NAS fileserver?

[anotherdog]

Paranoid as I am about data loss, I have been using Carbonite to back-up my data offsite. However Carbonite slows as you add more data and I'm now generating files faster than they back-up.

I am also noticing a real slowdown in the time it takes to access files from my Netgear 2TB NAS that I use as a fileserver. (gigabit network, all files are kept on the server not on the local machines). I currently have about 700 gig in live files/archive.

I would like to replace my fileserver with something a little faster and use the netgear as a back-up.

Any thoughts on a fileserver solution? I'm happy to get a faster NAS but I'm not sure how to tell if it will be faster than the current.

 

[Locals Find!]

Plenty of cloud storage options available. We discussed this a few weeks ago. I know one mentioned that I am looking into was Amazon S3. From my understanding of reading the pricing structure. It's cheap as sand in Arizona.

Worth looking into if nothing else. I am sure someone can chime in with more details and working knowledge.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I just recently bought a Netgear ReadyNAS, and i am also very disapointed in the speed, files seem to take ages to open, sometimes 3-4 minutes to open a simple 5 meg CorelDraw file.

 

[anotherdog]

Cloud is great, in addition to the cost of cloud I also have the Data transmission costs. I regularly go over the data limit and the costs can be prohibitive. I know I can uprade the data plan (yet again), but it is already crazy high (okay I also watch netflicks).

I would like to fix my fileserver speed issues AND bring the backup back inside (and in the firesafe).

(One day when the world is fed, clean and at peace, data will be free).

 

[Dave Rowland]

my amazon cloud got very expensive, i binned it and that was only used for a small company not my print one.

I had past history with Netgear, a little uncomfortable with their last NAS they developed as it buggy. - it looked like a white-toaster

I have the LG box, the software isn't being supported so no bug-fixes and i now have corruption on the database (Comnso Backup). The software also fails if you go over the size of the NAS, it keeps trying to backup each file. stupid! The actual box is pretty good and seems to be always available.

I am now looking for "hiquality" developed software that can do Live and Backups to NAS with NTFS security.

Started Looking at Buffalo drives too... but not bought one

I am wondering about USB3/SATA3 (installing a PCIexpress type card with USB3 or thunderbolt) and wondering about faster transfer speeds to the server instead of Gigabit network(s).

Similar situation and I haven't backed up for a while!

 

[oldgoatroper]

I think that you'll find that NASs, while great for home and small business, just don't have the speed necessary for efficiently working with large files.

We finally went and bought a real server - a fast processor, heavy duty case and lots of fans, lots of room for drives (8) and finally lots of ram. I added a 3Ware true hardware raid controller card and installed Fedora ? with Samba on it. It makes an awful noise, so it sits in its own little room.

It took me a couple days to set everything up and learn and tweak (and I have little to no Linux experience), but the resulting system is very fast and has been absolutely trouble-free for the last six years. Its performance has not lagged at all.

There was one incident where the boot drive failed but that was easily dealt with as I had already made a cloned copy of the boot drive on a spare drive, so all I had to do was swap it out. (Data drives are separate).

The time I invested in setting this unit up has paid off big time. This machine is so stable that, at one time it was up to almost two years continuous uptime and might have made it had we not had the power go out, which happens around here occasionally. We had a cheap little Windows server before that had to be rebooted at least once a week to get its performance back up to something acceptable.

I think NASs are great for home use, video storage, and backup, but if you need a serious file serving capabilities, then you need to get a serious file server. But it need not be that expensive -- we got ours for about $1,500 + approx $200 for the 3ware card. -- Amortized over the life so far of this machine, and that's actually pretty cheap. Plus, as long as it keeps working, I can keep swapping in larger drives as capacity needs increase.

 

[signswi]

I'm in the exact opposite camp of OldGoat. I build my own fileservers for a decade or more but the small business NAS machines being put out now are bulletproof, fast, reliable and affordable. I mean real NAS machines, not consumer grade crap like Iomega or whatever.

