NAS for small bus.

[snake.plissken]

Hey--new to forum--thanks in advance for any/all advice.

I'm looking to replace an '03 server that is aging and only shares data to three, sometimes four, users. The main data type is AutoCad drawings. I know the user(s) well enough to know that throughput is very important. There are so many options that I'm looking for some experience based advice. The Syn. DS411+ is at/near the top of the budget.

Need reliability and speed.

 

[stevech]

A two-drive NAS from Synology or QNAP would probably do, plus one external USB3 or eSATA drive to do weekly or so backups.
My choice was a Synology DS212.

Is your LAN gigabit to the PCs, via gigabit switches?

 

[claykin]

Are you on domain? Are you sure you want to dump Win Server? Lose all the benefits of active directory and policy?

Maybe consider Win Server 2011 Essentials. Easy setup and management. Way more power than NAS.

 

[snake.plissken]

Thanks for your input guys.

-Stevech: I initially looked at that very model and nearly pulled the trigger. My thought was maybe the DS411 would allow faster data transfer rate--specifically considering RAID 1 is not the fastest option. My thought was maybe using RAID 5 with the DS411+ would allow faster function for the end user. The end user is quite impatient. Gigabit throughput would need upgrades to the network equipment--that is part of the plan.

-Claykin: I agree with you and recommended that the end user stay with the server--it has been reliable and provides him with the function that is needed. I am tempted to stay away from this project just due to the fact that I don't like where it is going. At the same time, I don't want to turn away a customer. Plus my boss writes my checks so if I don't do something it doesn't work out well.

 

[stevech]

IMO: data transfer rates... I think that the speeds in practical uses are limited by the disk head movements and file system overhead. To get up to gigE LAN wire speeds, you need very fast computers on both ends and doing a huge sequential read of a gigabyte file.

My recommendation is to choose QNAP/Synology because of their great feature set. Transfer rates are a wash.