Question NAS for a small business

[slippyjim]

Hi,

I am looking for a 2 bay NAS for a small business that is to be used as their file storage location and enable them to remotely access the files. It's mainly going to be small Office files, no large files like videos or the like. I don't need it to be fancy or anything other than that.

I have these 3 models available
Synology DS220j
Synology DS218
SQNAPTS-230

The only real difference I can see between the DS220j and DS218 is 0.5GB vs 2GB RAM and drives being hot swappable on DS218 (which I don't need). I have used other Synology devices recently so I am more familiar but have used one QNAP in the past

They only require 1TB of storage so I want 2 drives in RAID 1 mirror but I am unsure if to go for SSD's or HDD's. The WD Red HDD and the other NAS specific HDD's all seem to be in much larger capacities than I really need.
So this leads me onto, do I really need a "NAS" HDD or would something like the WD Purple surveillance HDD be ok?
I just want this to be as reliable as possible and I did read this from a post 3 years ago so not sure if it is still valid as SSD tech has moved on over the years

• SSD will make your array less reliable due to highly correlated failures due to exact same wear. Also, go with SLC cache, MLC in the absolute crunch and never TLC or worse (e.g. QLC)

Any help or advice is appreciated

Thanks

 

[USAFRet]

In short:

HDD
WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf
Either Synology or QNAP (I have a QNAP)
Add some other backup concept besides the RAID 1.

 

[slippyjim]

Thanks for that
Yeah I am thinking of online backup from the NAS, from what I've been reading the Synology and QNAP seem to be compatible with all the popular providers so that all seems good

RAIS 1 and online backup should be good enough right? A 3 or 4 HDD array seems a bit overkill to me

 

[kanewolf]

Thanks for that
Yeah I am thinking of online backup from the NAS, from what I've been reading the Synology and QNAP seem to be compatible with all the popular providers so that all seems good

RAIS 1 and online backup should be good enough right? A 3 or 4 HDD array seems a bit overkill to me

The one question I will ask, Do you have a Windows domain ? If so, on the Synology side you want the "plus" model like the 720plus. It can integrate with your windows domain. The other benefits of the 720plus over the lower end units is that you can add NVMe SSDs to improve performance. In a shared usage situation that could be very beneficial.
The lower end units can't do those things. @USAFRet can probably provide a similar recommendation on the QNAP side.

 

[slippyjim]

The one question I will ask, Do you have a Windows domain ? If so, on the Synology side you want the "plus" model like the 720plus. It can integrate with your windows domain. The other benefits of the 720plus over the lower end units is that you can add NVMe SSDs to improve performance. In a shared usage situation that could be very beneficial.
The lower end units can't do those things. @USAFRet can probably provide a similar recommendation on the QNAP side.

There is no windows domain, it is just a basic office network setup.

At the moment there is only going to be 6 PC's on the network and all of them will have access to the shared NAS but from what I have seen of the setup it is not likely that everyone will be using it all the time.

I have read about the HDD and NVMe SSD for cache but isn't it just better to go with SATA SSD's in the first place? Especially as we only need 1TB of storage (will probably never use all that), I know people say "always get more cos you will need more" but they use currently use less than 20GB, it may well expand over time but by the time they fill 1TB a 10TB SSD will be the smallest you can get

Thanks

 

[USAFRet]

What are you currently doing for full drive backups of the 6x workstations?

 

[slippyjim]

Currently there is no backup at all, a new guy has recently bought the business and wants it all modernised with easy remote access to the files and automatic backup so I figured a NAS was the best way to go

 

[kanewolf]

Currently there is no backup at all, a new guy has recently bought the business and wants it all modernised with easy remote access to the files and automatic backup so I figured a NAS was the best way to go

That means that your 20GB number above is not representative of the space you actually NEED.
The delta cost for 4 or 8 TB disks compared to 1TB (and I don't know if NAS rated disks come this small) is minimal.

 

[slippyjim]

The plan is not to do system backups of each computer to the NAS, the NAS is just for data file storage so basically everyone will store any work files to the NAS and nothing s to be saved to their PC's

But now you mention it I might as well get the 4TB drives and do some system backups to the NAS as well

 

[USAFRet]

The plan is not to do system backups of each computer to the NAS, the NAS is just for data file storage so basically everyone will store any work files to the NAS and nothing s to be saved to their PC's

But now you mention it I might as well get the 4TB drives and do some system backups to the NAS as well

If the drive in one of those workstations were to crash right now, how long would it be until that person was up and running again?
Reinstall OS, updates, permissions, all their software, settings, etc, etc....a day, perhaps? Two?

A proper backup procedure, you could have them up and running in under an hour.