorry if this has been covered but reading through this post but i have just bought this week a Hp microserver N54l and not having much experience of building servers i was a bit worried, let me tell you it took like 10 mins to set up from opening the box unbelievable value, i just put freenas on a usb and slotted it into the internal usb space front left on opening the door booted it up and away we go , and have you seen you can run synology software on it without hacking ect the software is not pirated and is supplied via synology just google xpenology and away you go , the specs wipe the floor with synology cpu,ram, upgradeability oh and did i mention all this for £129 !!! ordering 2 wd 2tb reds to go in it then another 2 later on , simples even for a noob like me nothing is as good spec or as good value i am well chufted
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I completely agree with you Jackboo, especially now there's £30 cashback, making them £99. I may well pick one up anyway. However, for what I wanted, I didn't want something I had to tweak and mess about with. I wanted something that was 'supported' by the manufacturer and that I could rely on 100%. Amongst other things, the NAS is going to be used for company files so reliability is critical.

All in all, I'm glad I shelled out £460 for the rackmountable Synology RS814, and I hope I get some good use out of it, but as I said, I will no doubt get buying a Microserver as well.
 
Jackboo89 said:
..... ordering 2 wd 2tb reds to go in it then another 2 later on , simples even for a noob like me nothing is as good spec or as good value i am well chufted
Click to expand...

How easy is it to expand the volume by adding additional drives ?

Is it just a case of adding the extra drive and the software does the rest or do you need to backup existing data before adding drives ?
 
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