What is the point of a NAS?

Performance and Scale out. Synology or QNAP can't handle an enterprise demand, and just doesn't grow when to an enterprise solution such as an Isilon install. I am currently maintaining 2 500TB isilon clusters.. If I fill them up, I just add additional nodes. Additional nodes = disk space, and compute power. You don't get any of that with a Synology or QNAP device. There is something to be said with scale out vs scale up.

BRB, will be maintaining HUGE enterprise stuff that I'll stealth brag about in a consumer NAS thread later.
 
Performance and Scale out. Synology or QNAP can't handle an enterprise demand, and just doesn't grow when to an enterprise solution such as an Isilon install. I am currently maintaining 2 500TB isilon clusters.. If I fill them up, I just add additional nodes. Additional nodes = disk space, and compute power. You don't get any of that with a Synology or QNAP device. There is something to be said with scale out vs scale up.

But that's not a file server either, that's an Enterprise Cluster that you have to buy from a vendor. You're not whiteboxing a scale-out storage cluster on your own, you're paying a company to design and support it for you.

And QNAP does offer Enterprise products as well: https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/items_by_series.php?CA=1
 
My previous Thecus NAS was about to die, so i decided to go down the mini server route:
Using the DS380B Chassis as a base, i've built a nice little box, Core i3 processor, 8GB RAM, runs windows 10, Using a highpoint 642L RAID controller and multiplers, i have 8 drives internal(could do 10 but only 8 bays), and future expansion of an additional 10 external(2x5). Which should be enough storage for my needs. Boots from an SSD.

It's a bit more flexible than your average NAS, runs my Phillips Hue emulation(HABridge & Domoticz), have a Linux VM running on it for DHCP/DNS, it handles my usenet downloads, plex, couchpotato, sonar, Shoko Anime DB using MySQL, and i've still got plenty of resources free!

I could not do all of that with a traditional NAS, a pre-built NAS(with room for expansion) would have cost me more anyway.

That was similar to my original intention with a DS380, minus the raid card and only 4-6 drives at the start. Its not a horrible case given what it is, but I'd have paid $50 more ($200) for toolless bays with metal not plastic fronts. The noise levels still bother me and assembly is a pain with the hdd cage system, nature of itx though. That system isn't doing much due to my lazyness but I have a feeling it will end up in a spare node 304 I have with just 4-6 drives given the mobo I bought. The ATX version of the 380 looks similar in setup but likely easier to build in and deal with.

sorry off-topic but i'll make it quick
I work at a small company, about 9 employees, cheap laptop for each one. no network, no nothing. just a 2 gig dropbox.
we use our own email domain which stores emails for 60 days on the web-server and the rest of the emails are stored locally on each employee laptop
whats the best thing to do here? a NAS? does it require that we setup a network first? can we do it without a network? is there a network solution that doesn't require wires in the walls?

A NAS would need a network, with it being wired in most cases. You'd get more advice starting your own thread.
 
BRB, will be maintaining HUGE enterprise stuff that I'll stealth brag about in a consumer NAS thread later.

OP never said if it was consumer or enterprise. Ive been asked the same question in enterprise meetings in the past by people who don't understand the concept.
 
But that's not a file server either, that's an Enterprise Cluster that you have to buy from a vendor. You're not whiteboxing a scale-out storage cluster on your own, you're paying a company to design and support it for you.

And QNAP does offer Enterprise products as well: https://www.qnap.com/en-us/product/items_by_series.php?CA=1

Actually it is a filesystem. I'm sharing a common filesystem between Windows and Linux systems. In an enterprise environment, depending on your environment, it makes more sense to pay someone to build it out then to build it yourself.
 
Actually it is a filesystem. I'm sharing a common filesystem between Windows and Linux systems. In an enterprise environment, depending on your environment, it makes more sense to pay someone to build it out then to build it yourself.

Large enterprise? Sure. A NAS probably isn't the best choice. For anything medium-business and down to simple home use, a NAS is a great choice.

The point of my original question was to tell me what a "file server" (i.e., a single Windows Server or Linux box designed to serve as a network share drive) can do that a good NAS can't do. I was not asking for a comparison of $50k+ enterprise solutions to a desktop NAS.
 
