[lugm.org] NAS - Synology

[Keshwarsingh Nadan]

Hello,

 

For around 15k you can get an entry level HP / Fujitsu server with very low
power consumption & a 3 years warranty on all parts.. You have a hardware
raid controller, enterprise class sata hard drives, dual gigabit nics etc
etc
 You just have to load an openfiler & you leave it alone running &
forget it..

 

Rgds,

kn

 

From: discuss-bounces at lugm.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at lugm.org] On Behalf
Of Nishal Goburdhan
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2012 11:42 AM
To: LUGM Discuss Mailing List
Subject: Re: [lugm.org] NAS - Synology

 

On Mar 21, 2012, at 12:00 PM, pascal maya wrote:





Hello all,

 

This is an SOS call to the Mauritian Linux Community. Can you guide and help
me locate a reliable supplier in Mauritius to purchase a Synology DS412+ .

Any other relevant/similar alternatives(Qnap, Lacie, Dlink, etc), your more
than welcomed to suggest.

Setting up a FreeNAS is not an option, I'm looking for a small compact
solution with easy backup and restoration with RAID builtin.

Is Dropo an expensive alternative to other similar products ??? BTW Dropo
suppliers here in MAU ?

 

it's drobo. :-)

 they're not cheap, but if you want a fire-and-forget solution, then this
works well (i have one at home).

it's formatted for use with AFP (yes, go ahead and laugh logan, we only have
macs at home!), and it Just Works (tm).

my non-technical significant other is trained to look at the three colours
(green, orange, red, and act accordingly - ie.  green=don't touch;
orange=tell me;  red=swap disk with spare, and tell me).  i used to spend
quite a bit of time travelling, and, ease-of-use, trumped all else, hence my
decision to go drobo.

 

the local reseller is paoma, in curepipe - www.paoma.mu.  very helpful - not
that there is much to do! 

 

 

What could be the approximate cost for purchasing that kind of hardware here
in MAU ?

 

i bought my 4drive unit 2 years ago, with 2x 1TB disks;  it wasn't cheap at
the time (+30K iirc) and i got a discount because i also purchased a UPS and
other peripherals as well.

 

i've seen smaller synology units (2 disk) in stock at ct-zone at bagatelle
for ±11K.  

ispace-technologies - www.ispace-technologies.com - in ebene also had QNAP
units in stock, when i was there 2 weeks ago.

 

as ajay mentioned, most of these units use proprietary raid systems to give
you the expandable raid array options (what drobo sells as the any-size
disk-grow-as-you-need-raid-array).  while this works great when it works,
i've read lots of horror stories of people trying to get the data recovered
when something fails.  same with synology's SHR system - we recently
purchased one for office use in ZA, and the supplier warned -against- using
their SHR (expandable array) option for our data storage purposes.  ymmv.

 

yo should also know that these raid5+1 systems take absolutely forever to
rebuild - i recently swapped a 1TB for a 2TB drive to get to (2+1+2+2), and
the volume rebuild took more than 30 hours!  of course it's useable during
this period, but that might affect your data usage/storage systems.  (as a
home user, this didn't impact me too much)

 

i've been thinking about a backup NAS, and, speaking from a drobo user's
perspective, i doubt i will buy this again.

both qnap and synology seem to offer the same options at almost the same
price point;  both of which are well below drobo's.

while i love the simplicity:

* it's expensive by comparison

* there are cutesy home features in the other two that drobo lacks (built-in
media server, etc.)

 

don't get me wrong - the unit works great.  it's just expensive by
comparison *for home use*

 

the single largest technical benefit i've seen is that even my old unit will
scale to 4x 4TB.  looking through the whitepapers for synology and qnap,
most of their non-professional units will not support 4TB drives (some not
even 3TB).

 

hth,

--n.

 

btw, if you're willing to look for suppliers in ZA for these, ping me
offlist.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://discuss.lugm.org/pipermail/discuss_discuss.lugm.org/attachments/20120322/d4246e85/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 6996 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://discuss.lugm.org/pipermail/discuss_discuss.lugm.org/attachments/20120322/d4246e85/attachment.p7s>