NAS vs. a Desktop Server - Why Buy a NAS?

[L&LD]

Surely you have a Microsoft Key so the OS can be replaced, like any OS.

I really don't know why you're not understanding.

The key won't do you any good if the embedded storage is soldered on (or worse) and you can't replace it for any amount of money.

 

[coxhaus]

Now that we have covered security problems and replacing the OS we are down to if the hardware dies you are probably in trouble. I guess if the hardware dies in any NAS you are in trouble. You could probably load the OS on a drive in one of the drive bays but you would end up losing some space on the drive you have to load it on. The Microsoft Key should be for this particular NAS not where the OS is loaded. This is all speculation since I don’t really own one of these anyway.

 

[L&LD]

Now that we have covered security problems and replacing the OS we are down to if the hardware dies you are probably in trouble. I guess if the hardware dies in any NAS you are in trouble. You could probably load the OS on a drive in one of the drive bays but you would end up losing some space on the drive you have to load it on. The Microsoft Key should be for this particular NAS not where the OS is loaded. This is all speculation since I don’t really own one of these anyway.

You cannot replace the OS on this setup. Either from a hardware glitch with the embedded ssd or from a very potent OS BSOD either. I'm positive there is no option to load the OS on a drive bay. If there was; it would be done already.

You and I are both speculating, granted. But the point I was making originally and what you're trying your best to totally ignore is that a proprietary bootup ssd is not the best thing to rely on for keeping your data safe.

There are no security problems I see or have mentioned. Just plain (stupid) proprietary hardware with no chance for data retrieval except by having an exact same hardware example with the exact same OS and setup installed.

In other words, this is about equivalent to a Drobo. Not for my data, nor my customers.

 

[coxhaus]

You cannot replace the OS on this setup. Either from a hardware glitch with the embedded ssd or from a very potent OS BSOD either. I'm positive there is no option to load the OS on a drive bay. If there was; it would be done already.

You and I are both speculating, granted. But the point I was making originally and what you're trying your best to totally ignore is that a proprietary bootup ssd is not the best thing to rely on for keeping your data safe.

There are no security problems I see or have mentioned. Just plain (stupid) proprietary hardware with no chance for data retrieval except by having an exact same hardware example with the exact same OS and setup installed.

In other words, this is about equivalent to a Drobo. Not for my data, nor my customers.

So what are you using for your clients Microsoft Server Essentials 2012 R2?

 

[L&LD]

So what are you using for your clients Microsoft Server Essentials 2012 R2?

I'm not.

 

[azazel1024]

You cannot replace the OS on this setup. Either from a hardware glitch with the embedded ssd or from a very potent OS BSOD either. I'm positive there is no option to load the OS on a drive bay. If there was; it would be done already.

You and I are both speculating, granted. But the point I was making originally and what you're trying your best to totally ignore is that a proprietary bootup ssd is not the best thing to rely on for keeping your data safe.

There are no security problems I see or have mentioned. Just plain (stupid) proprietary hardware with no chance for data retrieval except by having an exact same hardware example with the exact same OS and setup installed.

In other words, this is about equivalent to a Drobo. Not for my data, nor my customers.

It is just speculating for all of us. Just because you can replace the OS on basically all "real" computers, doesn't mean you can on an appliance. The OS image may well be on ROM with a bit of NVRAM. Or even if it is all NAND, that doesn't mean that the NAS has anything like a pre-boot environment to boot off something other than the internal flash storage or the ability to overwrite the existing OS image.

 

[coxhaus]

I'm not.

What are you using for your clients?

 

[L&LD]

What are you using for your clients?

With regards to what?

 

[coxhaus]

What server software are you using with your clients?

 

[L&LD]

Almost all computers I service are running Windows 8.1 x64 Pro. No server software necessary for the office type work tasks involved.

If they are not running that version of the Windows OS (or very close to it), they are not on the local network (even if they have internet access via Guest / isolated network branches).

 

[unmesh]

This question must have been asked a million times before but I can't find it when I did a search.

Why buy a NAS when I can get a higher performance small desktop server for less money?

I used to buy the 2-bay SOC-based NAS'es because of the lower cost but eventually tired of the low performance and bought a HP 4-bay AMD microserver and most recently the higher performing Lenovo TS-140! The HP is being used as a file server only but I'm running VMware ESXi on the Lenovo and a NAS OS, Windows 7 and Windows 10 Technical Preview as VMs on the Lenovo.

As others have pointed out, this is not a plug-and-play solution. In addition to software installation issues (I'm using Xpenology as a NAS OS, for example), hard drives have to be cabled up on the Lenovo. The HP was easier since it has blind-pluggable hard drive bays.

I enjoyed getting these up and running; YMMV!

 

[coxhaus]

I have only worked in a large environment and we had mapped drives for all the different departments to save the daily work so nothing is lost. All the mapped drives were backed up. We did not backup workstations, only server drives. Maybe in a small environment it is done differently. I don’t know how to deal with not having a server as core storage. Even with home server I back up all workstations to a server so nothing is lost. My home is small enough to make this happen but when you get bigger I don’t think there is a way to back up all the machines. So to me server is the core but maybe this is old school.

 

[KenZ71]

^^Same here

I tell all family members save to the network, local is not backed up.

OH still puts stuff on desktop and gets upset she can't get to it when that machine is off. While I can see my stuff from phone, desktop, tablet, etc.

 

[azazel1024]

I haven't had to worry about back-ups, other than my computer, so far. I know that day is coming soon. For my desktop I have a weekly job to back-up all the stuff that may be of importance. Once my kid's start having their own computer and doing anything "important" like school papers and stuff, I'll probably set it up so that it is a daily/nightly job to backup whatever folder(s) they might be sticking important things.

