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Parent friendly NAS recommendation

CaptNumbNutz

CaptNumbNutz

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My parents need a new NAS. They have used a Western Digital My Book in the past, but it has its limitations. They need reliability and simplicity. Cost is negotiable, this will be a business expense but lets keep it under a couple grand. My father is tech savvy, but he is also stubborn and impatient. They are also moving out of state, so I won't be a 5 minute drive away for tech support anymore. This needs to be a pre-built box for simplicity sake. Please do not recommend that I build something like a ZFS rig.

Requirements needed:

1. RAID 1, 2 disk setup. If a drive goes down, it needs to be dead simple to rebuild the array. I have to literally be able to explain it over the phone without much fuss. Optimally, a rebuild would require replacing the dead drive and the machine takes over. More drives would be neat, but that is added complexity which he doesn't need. This requirement is negotiable.
2. Replacing a drive needs to be simple. A few screws at most, preferably tool-less.
3. Minimum of 2TB capacity, but needs to accept newer 4TB+ drives.
4. Have onboard cooling fan. I know drives don't require much cooling. However, my parents utterly refuse to put their computer equipment anywhere else but in a closet. No matter how much I push, they have only agreed to keep the shelves clutter free, well spaced (18-24" between shelves), and put a small desk fan in there to keep air circulating. With this setup, none of their equipment overheats, but I don't want to risk it with the NAS.
5. Software requirements need to be minimal. My father wants to be able to click on a network drive in windows, drag-and-drop, that's it. Automated software is neat, but not necessary, and he definitely does not want it as a requirement to function. This was one of his biggest complaints for the WD unit he used previously as it seemed to prompt to install the software everytime he plugged it back in. When the software was installed, it usually didn't function properly (probably due to his user error). I'm usually the one to figure out such a simple issue, but as mentioned before he is moving out of state and incredibly impatient.:p
6. Must not be made by Seagate or use Seagate drives. Silly requirement, yes. However, he is pretty stubborn. He had a bad experience with Seagate...once.:rolleyes: I do have more experience with WD's RMA process, so this will be easier on me also.



I'm very interested in Synology's lineup, but literally overwhelmed on their selection.


What do you guys recommend? If you guys recommend something that doesn't exactly fit these requirements, please explain why. I'm open to suggestions.
 
Sounds like the perfect candidate for a Drobo 5N. Though its a 5 bay device, it will leave room for expansion so your not having to buy the largest spinners on the market. Slap some Western Digital Reds in it, and be on your way.

Edit:
Disk replacement is as simple as removing the marked drive, and sliding in the new disk. Tool less also. Accepts 4TB+ disks IRC, need to double check on the specifics. Software installation is minimal. Shares are mapped by your OS just like normal.
 
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Cheveyboy said:
Sounds like the perfect candidate for a Drobo 5N. Though its a 5 bay device, it will leave room for expansion so your not having to buy the largest spinners on the market. Slap some Western Digital Reds in it, and be on your way.

Edit:
Disk replacement is as simple as removing the marked drive, and sliding in the new disk. Tool less also. Accepts 4TB+ disks IRC, need to double check on the specifics. Software installation is minimal. Shares are mapped by your OS just like normal.
Click to expand...
This looks like a winner, but I'm reading some reviews and having some reservations. The biggest complaints I see an issue with are speed and complete lack of customer support. I also saw a mention of proprietary formatting on the hard drives so if the unit goes down you have to buy another like it to recover the data. Can anyone confirm this?

As far as the speed, it doesn't have to be lighting quick, but within the upper range of what the drives are capable of is fine with me. This will be a wired gigabit network it will be hooked up to with all devices using gigabit ethernet controllers. I realize the complaints could be user configuration related, but if there are other units that work faster comparatively, I would like to know about them.
 
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I've had a 5 bay synology for a couple years they were ~$900 new, now that i'm wrapping my ZFS build I started price checking used for my sale price, you can get them ~$550 now. I can max out my 1Gig with NFS and iSCSI on my synology.

POINT CLICK everything.

You configure their network so you can connect remotely and manage it for them if you want.

I vote synology, I love mine for what it is :)
 
Correct, there are some trade off's when using any NAS/SAN that does thin provisioning like the Drobo does.

The reason for thin provisioning stems from the way Drobo sets the volume up when you first put the NAS together. In order for you to be able to add more disks later to increase space without needing to back up, blow away the config, create the new config and copy data back, they have you configure the volume to be larger then the disks you currently installed would allow.

Sooo... If you chose odd capacity disks compared to one and another or force the device to run in a weird non standard RAID type of way, it will cause overhead and thus slow down transfer rates.

So it goes without saying, its not technically because its a proprietary "format" that stops you from being able to rebuild the RAID in another enclosure. Its a determent to thin provisioning. But the boon, is the ease of adding disks later without all the hard work.

It should go without saying, you still need to backup your data... blablabla. Therefor if the device goes bad, and you don't want another Drobo. Restore your data to your new device.

i cant speak about their customer support. The few I've used in the IT consulting world have not needed support.

I've also never done a data rate test, they were used primarily for backup targets or simple file share.

Hope I helped!
 
I think you are better off with a QNAP or Synology 4 - 5bay. I have known people that used Drobo and liked it, but I have heard too many awful failure stories and that is when you need support which they suck at.

Smallnet Builder has tons of reviews and rankings of the different NAS units
 
Guys, I need model numbers please. Synology and Qnap have dozens of models. Please remember the requirements I mentioned above, this doesn't have to be a powerhouse that can encode on the fly, share media, or anything like that. I need something for this SOHO setup my parents have.

I'm keeping the Drobo 5n on my list for now. The failures worry me, the rest of its faults I can live with.

I've been looking at the Qnap TS-231 and TS-431. I'm particularly concerned with the software requirements I listed above (#5). Anyone with more experience?

How about Synology? I'm using their compare feature on their website to drill things down a bit, but I'm still concerned about their software. The DS214se and DS414j seem to fit the req's (414slim is out due to limit on 2TB drives), but I cannot tell how the heck you replace the drives if it's going to be a PITA or not.
 
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DS1513+ is what I have, and suggest ~$500 used 5 drives, you could configure a hot-spare even :)
 
QNAP-TS251 would be good. It's pretty much easily to set up and very easy to maintain. Comes with a fan and if there is a disk failure, you can just swap out the disk and the rebuild process will start immediately. It is drag and drop. It's also super quiet too. I don't have experience with the TS-231 but I think that's the slower processor but should also be good for your needs.

To address your software concerns, there is pretty much zero software because it's all managed by the QNAP site.
 
Either a QNAP TS-231/251 (251 has a much beefier proc) or a Synology DS215j. Both around $200. Both Dualcore processors with 512mb and decent read/write speed.
 
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