business -grade NAS.

16k_zx81

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Customer is a graphic design business with about 10 employees - called me in to work on their ';server' which is an old single core desktop running XP Pro.

Power supply had gone.

This machine stores the files for the entire business, all of their graphic design work for years.

"probably time to retire it, dont you think?"

"yes, we're thinking about it"

"Is the machine backed up regularly?"

"No., Not that we are aware of" (single harddisk) :eek:

I rang DELL and talked to them, they came back with a quote for 12 grand for a server and a tape backup. This is probably overkill and I am pretty confident would get laughed at (dont worry, Im going to lead with this and then see where the conversation goes). Assuming they dont have the budget, I will follow with a more cost-effective plan:

So what I am thinking is a NAS with 4x2TB tb hdd mirrored (2x2=4tb) (current storage need is about 500gb-1TB, but no point building to capacity - allowing overhead and expandibility if needed in future) - also would allow imaging of all of their machines to storage.

So, sanity check.

1. whats a suitable business grade NAS for this type of task? - bullet-proof, easy to upgrade, simple administration.

- I should note that permissions are all 'level' - ie everyone has access to all of the graphics files, no email storage, etc.

2. My understanding is that RAID mirror does not constitute a backup - so what would you recommend to a customer in regard to a proper backup of their data - cloud is probably not practical due to the sheer quantity?

- what I am thinking of suggesting is that they nominate a staff member to be in charge of weekly backup on an external to be taken off premises after each upload. - thoughts?

Am hoping those of you with relevant experience might be able to shed some light.

So, what would you do?

Something like this
http://web.qnap.com/pro_detail_feature.asp?p_id=165

With WD Blacks'?

- thoughts?
 
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Personally I would be going down the road of a "proper" server. However rather than DELL I would chose HP kit, but thats probably a personal preference since I have been using them since they were Compaq!

Having said that I would say Dell quote of 12k would be slightly excessive. I would say 10-12K for a business of that size would be ball park. That would include all hardware (including backup devices), all software (server / CALS / security) and all services (data migration / client migration etc)

The Synology are great devices, however we tend to use them as on network backups for servers.

If you need any local disties for HP kit, give me a shout.

Tom
 
I set a Synology NAS up recently for a four user company. 2 x 1TB hard drives as a raid 1, backups to external USB hard drive plugged into the unit and an Amazon S3 backup nightly to Amazon Ireland. Myself and the owner get 2 emails that these backups have completed successfully.
 
I set a Synology NAS up recently for a four user company. 2 x 1TB hard drives as a raid 1, backups to external USB hard drive plugged into the unit and an Amazon S3 backup nightly to Amazon Ireland. Myself and the owner get 2 emails that these backups have completed successfully.

Yes it sounds like an ideal setup, but I had a look at S3 pricing and from what I can see 1tb per month storage is in the ballpark of $128 per month. Its kinda pricey.
 

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ibackup.com is around $99 for 1TB.

There was a similar thread on here a few weeks ago and i recommended continuous backup to another USB or NAS box which is taken home of an evening by a director.
 
Yes it sounds like an ideal setup, but I had a look at S3 pricing and from what I can see 1tb per month storage is in the ballpark of $128 per month. Its kinda pricey.

You pay little to store with the one i did(12GB about £2 per month) and only really pay for download and that was for recovery in a disaster so the client was happy with that. 1TB is a lot of data so I don't think it will be cheap or practical to do on the net.
 
I know qnap allowed backup between two NAS devices but not sure if it would allow a seed backup to start it off

I've set this up.

You can do the first backup over a LAN. However you have to bear in mind that seeing as this is effectively syncing two folders, if they do something like change the name of a root folder it will back up the entire dataset from that branch onwards. This happened to my client.
 
I have a synology here at the office and like the features it has. I don't know if I would call it true business grade, but depending on their price point it can certainly be good enough. Leaps and bounds ahead of where they are.

I have not used the feature but it has the ability to backup to another synology device. You could have one off-site that it mirrors to nightly. Disclaimer -I have no idea how good their backup system works, all have their quirks.
 
In all seriousness I don't think I would ever consider selling a consumer grade
drive to a business client. I think it's just asking for trouble down the road.
I'm not saying it's wrong if you do, it's just not my approach.

I sell them on the extra reliability and warranty that the enterprise grade drives
offer and make more money on the parts to boot.

Not sure if it's a currency thing, but I can get 2TB constellations for $210 CAN.

Back on the topic of NASes, I just found out that Sage Simply Accounting
cannot work with network drives. It needs some "Connection Manager"
software on the server that is of course Windows only. Something to keep
in mind for accounting clients. Apparently QuickBooks has similar limitations
but I haven't looked into it. Ridiculous limitation, even Adobe Reader and
Notepad can open files on a NAS.
 
In all seriousness I don't think I would ever consider selling a consumer grade
drive to a business client. I think it's just asking for trouble down the road.
I'm not saying it's wrong if you do, it's just not my approach.

I sell them on the extra reliability and warranty that the enterprise grade drives
offer and make more money on the parts to boot.

Not sure if it's a currency thing, but I can get 2TB constellations for $210 CAN.

Back on the topic of NASes, I just found out that Sage Simply Accounting
cannot work with network drives. It needs some "Connection Manager"
software on the server that is of course Windows only. Something to keep
in mind for accounting clients. Apparently QuickBooks has similar limitations
but I haven't looked into it. Ridiculous limitation, even Adobe Reader and
Notepad can open files on a NAS.

The WD DX4000 Chris mentioned runs Windows Server OS.
 
Going back to 'Big Frog's' comments about accounting software and NAS's - I have just had a frustrating few days incorporating a NAS into a system where the client uses PASTEL Partner (vers.11.) accounting in both a networked and remote access environment.

The installation/configuration of the NAS and transfer of the Pastel 'company' data went well, but testing with users chucked out all sorts of problems when users were accessing data simultaneously. We called in a PASTEL consultant who has a great reputation for setting up this accounting software in a network environment and after 3 hours (honest!) tweaking he finally helped me get things working like a dream.

The secret? - it was the settings on the 'PERVASIVE' sql engine that PASTEL needs in order to run - when he tweaked the communication settings for PERVASIVE on all the machines on the network things started to go right - and kept going right.

Hope this helps; sometimes we need to get input from other experts who are specialists in their applications, I confess I don't have a lot of background knowledge about most of the accounting packages out there, and I could never have solved this one without this guys input!
 
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