cheap file server attachewd to domain controller?

[argint]

Hi all!

We are provisioning ourselves a server, 2008 r2 etc for our domain controller, print management and other things such as spiceworks.

Id like a separate file server for giving people their own space, perhaps even to vpn in to.

Can i ask her of a typical, robust, secure solution that people might use as a file server attached to the main domain controller?

Wed like tokeep the price down, but wed want the security of folders linked in to that set in active directory.

Any suggestions that areoften seen out there in the wild?

Regards
Argint

 

[claykin]

How about a NAS with AD support?

 

[argint]

Thankyou for your reply. My question would be, is there a performance hit with that? I have read that NAS solutions dont deal well with multiple simultaneaous accesses.

Is there any truth in this? Would a fileserver perform better?

Many thanks
Argint

 

[00Roush]

In my opinion it really depends on the NAS and the amount of simultaneous accesses. An NAS is basically a specialized file server so there is potential for a NAS to perform the same as a standard file server. A low end NAS that only has 512 MB of Ram and an Atom CPU would slow to a crawl under heavy load the same as a file server with similar specs would. On the same note a Quad core based NAS like this could potentially provide similar performance to a Quad core based file server with similar hardware. One difference should be noted however. Most NASes that I know of all use software based RAID and do not support SAS hard drives. Most file servers use hardware RAID and support SAS hard drives.

00Roush

 

[sdeleeuw]

How many users? I can say that our "cheapie" (relatively speaking) Synology DS111 handles multiple users and multiple functions beautifully and stays quick...

Beware of using a domain controller for extra functions due to the disabling hard drive caching that it continually likes to do. It keeps the file system safe in case of power loss, but can make running other apps terrible frustrating...