I am trying to pick the right NAS product to put into a small insurance agency. It would see normal office use for central file storage and PC backup. The other things specifically that are being asked for is the ability to upload pics to the NAS from their phones, and to have a second, backup unit offsite that the primary unit syncs with.
I am looking at the Drobo5n, but am reading horror stories about failure and being trapped in their product lines. I am also looking at some of the WD products because I see they have an easy feature to back one unit up to another.
I have built myself a FreeNAS box, but don't think that that type of product would be right for this situation, or at the very least, I don't know how to make one that would be.
Any suggestions that could be made would be appreciated.
FreeNAS is absolutely the solution to this. Perhaps for this situation it would be better to buy one from IX, instead of building one, so you have the support.
Call up IXSystems and tell them what you are looking to do and They will give you a quote.
An IX diskless system is twice the cost of the Drobo. What I don't know how to do with the FreeNAS system would be the phone upload or device to device mirroring. I'm sure it can be done though. Either way needs to be reasonably cost effective. I expect each device to run something like $1200, not $1700
The question is how scalable does your client need it to be? How many users today, how many in the future? How much space now, how much in the future?
Don't get me wrong, a Drobo will work....but how well for how long before they outgrow it?
If you are doing an install for a company, its often hard to sell them the RIGHT solution. FreeNAS is the RIGHT solution. At least INFORM them of that. It is up to you to research how to implement it for them, but I assure you while it may be more complex, you are paying for the ease of use of off the shelf products.
The IX diskless (FreeNAS Mini?) is twice the price, sure, but it is also alot more powerful. It uses the same 8-Core Avaton/and I think the same board Wendell used in his FreeNAS video series.
Drobo's are SLOW, because of the cheap hardware and file system they use, it just sucks. And they die. Alot.
The WD NAS's are slow, because of the slow/old Marvell CPU's they are running.
So while either of the other two solutions WILL WORK, you are trading the businesses cost savings NOW, with increased infrastructure costs later.
The Phone thing: Can be done by setting up a CIFS share pretty easily
If you insist on off the Shelf- Look into Synology. Still does not have scalability, but it works, and works well.