File server question

[CanuckSigns]

We have an older windows 7 pc that we use as a file server in the shop, all working files get saved to it and it's accessible to every computer in the shop. It also gets backed up to Carbonite.

It's getting a bit old now and I want to be proactive in replacing it. About 10 years ago I tried using an inexpensive NAS and it was painfully slow, so we switched back to an old PC.

Does anyone have more recent real world experience with a decent NAS from synology or QNAP or similar? We have about 12 pcs connected to the server, but only 3 people accessing it as a time.

Would a NAS work well for this, or should I look at a new desktop pc and continue what I'm doing?

 

[netsol]

Why don't you buy a Dell poweredge server?
There are reasons we have server OS in multiuser environments

You can make your network 10gb with cat 6 wire of fiber optics

 

[WildWestDesigns]

The thing with using a desktop as a server is that it's not the most efficient environment. It's low hanging fruit to get something up and running, but that's really about the only advantage that one has. Now depending on what server you get, sometimes can get away with less resources (depending on how modular that server OS is) or can more efficiently use those resources if able to cut out something that bloats it all up.

One of the servers that we have is a Poweredge T640. Another recommendation for one of those.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I'm really not technically savvy enough to run and manage a proper server with a proper server OS on it, what I have currently works just fine for our needs, like I said I'm just trying to be proactive and replace it before I come in one day to a dead server and all the BS that comes with that.

The NAS systems I've looked at look nice and they have a few advantages such as easy remote access, built in redundancy and easy cloud backup. But I just don't know if it would be quick enough to serve up standard sign shop files to 3 different people.

Or should I just buy a new desktop pc, throw some large HDD's in it and call it a day?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Just running a basic file server typically can be run on just about anything. A Pi could do that.

If the only choice is between the NASs (or similar) mentioned or just a desktop computer, I would go with a NAS. While a desktop computer would do the job in the most basic of way, it's grossly inefficient, plus more than likely what one would be running on the computer would not be good as a file server where uptime is critical and given the ever increasing loss of customization it appears with administrating said computer. Especially if this is a computer that is really going to be setup and just left alone for the most part after that. Win 7 was probably the last one that had this ability to do this and just be able to set it aside and not have to check on it as much.

 

[victor bogdanov]

I use a Synology DS1621+ , it has 6 20TB drives set up to where any 2 can fail without data loss. I have a 10Gig Ethernet and files transfer at 400-500mb/sec from the NAS, very fast. At first I was using a 1gig Ethernet and it was slower compared to having files on PC so I made the expensive but worth it upgrade to 10gig network

10gig network is key if you deal with large files

 

[FireSprint.com]

we have about 20TB across a few synolgy NAS drives. They are just wonderful and their software is great for backups. Plus no fees.

I don’t think they could be beat for a setup like yours.

 

[ikarasu]

A Nas will be slower than a PC. They're more energy efficient though.

The cpu in your windows 7 pc is probably better than a Nas... We use one and while it works good, there are slow downs when too many people are using it and it's running it's backup / sync tasks.

So now we're converting our server to truenas. If I were you.... I'd convert your windows 7 PC, or a different PC into true Nas. It's almost as polished as Nas software, free, and you're running on way better hardware.


And there's nothing wrong with doing it through windows 7 either. Will a server be better? Sure... If you want to drop 10k on a server. I've had windows 7 PC's have an uptime of 8 months. I only recently started to use a "true" server, and that's because I wanted to run a vSphere host and guy a good deal on one. Would I run a Normal PC as a domain controller? No... But as a file server is no problem.

Bot to mention in our current climate with ransomware running rampant, there's patches released so frequently youll be rebooting the server weekly anyways.

 

[caribmike]

I have two QNAP NAS units with a total of 32 TB available of which about 12 TB is used. These units are excellent and very easy to maintain. They're pretty quick serving up the files and I've never had an issue with them. I back them up daily to a cloud storage provider that gives me unlimited storage space for $9.99 a month. I have every file I've ever created over 20 years which is beneficial as most of our wholesale vendors only keep files for two years.

 

[brdesign]

I have two QNAP NAS units with a total of 32 TB available of which about 12 TB is used. These units are excellent and very easy to maintain. They're pretty quick serving up the files and I've never had an issue with them. I back them up daily to a cloud storage provider that gives me unlimited storage space for $9.99 a month. I have every file I've ever created over 20 years which is beneficial as most of our wholesale vendors only keep files for two years.

What cloud back up service are you using? I'm looking at either a Qnap, or Synology NAS, that can backup directly to an online service.

 

[CanuckSigns]

What cloud back up service are you using? I'm looking at either a Qnap, or Synology NAS, that can backup directly to an online service.

I currently use Carbonite, but it's not as good as it once was, the software crashes on a regular basis and the download speeds are horrible if you ever need to get your files back, there is backblaze which is similar but has much better reviews and can run nativly on most NAS devices. I will be making the switch to backblaze once I get this new system figured out.

 

[CanuckSigns]

A Nas will be slower than a PC. They're more energy efficient though.

