NAS servers (again)

[Spoiler]

Okay, I'm finally going to get a NAS server. So which ones are currently worth looking at? I'm looking to do the following:

- Backup 2 Vista laptops.
- Backup an iMac.
- Backup an XP pc.
- Support RAID.
- Stream music to something (Sonos?) at some point in the future.
- Also, easy facitlity to backup the NAS server (do they have a dvd burner?)

Not too concerned about price as I won't be paying!

Cheers.

[PAH]

For features and extensability it's worth looking at Windows Home Server. Though probably only if you're going to be building it yourself. I imagine any off the shelf solutions will be expensive compared to traditional NAS offerings.

WHS is especially good for backing up any Windows based PCs as it can be set to startup/shutdown the PCs overnight, and does incremental backups of only files that have been changed/added since the last backup.

I particularly like the drive pooling feature, so you don't have to worry about the complications of RAID. All the drives can be pooled into one big storage area (currently got 4 drives offering about 2.5TB of storage in mine ), accessed by shared folders that can be duplicated across seperate drives to offer the same protection as RAID 1.

Certainly worth looking into.

[b0redom]

Or, if you don't want to have to pay for it, how about OpenFiler?

[voodooflux]

QNAP are worth a look for Linux based NAS solutions - I recently picked up a TS-209 Pro II with a couple of Samsung 1TB drives and I'm very happy with it. They seem to very popular at the moment, attracting a lot of attention and good reviews.

For a nitfy Windows Home Server solution then take a look at Tranquil PC.

[TheVoice]

Depends if you want a ready made solution really?

Buffalo TeraStation...pretty much defacto standard in NAS boxen. Full RAID support (upto & including Raid5) - you can also hang up to 4 USB disks off it (or memory sticks) which can be shared out, obviously the USB drives aren't included in the array. No optical drive but then, why would you need one?

QNAP are pretty good also as suggested by another poster, the advantage with these guys is they've taken a Terastation & made it's OS more flexible so you could do your streaming & stuff from it if you know Linux.

Orrr you could *shock horror* build your own!

Get a nice spec machine that supports RAID & roll your own. Plenty of Linux distros out there that will get you going, FreeNAS & Openfiler being the 2 mainstream ones. Or, if you want something totally customisable go for your favourite "full" linux distro & set up samba, NFS etc yourself - very satisfying to get it going & you get to spec it how you want it.

Finally - FleaBay quite often has Powervaults & alike on it - maybe pick up a bargain from there!

Just my 2p...

[voodooflux]

Buffalo TeraStation...pretty much defacto standard in NAS boxen.

Perhaps in days gone by, but with Netgear (ReadyNAS) and Thecus now on the scene as well the NAS landscape is changing rapidly, and there are some interesting devices appearing on the market.

QNAP are pretty good also as suggested by another poster, the advantage with these guys is they've taken a Terastation & made it's OS more flexible so you could do your streaming & stuff from it if you know Linux.

The beauty of something like the QNAP is that you don't have to know Linux at all to get the streaming going - it has a built-in UPnP Media Server and SqueezeCenter can be added easily via the web based package manager.

[Durbs]

I backup a similar setup and stream music/vids using Home Server. You can pick up powerful servers for nowt these days, check out the £140 quad core HP's on http://www.serversdirect.co.uk/.

I'm an Action Pack subscriber so get a free copy of Home Server and it is a real hassle free app (which i would never have known about had a copy not dropped through my door). Its just basically 2K3 with an additional interface tagged on so is pretty stable.

As Home Server is designed to run without keybords/monitor/mouse etc, i've just stuck it out of the way connected to the network via a Homeplug.

I just bunged in a cheap high capacity disk and a cheap Crucial memory stick and jobs a goodun'.

[Spoiler]

Time for a rethink. I initially said cost wasn't a factor (wife's company would be paying), but after a little reseach into various NAS servers, the ones that were of interest are a little pricier than I had originally thought.

I have an old box that I can use so I may try the home built option, using freenas, to start with. If this works okay, I'll then invest in a RAID card & some new hard disks.

The Windows home server looks interesting, but by the time I've got a reasonable spec server, WHS software, new HDD's, it'll probably be similar to the cost of a NAS system.

[Chugnut]

Whatever you go for, make sure it is located somewhere remote where you can't hear it. I bought a Buffalo Terastation for Sonos / backups and the fan noise is pretty intrusive.

[FiveTimes]

I've got a buffalo nas, but I've been unable to backup vista desktop to it.

Plus the fan is not a quiet as they make out