So, i'm looking for a NAS solution for a home office network. The network is currently 1gbit it may expand to 10gbit fibre at some point, depending on requirements. Can anybody recommend a direction to look into? Common usage will be duplicated backup of workstation and an archive (ideally with cloud backup). Any suggestions?
Back in the day I would have said "HP MicroServer" - four non-hotswap bays (which can be upgraded to hotswap with a BIOS hack), fifth 5.25" bay, eSATA, and a PCIe slot for a 10-gig-E card in the future. Trouble is, the modern ones aren't as good as the older-generation ones - and a lot more expensive to boot. Could still work out cheaper than a dedicated NAS, though, depending on how much CPU and RAM you need (and if you're planning on doing full block-level deduplication, that could be a fair wodge.)
Budget? Capacity? "Fast"? Microserver is still good value for rolling your own, if not as good value (or as expandable) as previously - Synology and QNAP are also a good option if you want something that's a bit more turn-key, especially for the likes of cloud backup and various other data services. I'm not sure I'd bother looking at any other NAS units, though just cobbling together and re-using old-ish parts could work out pretty cost effective as well. QNAP tends to have better hardware for the cost, and includes either expandability for 10Gbit, or 10Gbit already on board at a far lower price point than Synology (sub £500) I'd be inclined to give Synology the nod for software, however for 10Gbit capability you're looking at a ~£800 entry point. Synology has a variety of cloud backup options, however Glacier or Synology's own C2 cloud are the best options in terms of cost IMO. I'm using 1TB of C2 and can't complain - all encrypted client side, data lives in Germany, can define different jobs for different data, retentions etc, and there's an intuitive restore portal both from the NAS, and from the web. I'm also backing up to another Synology NAS, and using the active backup agents on all of the clients in the house to back them up to the NAS - can't fault the software at all. Bear in mind that speed of the NAS is a function of both how powerful the CPU in the box is and how many disks are there. QNAP does include 10Gbit on some of it's 4 disk models and smaller, however you won't be getting your sweet sweet 1GB/sec throughput without more spindles, unless you're going for non-parity RAID and SSD. I used to use a G8 microserver, but outgrew it (wanted more than 4 disks and 10Gbit, which would be mutually exclusive with a microserver). I mulled over DIY options for a while but opted for Synology in the end because it's mainly idiot proof. Not that I'm an idiot... I've worked in the storage industry for the last 15 years after all, but it's something that's running everything in the house, and not something I want to be involuntarily screwing around with.