The cpu in your windows 7 pc is probably better than a Nas... We use one and while it works good, there are slow downs when too many people are using it and it's running it's backup / sync tasks.

So now we're converting our server to truenas. If I were you.... I'd convert your windows 7 PC, or a different PC into true Nas. It's almost as polished as Nas software, free, and you're running on way better hardware.


And there's nothing wrong with doing it through windows 7 either. Will a server be better? Sure... If you want to drop 10k on a server. I've had windows 7 PC's have an uptime of 8 months. I only recently started to use a "true" server, and that's because I wanted to run a vSphere host and guy a good deal on one. Would I run a Normal PC as a domain controller? No... But as a file server is no problem.

Bot to mention in our current climate with ransomware running rampant, there's patches released so frequently youll be rebooting the server weekly anyways.

Thanks, how many people typically access your NAS at a time to cause slowdowns? We only have 3 employees here, the most process heavy task would probally be copying files to onyx. as for backups, I would schedule them to happen off hours every night.

The TrueNAS looks interesting, how is it from a useability perspective? I don't have any desire to "nerd out" and tinker, I just want a set and forget solution that works well.

 

[victor bogdanov]

Thanks, how many people typically access your NAS at a time to cause slowdowns?

Any slowdowns with a mid-high end NAS will be due to network and mechanical drives. Same issue a server or PC set up as a server would experience. SSD cache can greatly help and is easy to set up in NAS.

NAS range in price from $100 - $2000+ (without drives price), obviously a cheap one wont be ideal, something in $750+ range will perform great

 

[CanuckSigns]

Any slowdowns with a mid-high end NAS will be due to network and mechanical drives. Same issue a server or PC set up as a server would experience. SSD cache can greatly help and is easy to set up in NAS.

NAS range in price from $100 - $2000+ (without drives price), obviously a cheap one wont be ideal, something in $750+ range will perform great

Thanks this is the one I'm considering, along with an extra 4GB ram stick to bring it up to 8GB total. It has 2 ethernet ports that you can bind together to get 2 concurrent 1Gb connections which should help with multiple users.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B087Z34F3R/?coliid=I35R7YYYVI9345&colid=14F8Z5CRN6BIX&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

 

[victor bogdanov]

Thanks this is the one I'm considering, along with an extra 4GB ram stick to bring it up to 8GB total. It has 2 ethernet ports that you can bind together to get 2 concurrent 1Gb connections which should help with multiple users.

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B087Z34F3R/?coliid=I35R7YYYVI9345&colid=14F8Z5CRN6BIX&psc=1&ref_=lv_ov_lig_dp_it

The 2x LAN won't make the network faster, if you do some deep dive reading about link aggregation, it is more for redundancy than speed. I though I was going to use the 2x 1gb connections for speed but that is not what it is for.

I added a 10gb card to my NAS, not sure if the one you are looking has a slot for a network card. Synology makes the 10gb network cards, very east to set up. Will also need 10gb network switch (expensive) and 10gb network cards for computers to take full advantage

 

[CanuckSigns]

The 2x LAN won't make the network faster, if you do some deep dive reading about link aggregation, it is more for redundancy than speed. I though I was going to use the 2x 1gb connections for speed but that is not what it is for.

I added a 10gb card to my NAS, not sure if the one you are looking has a slot for a network card. Synology makes the 10gb network cards, very east to set up. Will also need 10gb network switch (expensive) and 10gb network cards for computers to take full advantage

Thanks, the reading I have done says if you use both ethernet slots you don;t get 2 GB but you will get 2 1GB connections so if 2 people are accessing the NAS at the same time they can in theory both download at 1GB speeds, but aparently it's a bit tricky to setup.

I looked into the 10GBe but very few parts on my network are set up for it and my understanding is that the whole network is only as fast as it's slowest component.

Edit: also my current setup only has a single 1GB ethernet port and it's never been an issue.

 

[ikarasu]

Truenas is good. You might need to tinker with it a little bit for setup... but you do with a NAS as well. It's pretty much NAS software on a PC.

For $800 I'd build a nas... it'll always be better!


We have 10ish people in the office - Typically we have 2 graphics artists accessing / writing files, sometimes large ones. 2-3 Sales reps doing light tasks such as writing up work orders (Excel files) CNC operator...but also small files, and an accountant doing excel stuff. Not too much access at once.

How much space do you need? I'd use your $900 and buy SSD's... You can get close to 10 TB of SSD Space with that, then run Truenas. do you have a crappy old PC around? Throw truenas on it and play with it before committing... its super simple!



We've been hit by ransomware 2X now... Our old IT company has the office setup in a stupid way that keeps us open to the outside world - they assigned a domain admin account to our accountant... Who keeps somehow having his account compromised (He clicks lots of bad links...) And then every single PC thats turned on gets encrypted... Wasted dozens of hours on it. Currently re-setting up our whole network... so I've been looking into truenas a lot.

so I'm very, very anal about backups... Right now our accounting software will Zip up everyday at 6 PM. Then it'll back itself up to google and a remote server. Then it'll back up the artwork (about 7 TB) To google, and a remote server. I also have it realtime syncing the art room folder... So the moment an artist saves a file... it uploads to google and the remote drive.

