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We are pleased to announce the publication of our new guide: 'Synology Setup Guide for Small Businesses'. It is a comprehensive, well written, fully illustrated book that takes you through all the steps involved in setting up a Synology NAS in a home environment. It is available exclusively from Amazon Kindle. UK customers click here. US customers click here. Leading NAS supplier Synology have announced the latest version of their acclaimed DiskStation Manager operating system, known as DSM 5. Likely to ship during the Spring, the UK launch of the beta version took place in London on 16th January and CTACS were in attendance. DSM is a highly regarded piece of software and is considered to give Synology a huge advantage over other NAS suppliers. Most NAS systems are controlled using static web pages and as such are rather clunky to use. In contrast, although accessed within a browser, DSM provides an experience much like using a regular computer, complete with a Desktop, multiple windows plus a drag-and-drop interface. Synology were the first to do this and although other manufacturers such as QNAP and Netgear have been playing catch-up, Synology remain ahead of the curve. DSM 5 features a new interface. The fashion these days is for simplified, cleaner look, as seen in Apple's iOS 7 and Microsoft's Windows 8 and DSM 5 is very much within this vogue. But it is more than a pretty face - a lot of effort has gone into making it easier to install, configure and manage the system. As it is still early days, it's probably inappropriate to run through all the changes in detail, particularly as things are still subject to change. But one very useful new capability is the so-called "hybrid" cloud. Most people will be familiar with public cloud services such as Dropbox, SkyDrive and Google Drive. Synology have Cloud Station, which provides a totally private cloud solution. But DSM 5 supports both, offering the best of both worlds plus providing a means to backup key data from the DiskStation to Dropbox, Google Drive and Baidu (the latter is a sort of Chinese equivalent to Google). This is a very exciting development indeed. We will provide more information on DSM 5 as the official launch date approaches. We are pleased to announce the publication of our new guide: 'Synology Setup Guide for Small Businesses'. It is a comprehensive, well written, fully illustrated book that takes you through all the steps involved in setting up a Synology NAS in a typical small business. It is available exclusively from Amazon Kindle by clicking here. Dell have introduced a compact file server, the PowerEdge T20. Whilst not as petite as the HP Microserver or the Western Digital DS 5100/6100, it is nonetheless smaller than most entry level servers. Internally, it uses server grade components, meaning it is not just a souped-up PC masquerading as a server. The PowerEdge has a choice of Intel Pentium or Xeon processors, is expandable up to 32GB RAM, has four 3.5" drive bays plus can accommodate another two 2.5" drives via an expansion kit. Dell are aiming this server at the small office and the home-based office. No operating system is supplied, but a suitable offering would be Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials. One shortcoming of the T20 is that it only has software-based RAID, which we would not recommend (see The World of Fake RAID). A number of pre-canned configurations are available from the Dell website. At the time of writing, a Xeon-based model with 2 x 1 TB SATA drives, 8GB RAM and a basic one year warranty costs £528 + VAT. Allow for a copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials and some form of backup drive and you are looking at over £1000 for a working system. Whilst not outrageous, a Seagate Business NAS with 4TB storage and a backup drive is currently available (15/11/2013) from ebuyer for less than £200 and would provide sufficient functionality for many (see http://www.ebuyer.com/491331-seagate-4tb-business-storage-2-bay-nas-external-hdd-black-stbn4000200). You've got a shiny new iPad or other tablet. One of the things you had in mind when you bought it was watching your movies on the 'plane when you go on holiday. Or perhaps you've a home network based on a NAS and you want to put your movies on it so you can watch them from any of your devices. How do you go about this? The answer is that you need to 'rip' the DVDs, which means to make electronic copies that can be stored on your hard drive, NAS, USB stick, tablet and so on. Before we proceed, it should be pointed out that there is some debate as to whether this is strictly legal or not. In some countries it is not, but even if it is then you certainly can't do things such as rip your DVDs and then sell them, give them away, post them online and so on. Rather, the spirit is that you are simply accessing something that you have legally obtained but in a more convenient manner. Obviously we do not condone breaking copyright or anything illegal. There are many pieces of software around that can rip DVDs. However, they usually cost money. One that doesn't is Handbrake (the rather strange illustration to this article is actually the Handbrake logo) and it is available for both Windows and Mac. It has numerous options and, like all such products, needs a bit of experimentation and fiddling until you find the settings that give the best results. However, if you have an iPad or iPhone then there are built-in presets that will get you running up and quickly. The time taken to rip depends upon the performance of your computer, the length of the DVD, the resolution being used etc but is generally a couple of hours (a lot more in he case of Bluray). Handbrake works very well, but you'll quickly run into the issue of copy protection. Most commercial DVDs have been nobbled so you can't copy them; in order to do so you need a decrypter program. A free one that many people report success with is DVDFab HD Decrypter, also available for Windows and Mac. This creates a copy of the DVD or Bluray on your hard drive with the protection removed. You then run Handbrake on this copy, which typically generates a MP4 format file which will play on most devices. If you have a Synology NAS and a Roku streamer We've mentioned the low-cost Roku TV streamer previously (see here), and we are unashamed fans of the Synology NAS. As Synology boxes are able to serve up media - videos, music, photographs - and the Roku is able to display such things on a TV set, it would seem a perfect match. And now Synology have released the missing part of the equation - an app or 'channel' for Roku. To make everything work you