My vote? Synology DS411+ DiskStation in RAID 5 with automatic backup to Amazon S3. You'll see over 90MB/s read/write on that rig in RAID 5 which is plenty. You could work straight off it (and note that 90MB/s is 33% faster than a typical HD) though I prefer to have a workstation with SSDs that backs up during the night to the NAS automatically. Best of all worlds. Speed while working, remote and offsite storage, and you don't have to lift a finger once it's set up.

Here's a great resource to people looking to get into the NAS game: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view. It's also really handy for networking gear.

 

[choucove]

Everywhere that we have had to set up a file server system for customers, we ended up going with a full dedicated file server system mainly because you can run a desktop operating system (linux or windows) which makes it easier for other people, not as technically inclined, to be able to do work if needed on it, plus you can use a whole host of programs and integrated features to manage backups, updates, or other hosted applications that go well beyond the capabilities of your standard NAS.

Lately we have ordered several HP ProLiant ML110 G7 servers for different customers and have been very pleased with them. They are very powerful computers for the money, and highly customizable to fit your needs. You can go very simple, with the base included hardware, and just put in a couple 2 TB hard drives in RAID1 with Windows Home Server, Ubuntu, or whatever else you please. Or, you can put in a P410/256 MB SmartArray controller, up to 4 hard drives in a RAID 5 array, even have dual redundant power supplies, and go with a high end ESXi virtualization environment or Windows Server 2008 environment, whatever you wish to use!

These servers are pretty cheap when you compare them to other true server systems, and even when compared with some NAS devices they are quite reasonable.

 

[briankb]

We purchased a ReadyNAS a long time ago. I've had to replace the power supply twice and it's getting harder to find.

Around November we purchased two Synology DS211+ and packed them with 2 - 3tb drives setup in RAID 1 (mirror).

Synology is about to release version 4 of their software and it has a ton of cloud stuff. If you are considering a NAS look at Synology.com and they are available from Amazon and other retailers.

 

[ESBG]

for NAS, had good luck with Synology.

for speed, had good luck with direct attached external SAS.

 

[eforer]

Our NAS let us down big time a while back and I built a box to run unbuntu server. For just serving files, you don't need a beast. File serving is not taxing at all, so monster cpu's and ram won't make much of a performance difference. Also a software RAID is sufficient for most environments, and truthfully most raid cards aren't true hardware raids. We use crashplan running headless on the box (technically unsupported but it works great and is documented on the crashplan support site) and use an external hard disk also managed by crashplan for extra security.

In terms of performance, you'll find that some of the NAS solutions are really fast because they use XFS as a filesystem. XFS is notoriously unreliable and hard to recover data from. I am running ext4 on the new server and it is a little slower, but the tradeoff is worth it.

We're running 12 users off our box and you could build it for less than $500.00.

 

[jrsc]

Most nas seem very slow. I just bought a HP proliant N40L server from newegg and put windows home server on it. It works great. If your drives are fast enough it has no problem maxing out a gigabit connection. I was able to copy large files at 115MB/sec. They go on sale all the time usually with some time of combo deal. I have about $400 in mine now after buying windows home server, hard drives, and extra ram. For backup I do 3 things: cloud backup, sync to a nas on the other side of the building, and use the windows home server usb drive backup and put that in a safe every night. As a bonus it also does a full backup of all your computers on the network every night. I'm very happy with it and it is very easy to use.

 

[Tigertron]

I have been running FreeNAS on an old Intel machine. The only real cost I have in it is the HDs. It runs headless and has some spiffy options. I rsync all my machines to back up automatically.

 

[amw]

We have no trouble opening large files on our network.
We use our 2 year old file server with 9TB in it, and using about 6.8TB currently. On a gigabit network and I dont know if it makes a big dif or not..but our server has 2 network connections running all the time.

I would def go with a server over NAS.

We will be getting a new one soon and will use the old one as an offsite backup for client files only.

Tony

 

[cdiesel]

We love our Synology NAS devices. We have three currently. We routinely work with large files, backup between the devices every night, and don't see any loss in speed. There was a thread that went into detail about NAS's a couple weeks ago. Do a search as there was a lot of good info in that thread.