NAS or network shared hard disk?

[glennzo]

In my wife's office there are 4 desktops and there is 1 NAS. The NAS is aging quickly, as are the 4 desktopps so they are thinking of replacment. This is all Windows based by the way. They will likely go with 4 new desktops but as far as the NAS is concerned, is it really needed? Couldn't we just add a second hard disk to one of the desktops and share it over the network so everyone can access it just like it was a NAS?

[jpollard]

It may make a difference to the Windows licensing...

I believe (not sure, it has been a VERY long time) that MS counts a system providing disk services to multiple clients a server. And that usually involves an additional price.

The big problem is that now all systems are dependent on that one Windows system to remain "bug free" and prevents arbitrary reboots (doesn't do well when the server disappears and reappears during a file save).

[smr54]

I'm not sure about the licensing, though I would think that a workstation can also share files--it just becomes a shared disk.

As jpollard says though, it can be a problem if that workstation goes down, gets rebooted, or any number of things.

[glennzo]

That's enough to make me lean towards the NAS.

[smr54]

Also, in my opinion, and experience, sooner or later, there will be a new employee who needs the new computer, or someone else's computer will crash, and just this once, Well, we'll use this one today, and the new person will forget and turn it off, or the like.

(Another option might be a relatively cheap machine running Linux with samba, not open to the Internet.)

[Dan]

(Another option might be a relatively cheap machine running Linux with samba, not open to the Internet.)

+1


Barring that option, NAS.

[stevea]

Arrrrr & Avast - put on your pirate caps, cutless and eyepatch matey - tis time to plunder.

There is no better way to sneak a Linux system into the nest than with a NAS. There are a zillion NASen on the market and most are pretty good wrt Win/Samba/CIFS. So help choose something that is fast, effective and Linux.

There is one excellent resource wrt NAS ... here...
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/finders/nas/view

Keep in mind that a fast 2TB drive costs a mere $140 these days, and a lesser 2TB drive well under $100, so RAID0 or RAID5, 10 ... scheme which has true data redundancy and a bumload of storage for a 4-10 person office is pretty cheap these days.

As much as I personally am looking for an ARM based NAS to act as a lightweight server, there are a load of Intel Atom based Linux NAS that really hit a nice price/performance spot - for a few watts more.

[Doug G]

Workstation versions of windows typically have a hard-coded 10 connection limit, so you wouldn't have a problem using a shared disk in you small network.

Or you can just stick a linux machine on the network with samba and add some shares for your windows users. NAS are nice but kind of pricey unless you build your own with something like freeNAS.

However if window permissions need to be saved with all files, permissions can be an issue with a linux-based nas or share. You may want to stick with using a windows shared disk, which will support the full ntfs ACL's.

[stevea]

Originally Posted by Doug G

Or you can just stick a linux machine on the network with samba and add some shares for your windows users. NAS are nice but kind of pricey unless you build your own with something like freeNAS.

You think they are expensive compared to a PC with a few drive bays ? I think you are overestimating the cost of a NAS and underestimating the cost of PC + configuring, installing, tuning and maintaining a PC solution.

You can get a top performing 2-bay BYOD Synology DS712+, 2 enets for about $260, add a pair of 2TB drive may double that. Then you have a fixed, preconfigured, high performance appliance for ~$520 serving 2TB as RAID1 supporting all the common shared FS' and acts as an iSCSI Target(server) too. Probably all you'll need for a small office.

You can get a 4bay, 2enet Thecus N4800 or N4200PRO for $600, load it with commodity disks and get all the above features and it's supports the other RAID types unavailable w/ 2 spindles.

You can probably match the Thecus price with a cheap PC build, but then you have a fair bit of admin work just to make it work PLUS it takes a lot of tuning to tweak the network server performance. The boxes above measure at >90MB/s on the net and if you just throw a bale of parts together you're more likely to see ~35MB/s and you'll have a lot of work to tune that out. A PC solution is fine if you plan to roll-out and admin 40 NASen for an enterprise; but for a <20 person office it's lunacy to do anything buy buy a turnkey solution.

Yeah you can just stick a Linux machine on the net configured with Samba - but then YOU are gonna get a call every time the logs overflow or the Samba config needs a tweak.

FreeNAS is indeed a nice NAS distro seems to be well maintained. Wikipedia mentions others but OpenMediaVault(Debian) and TurnKey(Ubuntu) deserve consideration.