Synology NAS

Synology Network Attached Storage (NAS)

These low cost, compact, high performance units are being Used more and more to replace data only servers, data mirrors and backup devices.

Synology NAS units come in a variety of capacity’s and quantity of hard disk drives to suit an y NAS requirement. The largest one we have installed to date was 48TB for engineering backups.

Shared data folder

Shared folders such as the P: drive

Backup computers on your network

Synology NAS can be used to continuously backup every computer safely and securely over your network. The computer backup program is Free to use and has no licencing limitations.

Mirror its own data

It is possible to set up a 2nd drive as backup to the first one. This may be on site – in a different part of the premises or better again, offsite altogether. We have our own site for this and we charge £6 / month. This also means that when you need data recovered it can be done quickly.

Performance

Data only servers do not need high processing power or large amounts of memory to cater for small office users. However the system is scalable right up to large numbers of heavy duty users. Memory on the larger models may be increased and hard disk drives may be replaced with Enterprise grade SSD’s and network ports may be teemed for greater performance.

Linux?

Yes virtually all NAS’s use a custom version of Linux as their operating system. This helps with performance as Linux has a much lower overhead than other Operating systems. Also Linux has zero licencing costs – although some apps do need to be paid for. We have installed several hundred Synology NAS’s and have yet to ask our clients for a penny for additional software.

Reliability

Synology NAS’s have proven to be extremely reliable and we do recommend that you log into them a couple of times a year to ensure they are up to date.

Reporting

It is possible to set up a Synology to report its status according to your preferred schedule. It can also report when backups have been successful and even when it has been switched off and on!

Auto power on

We normally set Synology NAS’s to switch themselves back on after a power cut. It means that when the power comes back on, the NAS is ready.

Power usage

Synology NAS’s use only a fraction of power compared to a full blown Windows server.

SQL and Microsoft Exchange.

The answer to both is a not really. SQL may be run with difficulty using things like ‘Docker’ but has a reputation for freezing. They can host Joomla and WordPress websites but we dont support these.

Give me a shout if you are interested.