Looking for a Business NAS

[Generic George]

Something in a 5-8 bay unit. We like the hardware specs/capabilities on the Thecus units, but are leery of the support. Since the forums appear to be pretty much useless and nobody seems to speak well of their other support options. Netgear has good support, but is 2-3x the price, especially for a 10gb Ethernet capable unit. QNAP seems to be a decent middle ground, but doesn't seem to have a 10gb Ethernet option.

We would consider a server running windows storage server or something equivalent, but we'd like decent support and don't want to pay Dell's horribly inflated HD prices.

Any suggestions?

 

[HDClown]

What have you used to determine that you need 10GbE speeds? What kind of files are you pushing around your network?

 

[oostertoaster]

The only unit I am aware of that has that capability is the N7700Pro/N7700+ from Thecus.

 

[thiggins]

If you are concerned about support, go with the NETGEAR 4200 and pay the money.

 

[Generic George]

Paying the 3x cost (about 9k-12k for the netgear vs roughly 3k for the thecus) is not an option with my boss. That's just too high of a price differential. Its like with the HD on Dell servers/nas. They're $700 for a $100 or maybe $300 HD. Granted the $700 hd are tested and warrantied, but he just balks when he sees that kind of price difference. Especially when the thecus has much better hardware specs for the price.

We don't have to have the 10 gb ethernet, but it would be a very nice option to have and it would significantly extend the useful lifespan of one of these units.

 

[HDClown]

I think you're putting way too much emphasis on 10GbE in a unit like this. Get a unit with dual GigE NIC's that supports Link Aggregation (such as a QNaP) and use that combined with a switch that supports Link Aggregation and you will be more than fine for quite a long time.

I run a 40k+ NetApp SAN's on dual GigE NIC's with link aggregation talking iSCSI and NFS in an environment with 400+ users and network throughput is not an issue.

If I can get by with that, you can surely get by with it for a small business.

 

[oostertoaster]

I agree with HDClown, dual NICs should be sufficient.

Just curious: How much data are you going to be using the NAS for? The theoretical maximum for a single gigabit link is 125 MB/sec, and for a single 10GbE link is 1250 MB/sec. Do you really need that level of throughput right now? Do you already have the 10 GbE switches on-site to support that throughput?

One thing I have learned is that buying equipment for your future needs is a mistake. By the time those needs actually materialized, the equipment you have purchased will already be past its prime anyway. Additionally, buying equipment that suits your current needs is often much, much cheaper.

Just my two cents

 

[SoftDux-Rudi]

We brought a couple of Thecus devices in December and I'm very happy with them. The 3 support cases I had was also answered quickly enough for me to be satisfied with it.

I also considered the Netgear devices but was put off with the fact that for 3x more I don't have RAID 10 support, which is supported on the Thecus. And upto now I haven't yet needed to order the 10GB NIC, just using the 2x 1GB NIC's with link aggregation.

 

[kamina]

Paying the 3x cost (about 9k-12k for the netgear vs roughly 3k for the thecus) is not an option with my boss. That's just too high of a price differential. Its like with the HD on Dell servers/nas. They're $700 for a $100 or maybe $300 HD. Granted the $700 hd are tested and warrantied, but he just balks when he sees that kind of price difference. Especially when the thecus has much better hardware specs for the price.

I think you are looking at it from the wrong angle. The idea is to calculate how much the slower / worse support option will cost your company when there is a problem, and consider if you can afford that risk.

If everybody can continue to work and it's mainly an inconvenience then it's probably not worth it to go for the expensive option just for that. However if you have a few people sitting around doing nothing while waiting for support, or even worse you can't serve your clients then the price might actually start looking pretty cheap.

After all that's what you are paying for with a better support scheme. It's kind of like buying insurance: just looking at how much your company pays for insurance might seem terrifying - but looking at what could happen without the insurance would possibly be even more terrifying.

It's basic business continuation, and this is not even accounting for a far fetched scenario.