 

[L&LD]

I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating.

With Windows 8 and up, I have each client PC do a File History backup to a local NAS (mostly QNAP 4 to 8 bay models). This is one reason that Windows 8 / 8.1 is required. These backups are continuous and run several times a day and at least once overnight without user intervention. No PC gets turned off or rebooted except as required for Windows Updates or other maintenance work.

With higher end customers, that NAS is backed up to another 2 NAS' too on rotating schedules (one week and one month intervals to alternating BU1 and BU2 NAS').

In addition to these automated BU NAS' data copies, manual USB backups of each NAS unit (main, BU1, BU2...) is also done on a schedule too (based on the rate of new data and the importance of that new data). On at least two USB drives that are also alternated (one for local storage in a safe usually, and one offsite; with the owner or one of the senior partners in their home safe or bank safety deposit box).

So, when everything is going fine, there are at least 3 copies of each document and up to 12 copies depending how old the document is in the backup schedules.

Local is not backup. But, it is another copy to rely on. This configuration also cuts down the network traffic for the people and devices that really need it too.

With the appropriate rights and passwords on each PC and NAS folder(s), read only rights to core documents and other similar procedures, this system works well without needing to babysit each employee on a constant basis. New files (once verified for accuracy by the higher ups) get put into the read only folders as needed. The system works well and the work flows smoothly too.

With at least one QNAP file server running, a MS server is redundant for the customers I mostly work with.

While the above sounds complicated to write out and read, it is pretty straightforward in practice.

In addition, I am not needed to retrieve a potentially compromised document (the executive staff can figure it out easily) and the checks and balances put in place make it easy to pinpoint any single employee of either needing more training, or needing to be let go for whatever reason (with regards to data integrity and confidentiality).

What my customers get from a setup like this is one less device to need monthly maintenance (i.e. a server) as the QNAP products just work without issues. Sure, they pay more for me to set them up like this, but it is blueprinted and once the base work is done, the executives can add, remove or change employee roles (and the files they are allowed to access) very easily with full confidence of their actions. I have not seen that from any version of MS server since around 2005 or so.

 

[coxhaus]

To me I find managing all these little chron jobs on different machines is too much trouble and requires too much effort to maintain. Having one central location and one big backup is much easier to me.

 

[L&LD]

Chron job?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/set-drive-file-history

Select a File History location and turn on FH. Pretty easy.

 

[coxhaus]

Chron job?

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-CA/windows-8/set-drive-file-history

Select a File History location and turn on FH. Pretty easy.

I just picked chron jobs because I wrote some batch and Rexx files to mirror the documents folder on each user’s machine which will work on older versions of Windows before 8.1 existed. Trying to check to make sure they all ran turned out to be too much trouble. Nice to see it is built-in to Windows 8.1 as it is probably more dependable. Does file history work very well for shared files that multiple people work on?

 

[stevech]

^^Same here

I tell all family members save to the network, local is not backed up.

OH still puts stuff on desktop and gets upset she can't get to it when that machine is off. While I can see my stuff from phone, desktop, tablet, etc.

I use Centered Systems' SecondCopy - it silently and reliably copies from PC to NAS what I tell it to watch. Used it for years. Simple, good.

 

[sfx2000]

This question must have been asked a million times before but I can't find it when I did a search.

Why buy a NAS when I can get a higher performance small desktop server for less money?

The best rated 4-Bay NAS's seem to cost more than US$350 without HDD. I easily can buy a Lenovo TS-140 with a Haswell i3-4130 CPU and 4GB of ECC PC3-12800 RAM, 2-Display Ports, 6 USB 3.0 ports, 2-USB 2.o ports, 1-Gigabit LAN Port, Built in RAID and Remote Access, Built in Graphics and Audio, 4-HDD Bays, and an Optical drive for less than US$200.

I have to put in a OS drive and Storage drives as well as put on an OS. I need to populate the drive bays on the NAS's that come without them anyway.

The TS-140 is a bigger box than a dedicated NAS box. The advantage of that is I have a lot of upgradeability to put in other cards like a 4-port gigabit intel i350-T4 card to give me 5 gigabit ethernet ports. The RAM is upgradeable to 32GB also.

Power usage on the TS-140 is also quite low. I measure power usage at idle somewhere between 15-20 watts depending on how many drives and what other cards I have installed. The maximum power usage when the CPU is at 100% utilization and I am streaming as many streams as possible from all the drives is around 66 watts (most I have ever measured) but more like in the 45 watt range. This is about what a i5 Laptop uses.

I'm curious about this since it has always seemed that NAS boxes have a very high price for not as much capability.

You raise a good point - to be honest, one can pick up an off-lease HP/Dell small form factor desktop off eBay/Craigslist which will have at least a Core2Duo or perhaps a Core i3/i5, along with 2GB RAM, 1TB Disk, and a gigabit ethernet adapter - add Ubuntu 14.04LTS Server, install samba, and a minimal smb.conf like below:

[global]
workgroup = WORKGROUP
netbios name = nasbox
# security = share, or perhaps user, depends on what version of samba
security = user
map to guest = Bad Password
# hosts allow - limit to the LAN local subnet - example 192.168.1.0/24
hosts allow = )see note above)
[share]
comment = HomeServer
path = /sharepoint
force user = fileserver901
force group = fileserver901
guest ok = yes
read only = no​

Create a directory called /sharepoint, a user/group fileserver901, and share away... it'll be fast and friendly for most clients - Mac/Windows/Linux...

What you get with a pre-built NAS though... More features, better QA, and better support for the HW and SW, and for many, this is very important.