NAS with automatic sync between computers

[kwiato]

Hi, I need some help with software and hardware to setup a NAS in my company.

It's small graphic design company and I would like all my co-workers to have access to our client files. The way that I think would be Ideal is that everyone would have a folder with all the files on their drives but the files would be synced automatically to NAS. As a backup and as a source for other workers to sync when they will turn on their computers. Preferably with an option to retrieve previous versions of files.

 

Question one: What is the software solution that I should use not to cause conflicts?

Question two: What hardware would be required to use it? Is a ready solution like for eg. Netgear ReadyNAS RN102 able to handle something like this or should I buy a low power PC and maybe install a Bittorrent Sync?

 

I don't know a lot about this and I don't want end up buying software-crippled hardware.

Thank you very much in advance.

[TidaLWaveZ]

Is there a reason you would prefer not to just map the nas and have permission specific folders?

[kwiato]

Files can sometimes get really big and we're working on Wi-Fi. So I was thinking that syncing local files in background would be a better solution than to rely on network speed that might be a bottleneck.

[SaladFingers]

10 minutes ago, TidaLWaveZ said:

Is there a reason you would prefer not to just map the nas and have permission specific folders?

Agreed, why would you want to constantly have the clients download files? Assuming this is a local network, then you won't really have speed limitations, so why would you want to use it like dropbox? You can have the drive appear as a network drive on each client's PC and any change will be seen by anyone at all times.

[SaladFingers]

2 minutes ago, kwiato said:

Files can sometimes get really big and we're working on Wi-Fi. So I was thinking that syncing local files in background would be a better solution than to rely on network speed that might be a bottleneck.

But wouldn't that still mean more work for the Wi-Fi? Let's say client A makes a change to file X. If client B were to use said file, it would then specifically use the Wi-Fi bandwidth at that given moment. Now, if the files were to be synced to each client's PC, that would mean that anyone changing anything would trigger each client to download the new file. Sounds like more of a bottleneck when done like that to me.

[Godlygamer23]

BItTorrent Sync.

[Element23]

Agreed, I think BitTorrent Sync is what you are looking for.

[kwiato]

9 minutes ago, SaladFingers said:

But wouldn't that still mean more work for the Wi-Fi? Let's say client A makes a change to file X. If client B were to use said file, it would then specifically use the Wi-Fi bandwidth at that given moment. Now, if the files were to be synced to each client's PC, that would mean that anyone changing anything would trigger each client to download the new file. Sounds like more of a bottleneck when done like that to me.

But saving a 500MB file in Illustrator straight to NAS could cause errors or crash the program if the network has problems and the file would be lost. Am I wrong? 

 

This could be prevented a little if we would switch to wired network i guess. But this would still be slower than hard drive speeds right?

[Godlygamer23]

Just now, kwiato said:

But saving a 500MB file in Illustrator straight to NAS could cause errors or crash the program if the network has problems and the file would be lost. Am I wrong? 

 

This could be prevented a little if we would switch to wired network i guess. But this would still be slower than hard drive speeds right?

If you're using gigabit Ethernet, that's capable of 120MB/s, which is slower than most desktop hard drives. You can perform Link Aggregation if you have a NIC with multiple Ethernet ports, which could give more throughput.

[SaladFingers]

3 minutes ago, kwiato said:

But saving a 500MB file in Illustrator straight to NAS could cause errors or crash the program if the network has problems and the file would be lost. Am I wrong? 

 

This could be prevented a little if we would switch to wired network i guess. But this would still be slower than hard drive speeds right?

It would probably be fast enough though. In the neighborhood of 60-75mb/s to even 100-120mb/s when there is no file check, which would the the maximum a gigabit cable would be able to give anyway.

 

Saving a 500MB file while having network problems could crash the program. But wouldn't your computer trying to sync that 500MB file every time someone edits it cause the same kind of problems, only more times?