Looking for NAS for Small Business

[MIRTBelGeran]

I have some friends that run a small buisness but they are not tech savy. They have a significant library of digital artwork that they need to backup and store. They would also benifit from a print server. I'm recomending that they purchase a NAS device with print server capability but can not decide on the best option.

In this circumstance I'm not a fan of DIY computer NAS builds because they must be able to support themselves. I offer my services for free so am not interested in spending my time at their shop. For this reason any RMA solution should be single vendor. Perhaps harddrives can be supported seperate.

I believe they need atleast RAID 1 support and around 500GB space.

So far the best product I have come up with is from HP. Any other sugestions?

HP Media Vault (http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c00768544.pdf)

[Cyrilix]

It depends on what you intend to do with the NAS, as they have a variety of features. Some might work better than others. If you only intend to drop files though (I haven't tested any other features because I don't use them), then the N5200 is a pretty fast NAS. The Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ has also received good reviews.

[gigabyte1024]

I don't know which would be better, we use dell in house so you could consider one of these...

http://www.dell.com/content/products/compare.aspx/storserv?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd

[MIRTBelGeran]

Performance is not critical however ease of use is. They are sharing graphic art not streaming media. The network is primarily wireless becuse the building infrastructure is crappy.

Also budget is very small. I'm looking at a sub $1000 solution. This is a 3-4 person operation.

[Asgorath]

Infrant ReadyNAS NV+

I just set someone up with one of these and it's awesome. I got the diskless version and put in 3 x Western Digital 500GB RE drives (5 year warranty) and set them up in an XRAID.

Super easy. FTP, SMB, WebDAV, and some other good protocols. File permissions can be set on box or windows.

A++

[Asgorath]

Oh, and the NV+ is gigabit ethernet. If you want to make it wireless you'll have to get a wireless bridge. I would recomend just hooking it into your wireless router. You'll get MUCH better performance that way.

Just remember, a wireless access point acts like a network hub. 54g wireless is 54mb/s divided up among all the users. Same goes for wirelessN.