I have - Weekly full backups (saves a months worth) As well as version backups that save every night.


I had to do a restore and it took 3 days to restore 7 TB From my remote server to my NAS... I did a test and restored it to my server instead of the NAS and it took a few hours. The NAs has to process a lot when it's doing a restore, and the CPU in the nas sucks.... just using it as a file server isnt bad, but if you ever have to restore a drive....thats where it gets you.



https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J4125+@+2.00GHz&id=3667 This is the CPU in the nas you're looking at - And I'd say the 920 is one of the better nas's. CPU score isnt always the best to tell... but itll be good enough for a comparrison. 3000 CPU score... comparing that to the latest, cheapest AMD 7600X which costs $340 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+7600X&id=5033 28645 score.. Almost 10X Faster. Ontop of having more ram to handle more tasks / multitask. To me.... using a desktop as a nas is better for futureproofness, being able to have more hard drives... its cheaper, And runs smoother. The only benefit to using a synology vs a truenas setup is it eats up 1/10 as much power.... but we're talking like $10 a month, for a business thats nothing.

 

[victor bogdanov]

https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J4125+@+2.00GHz&id=3667 This is the CPU in the nas you're looking at - And I'd say the 920 is one of the better nas's. CPU score isnt always the best to tell... but itll be good enough for a comparrison. 3000 CPU score... comparing that to the latest, cheapest AMD 7600X which costs $340 https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=AMD+Ryzen+5+7600X&id=5033 28645 score.. Almost 10X Faster. Ontop of having more ram to handle more tasks / multitask. To me.... using a desktop as a nas is better for futureproofness, being able to have more hard drives... its cheaper, And runs smoother. The only benefit to using a synology vs a truenas setup is it eats up 1/10 as much power.... but we're talking like $10 a month, for a business thats nothing.

Not much for a CPU to do in a NAS, most of the work is done by the RAID controller, cpu is there to run the UI and some apps. The file reading/writing is all handled by hardware

 

[ikarasu]

Depends what you do with a Nas. Transfering 1 gb, or 10 gb takes a bit of cpu - backing up files takes a lot because it compares CRC values of files youmhave vs what's uploaded.

If you're using it as a strict file server, the cpu isn't bad... But then you're buying a $1000 device and limiting yourself, at that point may as well buy a $50 pi

 

[WildWestDesigns]

A Nas will be slower than a PC. They're more energy efficient though.

Yes, especially with Qnaps for sure. The last one that I had was on an Atom processor. Slow startup, slow shutdown, otherwise, not really much latency, but it does depend on what you are doing and the hardware that everything is running on.

The cpu in your windows 7 pc is probably better than a Nas... We use one and while it works good, there are slow downs when too many people are using it and it's running it's backup / sync tasks.

Depends on what using. For a server,Xeon processors with ECC RAM (only real slowdown is if there is any error correcting) and an error will cause a Win desktop pc to complain and BSOD. I would (and have used) that type of processor/memory combo for just regular desktop production as well. It's a great combo, can actually be had quite cheaply if know how to play the used market as well (used server components isn't like getting used consumer grade products, so keep that in mind as well).

So now we're converting our server to truenas. If I were you.... I'd convert your windows 7 PC, or a different PC into true Nas. It's almost as polished as Nas software, free, and you're running on way better hardware.

It's better compared to what Qnap has. In most instances, polish just means polish == newb friendly. Not much more compared to that. Just more abstraction away from what something can do. May or may not have it's merits, just depends on where one falls in that category.

And there's nothing wrong with doing it through windows 7 either. Will a server be better? Sure... If you want to drop 10k on a server. I've had windows 7 PC's have an uptime of 8 months. I only recently started to use a "true" server, and that's because I wanted to run a vSphere host and guy a good deal on one. Would I run a Normal PC as a domain controller? No... But as a file server is no problem.

Yes that is true, like I said, Win 7 would be better (unless one has certain later updates) compared to anything post Win 7 (which more than likely would be the case for any new Win machine that the OP would get) in terms of uptime and stability (although stability mileage may vary, some have had decent/maybe even great stability, others not so much) and among other things, but I would digress big time on that.

Basic file servers can be run essentially on potato hardware if needed just for basic file serving with low connection demands. But it's when everything else comes into play, that's when hardware requirements change. A Pi can be just fine for basic file server depending on workload and how storage of the files is handled. A NUC as well (Intel's x86_64 low powered version of the Pi).

Bot to mention in our current climate with ransomware running rampant, there's patches released so frequently youll be rebooting the server weekly anyways.

This is why I would suggest keeping production rigs off the internet, but with SaaS and all that BS, very hard to do if using that type of software as it is. Servers don't go down that frequently and in all honestly, compared to the majority of Windows updates, if it's a unix-like server (which truenas is) a lot of the updates don't require a restart. Only if it's something like a kernel update etc does it require a restart. Even my Arch installs (which I do have every other day updates) don't require restarts. Windows, not really so much. Little things in Windows cause more need of a restart.