Need a fileserver

[jidehassan]

I work in an audit office of about 15 people. ost of our work revolves using  excel. We want to now have everyone save their files on a central system (we tried at a time using google cloud). We sometimes might require to connect to this server to retrieve some files (remotely from outside the office). And also was thinking that do we have to create individual accounts for this users on the server or they all dump their files and we have to find a way to arrange? Our files are growing huge, close to about 100gig+. Currently short of cash to buy a real server and a bit skeptical buying a used one. So we intend to use a normal desktop system and configure it so serve as a file server. Is it safe for office computers to connect to this server wirelessly or rather by cable?Is this safe? What options do we have? What should be put into considerations?

[theklax]

My advice would be to buy a prebuilt NAS from Synology or QNAP. They're quiet and come with software good for this purpose. I'd recommend buying fewer higher capacity drives to reduce the chance of a drive failures and being reliant on software RAID in the event the unit itself fails. Perhaps a 4 bay unit? 2 x 8TB NAS drives duplicated, which would facilitate future expansion too.

 

The unit should be backed up offsite. Perhaps weekly with a couple of external drives or nightly with cloud storage. Both brands come with software to make this job quite painless.

 

Depending on your access requirements I'd highly recommend the use of an ethernet cable at least between the NAS and the router.

 

 

 

 

[chiller15]

I wouldn't recommend doing it on the cheap, as there can be a lot of factors to consider, especially when it comes to backups/redundancy. For example, if you bodge a spare machine together with a 2TB HDD in...what if that drive fails? Ideally you'd want to use something like RIAD5 across multiple HDDs, coupled with an off-site backup.

 

I'd recommend a dedicated NAS that has RAID built-in and using an off-site backup service.

[NelizMastr]

A regular office desktop of decent quality will also set you back like $400-500 and more, so you're better off with a prebuilt NAS. It used less power, is virtually silent, and does everything you need it to do while manageable from a web UI.

 

You could go for a 2-bay NAS and an external harddrive for backing up the NAS, which would be the cheapest solution. You could also go with a 4-bay and start with just 2 disks and fill it up as the need grows. 

 

I can recommend the Synology DS218j and DS218 2-bay devices as I've used them extensively. Their 4-bay counterparts should be great too (DS418j and DS418). Start with a bunch of 2TB drives to keep cost down, or jump for the ideal bang for the buck, 4TB disks.