NAS for small/medium business

[Nonprofit]

Hi all,

I am in the market for a NAS for my organization. We have about 80 employees and our currents storage needs are in the 2TB range.

I am looking for a NAS device that would work for us. My feature requirements are pretty simple - RAID 5, 2 TB of space - but I place a premium on support and uptime. I can't have this thing going down, and if it does go down I need support and help right away - something like Dell server support where you have 24hr onsite support.

It seems like most of the conversations related to NAS' here are for home use and very small businesses.

Are there any that you would recommend for a more business orientated situation?

 

[thiggins]

One alternative is the Cisco NSS300 series. Design is a bit dated, but should be powerful enough for your needs and you should be able to get a Cisco service contract.

Another alternative is NETGEAR ReadyNAS. I think you can get a priority support service plan, but not sure. I'm sure Claykin will chime in.

If this NAS will be a primary data store, make sure you back it up. RAID is not backup.

 

[stevech]

One alternative is the
RAID is not backup.

Seems these days that the probability of a disk drive failure, which RAID5 offsets, is less likely than human error (oops, didn't mean to delete that), or a file system getting corrupted by an OS screwup.

So RAID + external backup + offsite backup is the norm if the data is crucial.
Also somewhat likely is theft of the whole kit and kaboodle. Hence, offsite backup.

 

[stevech]

One alternative is the Cisco NSS300 series

some say
Cisco (not Linksys): You can find better products, but you can't pay less!

 

[travisco_nabisco]

Iomega offers a Premium support option for any of their rackmount NASes, this includes 24x7 phone support and next day on-site.

 

[Nonprofit]

Thanks for the replies!

Is there any consensus on the solutions that Dell offers?

Such as the NX200?

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powervault-nx200/pd

It costs up to twice as much as some of these other options I am looking at, but does appear to be built on an enterprise server platform and comes with that awesome 3 year pro support.

 

[Generic George]

Thanks for the replies!

Is there any consensus on the solutions that Dell offers?

Such as the NX200?

http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/powervault-nx200/pd

It costs up to twice as much as some of these other options I am looking at, but does appear to be built on an enterprise server platform and comes with that awesome 3 year pro support.

Plus -
Dell's pro support is extremely good IME and that is basically a low end server. The windows storage server is probably more capable than your typical nas.

Minus-
You are talking about $2400 for the base 2tb unit with the pro support and going to 8tb is another $1900. Which is pretty dammed pricey even at the current HD costs. It also does not have a redundant power supply, which is one of the most likely to fail components. The windows storage server is also probably not as simple to set up as your typical nas either.

You can easily buy two good 2 bay NAS, each with a pair of 3tb drives in raid 1 (which is at least as secure as raid 5, probably some what more so, since you have the same level of redundancy with fewer potential drives to fail), for the cost of the single Dell. So you are paying a LOT for that piece of mind.

 

[Nonprofit]

Plus -
Dell's pro support is extremely good IME and that is basically a low end server. The windows storage server is probably more capable than your typical nas.

Minus-
You are talking about $2400 for the base 2tb unit with the pro support and going to 8tb is another $1900. Which is pretty dammed pricey even at the current HD costs. It also does not have a redundant power supply, which is one of the most likely to fail components. The windows storage server is also probably not as simple to set up as your typical nas either.

You can easily buy two good 2 bay NAS, each with a pair of 3tb drives in raid 1 (which is at least as secure as raid 5, probably some what more so, since you have the same level of redundancy with fewer potential drives to fail), for the cost of the single Dell. So you are paying a LOT for that piece of mind.

Excellent info to think about.

The corporate pricing I am getting on the 2tb version of the Dell is just under 2k. Which is only about 400 more than I am being quoted for comparable Cisco's and ReadNAS Pros. (4 disk raid 5 with at least 2tb)

NBD onsite support is really the key for me. If a power supply does go down, knowing it will only be down a day at most is huge for us. I'm currently investigating if the Cisco or Netgear warranties have anything comparable.

One other thing that was just brought to my attention that might force my decision on this is that we use Shadow Copies for user based recovery of previous versions. I know storage server has this, but I have to find out if the other devices have similar functionality.

 

[Nonprofit]

Bleh, I just heard back from my Dell rep. I had him checking on the version of Windows Storage Server installed on this device and it is a version called "basic". I can't find any info from MS on this, but I am being told it does not include Single Instance Storage, and most likely does not include Shadow Copies.

I was close to justifying the extra money if it brought me the advantages of Windows Storage Server... but since it doesn't, that Dell is out of the question.

 

[Generic George]

Excellent info to think about.

The corporate pricing I am getting on the 2tb version of the Dell is just under 2k. Which is only about 400 more than I am being quoted for comparable Cisco's and ReadNAS Pros. (4 disk raid 5 with at least 2tb)

Part of my point was you don't need a 4-5 bay nas to get to 2 tb+, it's less secure than raid 1 and even a 2 drive unit can saturate a gigabit ethernet link. So you don't need it from a capacity, safety or performance standpoint.

So you can have ample storage in a 2 bay unit like the Synology DS712+, which is only $500 or so. With the savings of a 2 bay unit vs a 4-5 bay, you can afford to buy two 2 bay NAS. Have them set to constantly replicate and you've got a higher level of redundancy and security.

One of synology's best tricks is that you can get a 5 bay esata box you can hook up to their higher end 2 bay units if you do need storage past what a 5 tb drive can supply.