NAS for POS System

[repo]

I have a client who runs a small high-end jewlery shop. He is using a 1TB Linkstation Pro Duo as a central file server for a Windows POS system and a desktop. The Linkstation has a bad habit of locking up (once a week to once a month) which means he loses his cash register until someone can get there to reboot it for him. In addition to being a large central point-of-failure this is his only backup for all his business data. I don't like that I would have to take the box apart to rescue or replace a drive and reviews on restoring the RAID are poor.

I have found very little data on NAS reliablility. Is there a brand/model that has a particular reputation for high uptime? Has anyone had any long-term experience with a NAS in a business critical situation that they can share? The article "Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID" is intriguing. Has anyone tried using 2 single NASs instead of one dual RAID and is there any way to connect them in a fail-over configuration? Any thoughts are appreciated. I want to know what I'm doing before I try to replace this!

 

[Herbert]

Hi!

Wow! I am surprised with the situation you have described. I cooperate with Point of sale systems NJ. Never have I faced such problems... Luckily they give free quotes about pos systems, concerning different problems. You can contact them and try to find out the solution. I think they will help you
Hope it was useful for you...

 

[stevech]

I have found very little data on NAS reliablility. Is there a brand/model that has a particular reputation for high uptime? Has anyone had any long-term experience with a NAS in a business critical situation that they can share? The article "Smart SOHOs Don't Do RAID" is intriguing. Has anyone tried using 2 single NASs instead of one dual RAID and is there any way to connect them in a fail-over configuration? Any thoughts are appreciated. I want to know what I'm doing before I try to replace this!

I think my experience as below is typical of market leaders Synology and QNAP.
Synology DS212. Fairly heavily used NAS by several PCs. Configured to auto-power off from 1AM to 7AM every day.

Never had any problems or issues. It just works. I have a robust full backup scheme in place, all automated. A small business needs that, else one could lose a lot of business-vital data and tax info. I don't use RAID on my 2-drive NAS. I have two logical volumes, one per drive. Drive 2 is a time backup - revision history going back months.

NAS alone is NOT a backup.


BUT is the issue the NAS? Or the ethernet? Or the POS hardware/software? Making it work by rebooting the NAS may mean that the NAS is not at fault. But that NAS brand is not mainstream.