Installing an Office NAS: 2 or 4 Bay?

[RuamRudy]

In our office we use G-Suite and a shared G-Drive file system, however we are experiencing a couple of issues: corrupted files because of different users accessing the files at the same time, and also the dynamic file names means that files with external links can only be refreshed by a single user. To overcome this, we are going to install a NAS and I am mulling over whether to get a 2-bay or 4-bay unit. 

 

On G-Drive we have a total of about 30GB of data and it doesn't grow that quickly; the NAS hard disk will be a single 2TB drive. Therefore, I don't foresee us filling this any time soon, let alone having to install a second drive, so I am tending to go with the cheaper 2-bay option. Other than future expansion issues, are there any other things to consider here? Thanks!

 

[shady86]

Depends on your budget, just make sure the hardware is fast enough to saturate gigabit ethernet (1000Mbps) else everything slows down if you transfer huge files and many random access at the same time. 2 bay should be good enough for raid1 redundancy but having 4 bays are future proof for upgrades. 

 

If space is not and issue, you can use a old desktop I3 gen 2 above and install freenas. 

 

 

[RuamRudy]

10 hours ago, shady86 said:

Depends on your budget, just make sure the hardware is fast enough to saturate gigabit ethernet (1000Mbps) else everything slows down if you transfer huge files and many random access at the same time. 2 bay should be good enough for raid1 redundancy but having 4 bays are future proof for upgrades. 

 

If space is not and issue, you can use a old desktop I3 gen 2 above and install freenas. 

 

 

Thanks - I appreciate your input.

We are replacing all our computers as part of the exercise. The spec of the new computers is:

 

- Intel I3-8100 3.6Ghz 1151 6MB Processor

- Asus Prime H310M-E R2.0 1151 DDR4 AVL MATX Motherboard

 

And the NAS is:

 

- SYNOLOGY DS218 2-BAY DISKSTATION

- Quad Core 1.4 GHz, 2GB RAM

 

There is an option for a Dual Core 2.0 GHz (turbo to 2.5 GHz), 2GB RAM (up to 6GB) but I am erring on the side of frugality and planning on going with the Quad Core.

[OneMoreFarang]

I suggest most important is that you have mirrored drives (RAID1) and that you make regular backups to some other device.

 

If you use only 30GB or even more then I would use (by now relative) cheap SSDs in the NAS. I.e. buy two 250GB SSDs for together 2000B or so. They are much faster than any HDD and you can use them like HDDs.

And if you need more space in a year or two then buy bigger "disks" at that time. Likely double the space will cost less than half from now so there is no point in buying now much more space then you really need.

 

[RuamRudy]

3 hours ago, OneMoreFarang said:

I suggest most important is that you have mirrored drives (RAID1) and that you make regular backups to some other device.

 

If you use only 30GB or even more then I would use (by now relative) cheap SSDs in the NAS. I.e. buy two 250GB SSDs for together 2000B or so. They are much faster than any HDD and you can use them like HDDs.

And if you need more space in a year or two then buy bigger "disks" at that time. Likely double the space will cost less than half from now so there is no point in buying now much more space then you really need.

 

Thanks for that - I was actually just thinking this morning about backups; one of the benefits of GDrive is that I can retrieve older versions of files if the current one screws up. Clearly I need to do more research. Thanks again.

[OneMoreFarang]

6 minutes ago, RuamRudy said:

Thanks for that - I was actually just thinking this morning about backups; one of the benefits of GDrive is that I can retrieve older versions of files if the current one screws up. Clearly I need to do more research. Thanks again.

I guess you can still backup your data to the GDrive. Then you have your files local and an online backup.

Another offline backup would be even better but one backup should be good enough in most cases.

[muratremix]

if you need advanced features, you may need a higher end nas like DS918+ (16900 thb) which supports BRTFS and file replication.

 

synology cloud disk may also support file versioning in lower end models, not sure. make sure you do your research before buying any.

 

also, sata disks can easily saturate 1Gbit port so no need to buy SSD unless you work with so many small files or accessing them from multiple computers at once. In that case, DS918+ has support for file caching on nvme pciexpress ssd (2 slots) and that would ensure performance on your end.

 

4 disks can also provide better protection with Raid6 (2 disk failures) vs Raid 1 (one disk failure).

[RuamRudy]

1 hour ago, muratremix said:

if you need advanced features, you may need a higher end nas like DS918+ (16900 thb) which supports BRTFS and file replication.

 

synology cloud disk may also support file versioning in lower end models, not sure. make sure you do your research before buying any.

 

also, sata disks can easily saturate 1Gbit port so no need to buy SSD unless you work with so many small files or accessing them from multiple computers at once. In that case, DS918+ has support for file caching on nvme pciexpress ssd (2 slots) and that would ensure performance on your end.

 

4 disks can also provide better protection with Raid6 (2 disk failures) vs Raid 1 (one disk failure).

I don't think our requirements are too demanding - maybe 10 computers linked to it, mostly using MS Office applications with a couple using Quickbooks and an inventory management system. But the backup you and others have mentioned has pushed me into that direction so I will give that extra attention. Thanks.

[extercy]

I don't think you can solve your data corruption issue with a NAS. Limiting file access to single user at a time would be much better, meaning only 1 user can have read and write access at a single time and the rest will have only read access.

I would never recommend a NAS because of the time, effort and money spent, might as well have a server that is more cost effective, easier to maintain and to add services. You can even use your old hardware, i3 and up recommended. It does not need to be server grade, just any of your old PC with Linux Mint running would be fine. Or you can run FreeNAS as mentioned above.

The more features you want in a NAS, the more you pay and the price can be equivalent to a nice PC with a lot higher specs. Do some YouTubing to check out how complicated it is to setup a NAS to your liking .. some are really complex as not as easy as PlugNPlay as it seems.

Edited February 17, 2020 by extercy