NAS needed
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Less than a gig? What is their internet connection like? Why do they need a NAS suddenly? Could they get away with using something like ODfB, Dropbox, or Box? That way the users have it backed up on their desktops and in the "cloud".
I don't think I would purchase a NAS for less then a gig for just two users.
What is stopping these users from creating a share on one of their desktops and then mounting it on the second users machine?
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@coliver said:
Less than a gig? What is their internet connection like? Why do they need a NAS suddenly? Could they get away with using something like ODfB, Dropbox, or Box? That way the users have it backed up on their desktops and in the "cloud".
I don't think I would purchase a NAS for less then a gig for just two users.
What is stopping these users from creating a share on one of their desktops and then mounting it on the second users machine?
The cloud storage idea is good. I also was wondering about just a desktop share. However, this may be looked at as an opportunity for long-term growth with a NAS.
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Is "less than a GB" correct? Did you mean less than a TB perhaps?
Best two bay NAS solutions are ReadyNAS, Synology or IoSafe and Buffalo. All three are very good.
ReadyNAS is here in ML @mdgm
IoSafe is here in ML too @Brett-at-ioSafeIoSafe is a really nice solution for a company relying on a single storage device as it is fire safe, so you are far more likely to be able to survive a several local event in case of disaster since you will be working off of a single device. IoSafe is Synology under the hood.
Both ReadyNAS and the IoSafe/Synology options are very good.
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@g.jacobse said:
These are very nice. The DS214 is the underlying platform that IoSafe uses.
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@g.jacobse said:
We support some of these and haven't had the best of luck with them. Very low end devices. Not horrible, but not up to par with ReadyNAS, Synology, et. al.
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@thanksaj said:
Actually, a VM of FreeNAS would be ideal in this case.
Assuming that they have a virtualization infrastructure, seems unlikely with less than a GB of data.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@g.jacobse said:
We support some of these and haven't had the best of luck with them. Very low end devices. Not horrible, but not up to par with ReadyNAS, Synology, et. al.
Good to know. I know the ReadyNAS line has been commented on recently as the ioSTOR series.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@thanksaj said:
Actually, a VM of FreeNAS would be ideal in this case.
Assuming that they have a virtualization infrastructure, seems unlikely with less than a GB of data.
If they don't have a virtualization infrastructure in place on-site, a desktop share makes the most sense.
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I really like Synology.
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@technobabble If it were me, I would go with a Synology NAS (2-4 bays) and just get some 250GB or 500GB drives. They might now have a lot of data right now but you want to have room to grow for a few years too.
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@Bill-Kindle Why such small drives?
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@thanksaj said:
If they don't have a virtualization infrastructure in place on-site, a desktop share makes the most sense.
With only ten users that can work. Although typically this is less than ideal as you don't normally have RAID and you rely on that one desktop to always be on and available. Even at home I don't do that.
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@Bill-Kindle thanks....checking out the prices now.
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@scottalanmiller checking out IoSafe.
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If the load is pretty low, I would say try this.
http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?sn=822&c=351&sc=514&t=522&n=18376
I just bought one for myself, popped in four 2TB hard drives. It supports iSCSI, NFS, SMB, LMNOP, BBQ and WTF. Even one of the two drive boxes would do you good, supports the same protocols.
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@PSX_Defector said:
If the load is pretty low, I would say try this.
http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?sn=822&c=351&sc=514&t=522&n=18376
I just bought one for myself, popped in four 2TB hard drives. It supports iSCSI, NFS, SMB, LMNOP, BBQ and WTF. Even one of the two drive boxes would do you good, supports the same protocols.
It's the support that is the problem. QNAP if you read their full SLA is "you'll get a new box, two weeks after you send us your old one." For home, that's fine. For a business, it's bad. Stick to the business class devices unless you plan to buy a second just to have on hand to do the job while the first one is in its two weeks hiatus.
And getting support is reportedly nearly impossible. @John-Nicholson has had a terrible time getting any support on them and what he got had to be done in Mandarin - which most of us lack as a support option.
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@scottalanmiller said:
It's the support that is the problem. QNAP if you read their full SLA is "you'll get a new box, two weeks after you send us your old one." For home, that's fine. For a business, it's bad. Stick to the business class devices unless you plan to buy a second just to have on hand to do the job while the first one is in its two weeks hiatus.
I don't see where you see that.
http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?lang=en&sn=855
QNAP is saying that warranty work is supposed to go through the vendor/authorized reseller. And even if you use them for service, you are paying full freight either way. I've never known a vendor who wouldn't do an advanced RMA anyways, so if it popped on Friday, it would be on the next slow boat from China on Monday.
And getting support is reportedly nearly impossible. @John-Nicholson has had a terrible time getting any support on them and what he got had to be done in Mandarin - which most of us lack as a support option.
Huh? That don't make sense. Even when I had to get support from Peplink, a very Chinese company, it was always in English. Anyone NOT doing business in English will find themselves without customers.
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@PSX_Defector said:
QNAP is saying that warranty work is supposed to go through the vendor/authorized reseller. And even if you use them for service, you are paying full freight either way. I've never known a vendor who wouldn't do an advanced RMA anyways, so if it popped on Friday, it would be on the next slow boat from China on Monday.
I can get a Netgear replacement in Dallas in 2-3 hours.
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@PSX_Defector said:
Huh? That don't make sense. Even when I had to get support from Peplink, a very Chinese company, it was always in English. Anyone NOT doing business in English will find themselves without customers.
Not QNAP. People buying their products aren't researching them much or listening to feedback. This has come up in online forums so many times but people just keep buying them and touting that they "have no issues." But ask people if they've actually tried to get support and you find out that all the people pushing them are the ones who have gotten lucky and never dealt with support and base their business recommendations on their use case of a device that hadn't failed - so they had no idea if they would get support or not.
QNAP also got caught putting random drives on their HCL, ones that weren't even compatible with the system. They since changed this, but it was all made up as it didn't matter for a long time.
You assume that QNAP loses customers because of support issues. But they are a consumer class company that a lot of SMBs buy because they are cheap. When people are buying QNAP, they aren't doing so because of lots of good reports or experience about support. They are talking to people without any experience, checking a price and buying without researching or caring. The SMB mostly operates like a consumer and consumer markets don't have the negative reaction to lack of support that real businesses do.
