Small business options...

[bishoptf]

So I support my church after hours and I am starting the process to upgrade and replace their servers (sbs 2003). So I am looking at going with a NAS and taking everything virtual (xenserver). So the storage will be used to store all of the virtual images and the associated data..so the units I am looking at are the QNAP TS-559 Pro II and from reading here started looking at ReadyNas RNDP6000-200NAS. Since I support this after hours I need stuff that is very reliable and well built. Here is what I am thinking are my requirements:

Raid10 ( 4 disks + 1 hot spare)
Amazon s3/elephant drive backup capability
iscsi support ( not sure if I will go this way but will go down this path to start with)
Well made with optional extended warranty support


So I'm not sure that the redaynas supports raid 10 + hot spare I know ready nas has started to offer raid10 on the 6bay models not sure why that has not been an option all along. I do know that I read that QNAP does support raid10 + hot spare. I think that I can get and extended warranty with NBD hardware support from readynas not sure if Qnap offers anything. Anything suggestions or information to consider would be welcome. Thanks in advance..

 

[stevech]

I read too often about burglary at Churches.
So the NAS should be encrypted as it might have personal data on it.
And a cloud/off-site backup might make sense if burglary is a concern.

and the mantra: RAID is not a backup - you need an eSATA or some such external drive for backup.

 

[bishoptf]

All of the stuff stays locked up behind closed doors and in this case is located in a network cabinet also. The plan is to back up to the cloud that way it is consistently done and make it easier, the problem I will have is laying out the drive storage strategy, because not everything is critical. I want/need all of the VM's to be backed up and some of the data, but I don't need all of the data. Right now we back up three times a week and we rotate through usb drives, take them off site. I could continue to do something like that but I haven't made any finally decisions, since I'm not there but once maybe twice a week, I need it to be lights out capable. Currently the office OA rotates the disk on a weekly basis, I use 2.5" disks, but I am planning on having more storage that I probably could backup on a 2.5 disk....more to think about...thanks for the suggestions, keep'em coming

 

[claykin]

2 Readynas Pro6 with Readynas Replicate.

You are correct about Readynas offering Enterprise support options with overnight exchange, etc. during 5 year warranty period. I have it on my NVX. Last I read QNAP still requires you to arrange repair through reseller. QNAP users are normally happy until it comes time to get their unit repaired. I've read stories about resellers being told by QNAP that units had to be returned to QNAP Taiwan for repair. 2-4 week turnaround. That was a couple years back. Maybe things changed....

 

[bishoptf]

2 Readynas Pro6 with Readynas Replicate.

You are correct about Readynas offering Enterprise support options with overnight exchange, etc. during 5 year warranty period. I have it on my NVX. Last I read QNAP still requires you to arrange repair through reseller. QNAP users are normally happy until it comes time to get their unit repaired. I've read stories about resellers being told by QNAP that units had to be returned to QNAP Taiwan for repair. 2-4 week turnaround. That was a couple years back. Maybe things changed....

Yeah that would not work since I would be storing all of the VM server on the storage, I need something very reliable that works and in case of a failure something that I can replace quickly. The SBS server runs everything and I mean everything. What if I went with a 2 bay pro model like the RNDP2210, and the just put one disk that I replicate from the 6 bay model, I'm only going with 2TB and might go less than that. So I would need to understand how the replicate stuff works, but could I then have her swap out the one disk on a weekly backups and use that as the disaster recovery option?

 

[stevech]

... I've read stories about resellers being told by QNAP that units had to be returned to QNAP Taiwan for repair. 2-4 week turnaround. That was a couple years back. Maybe things changed....

Is Synology US (Bay area) based for support and repairs?

 

[bishoptf]

Is Synology US (Bay area) based for support and repairs?

From doing more reading last night synology looks to be better performing than the netgear. They have a excellent wiki that covers just about everything but it appears they currently don't support backing up to the cloud. The other thing I would need to find out is do they offer any advance replacement support like netgear. Does anyone have any insight into synology support?

 

[claykin]

http://www.synology.com/support/warranty.php?lang=us

Call Synology and inquire about their current RMA procedures.

North & South America

Synology America Corp.

2899 152nd Ave NE,
Redmond, WA 98052.
USA
+1 425 296 3177 - Support

(Hours of operation: 9A-5P, M-F, GMT-8)

+1 425 818 1587 - Other Inquiries

 

[travisco_nabisco]

http://www.synology.com/support/warranty.php?lang=us

Call Synology and inquire about their current RMA procedures.

North & South America

Synology America Corp.

2899 152nd Ave NE,
Redmond, WA 98052.
USA
+1 425 296 3177 - Support

(Hours of operation: 9A-5P, M-F, GMT-8)

+1 425 818 1587 - Other Inquiries

From my experience this is only somewhat the case. About 6 months ago the company I was at, on the west coast of Canada, had a Synology DS 1010+ drop two drives during a RAID expansion. Tech support took a few days to log into the box remotely and remount the array as read-only, so that we could copy the data off before rebuilding it. The actual technician i was in contact with was in Taiwan.

To be clear, I still very highly recommend Synology. I was replacing the drives that my predecessor put in, not on the supported list, with ones that were on the list. I blame the drive drop on this because there have been no other issues with the DS1010+.