Actually it is a filesystem. I'm sharing a common filesystem between Windows and Linux systems. In an enterprise environment, depending on your environment, it makes more sense to pay someone to build it out then to build it yourself.

What is a file system? An EMC Isilon cluster is network attached storage that is scalable. It uses their FreeBSD based OneFS and it's not a traditional Linux or Windows File Server which is what we were comparing to a NAS.
 
Large enterprise? Sure. A NAS probably isn't the best choice. For anything medium-business and down to simple home use, a NAS is a great choice.

The point of my original question was to tell me what a "file server" (i.e., a single Windows Server or Linux box designed to serve as a network share drive) can do that a good NAS can't do. I was not asking for a comparison of $50k+ enterprise solutions to a desktop NAS.

NAS Solutions in the enterprise have their use. I currently use it to augment our backup solution. I also use it to share a common filesystem between windows and linux. Example, application uses windows, outputs data into some format into a Nas folder. The Database server is Linux, mounts the same folder and pulls in the data. No need for extra service accounts to do sftp/ftp transfers between system. Infosec loves that. I'm also using it as a common repo for applications. At the end of the day, a Nas is a file server.

I didn't see anywhere there was a budget limit on this post and OPs original post didn't say anything about consumer vs enterprise.
 
What is a file system? An EMC Isilon cluster is network attached storage that is scalable. It uses their FreeBSD based OneFS and it's not a traditional Linux or Windows File Server which is what we were comparing to a NAS.

OPS orginal post..

No, seriously, what is the point of a NAS, and how did they get so popular? I've been racking my brain trying to understand why someone would choose a NAS solution over a local server. In every instance where I tried to compare the two, the local server was cheaper, more powerful, more expandable, sucked negligible power at idle, was able to do much more than just store files...

My response was based of this post.. He asked why someone would choose a Nas over a traditional filesystem.. I responded with why I would choose as a NAS over a traditional fileserver. Not a lot of context in OPs post.. So I posted my response based on my daily job.

I'm not wrong, either are you, or either is the OPS question. Lots of ways to do the same thing. We all just have different views on how to do it.
 
NAS Solutions in the enterprise have their use. I currently use it to augment our backup solution. I also use it to share a common filesystem between windows and linux. Example, application uses windows, outputs data into some format into a Nas folder. The Database server is Linux, mounts the same folder and pulls in the data. No need for extra service accounts to do sftp/ftp transfers between system. Infosec loves that. I'm also using it as a common repo for applications. At the end of the day, a Nas is a file server.

I didn't see anywhere there was a budget limit on this post and OPs original post didn't say anything about consumer vs enterprise.

I think we're getting a bit off track on my point. The person I was responding to described a NAS as a "watered down file server". I was asking them for what features a full Windows/Linux file server would offer that weren't available on a good NAS. The point of my question was really to point out how capable Synology/QNAP NAS software really is these days, and how it can really handle just about everything for a medium/small business. It's not going to handle businesses that are computing-focused, but it's more than enough to handle simple mail duties, file sharing (permissions, quotas, backups, remote access, etc), and a host of other tasks. That being said, they ARE a small device, and generally not rocking super powerful CPUs and loads of RAM. But for a 10-25 person office at a law firm? Or a doctor's office? Probably an ideal solution.
 
Yeaaaa.. we kinda drifted a bit. You are totally right with that thought process. There are a million different ways to do the same thing, just depends on the goal, budget, environment and expected out come. So I totally get where you are coming from.
 
I don't get this question. Network attached storage is shared storage. It's like why do companies use SANs instead of all local storage.

SANs/NASs give you redundancy, shared storage, dedicated cooling, storage management, lower power usage than a computer, etc.
 
The title is wrong - the actual question was "What is the point of the expensive pre-built self-contained NAS's when you can build a cheap file server?".
 
That's an easy question to answer.. Not everyone wants to build and support their own one off solution. There are plenty of reasons behind that answer, and most of them depend on use case, support options, and budget.
 
I also noticed this. A maxed out 4 bay can replace my current NAS and my ESXi server. Anyone with experiance using QNAP Virtualization and Container stations?

to bad all my stuff needs intel verse AMD
 
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