need a Synology box of some sort, a Roku box or the Now/Sky variant, the DS Video channel (download from Roku) and the Video Station application installed on the Synology. Load the Synology with your videos (you can rip DVDs using tools such as DVDFab and Handbrake) and let it think about things for a little while. The Video Station application will index your videos by searching for information on the internet, bringing down cover art, actor/actress/director data and so on (it sometimes gets it wrong, though, in which case you can edit it). Go to your TV, switch to Roku, select the DS Video channel and you'll be presented with an attractive visual catalogue of your videos (see the screenshot above). You can scroll through the catalogue, sort it alphabetically, by genre, producer, actor and so on. It all works very well, far simply and more consumer-friendly than playing about with Plex or Twonky or the other home streaming solutions. In addition, Roku have an app for Android and iOS. This lets you control your Roku using a smartphone or tablet, plus adds other tricks such as streaming music and photos direct from your phone to the TV. Launched a couple of year ago, the HP Proliant Microserver is a popular choice for small businesses and computer enthusiasts. It is a regular file server - not just a PC masquerading as one - but is small and cheap. Very cheap. And now it's even cheaper. Usually priced around the £220 mark, until the end of June it is available with £100 cashback from HP. At the time of writing (9th June 2013), ebuyer have an additional discount, meaning by the time you claim the cashback you will have paid just £99.99 for it - truly astonishing. At this price, you don't have to use it as a server: it's the cheapest way of buying a new PC. In fact, it's worth buying one as a spare even if you don't need it! So, what exactly does £99.99 buy you! Quite a lot. The Microserver is powered by an AMD N54L CPU clocked at 2.2GHz, has 2GB of DDR3 RAM plus a 250GB 7200 rpm SATA hard drive. That might not sound like a particularly high specification, but performance-wise the Microservers punch well above their weight. There are four drive bays; stuff it with 2TB drives and you've 8TB storage in the box. The drives can be configured as RAID 0 (for performance) or RAID 1 (for reliability), although the RAID controller is not as sophisticated as a dedicated controller card. There are numerous USB ports, for the connection of external drives for even more capacity or for backups. There is no DVD drive; it is relatively straightforward to add one, although it does necessitate opening up the box. Memory can be expanded to 8GB (and it supports ECC RAM, too), although again it is necessary to open it up. To use it as a server, it is necessary to install an operating system. The slight problem here is that a full version of the Windows Server software costs considerably more than the Microserver itself! Fortunately, there are some low cost alternatives available. A popular choice is Windows Home Server 2011; this is a sort of cut-down version of Windows Server 2008 that will handle up to 10 computers/users and is available for less than £40 onlime. Another alternative is ordinary Windows 8, still available for £50-£80 in some places. Although this is really a desktop operating system, the built-in Homegroup networking services are fine for the home or very small business. Finally, there is even a totally free operating system called FreeNAS; this turns a computer into a very capable NAS box along the lines of what Synology, QNAP, Buffalo etc sell. It can even run from a USB memory stick, and there is space for one inside the Microserver. However, this is very much an option for the enthusiast rather than the man or woman in the street. A reader writes... "I have just had TalkTalk fibre broadband installed. They supplied me with a Huawei router. It seems better than the BT HomeHub I previously had, but I don't like it and it doesn't have gigabit Ethernet ports on it. However, it does have a USB socket that allow a memory stick or external hard drive to be shared, which sounds a good idea. Two questions: Do I have to use this router? And if I do, will the shared USB drive be the same as a NAS?" The short answer is: no, you don't have to use the TalkTalk router at all. The Huawei HG533 that TalkTalk commonly supply is widely regarded as one of Huawei's best efforts to date, but will not suit everyone. But you can simply replace it with just about any router of your choosing. TalkTalk's fibre, like any other company's, actually connects using a BT Openreach modem. This, in turn, connects to the Huawei router using a standard Ethernet cable. As long as your alternative router has an Ethernet socket on it - and they all do - then you simply plug it into that instead. Domestic internet routers come in two flavours: for use with cable connections and for use with ADSL ("telephone line") connections. For best results, you want a cable router (ADSL can be made to work but is more fiddly). The really good news is that TalkTalk fibre broadband doesn't use any passwords or have odd settings - it really is just a matter of connecting the modem to whatever cable router you fancy. With regards to the second question, many home routers come equipped with USB ports that allow an external hard drive to be shared (besides the Huawei there is the BT HomeHub 3, the Apple AirPort, Western Digital My Net N900, models from Belkin and Netgear et al). Typically the drive will appear as another disc volume, for instance it might appear as the Z: drive or something. Alternatively, you might have to type something like \\192.168.1.1\shared to access it. As every computer in your household/office can see it, it potentially gives you a mechanism to share files and folders. However, in practice these facilities often don't work very well at all. The processor in a small router is not very powerful; often it cannot adequately cope with the demands of serving up the internet and files at the same time. If it can, performance may be very poor, for instance you may only be able to read or write files at a lowly 1Mbyte/sec or so. There may be few or no controls, with no concepts of privacy and security. It may prove flakey, with dropouts. It might be the case that only certain external drives or USB memory sticks will work with it. So, for these reasons, the shared storage facility offered on routers is not very good and it is better to go with a conventional NAS drive. An alternative for some people who may already have a USB drive that they were thinking of using is the Synology USB Station 2. This is a small, silent version device that has no storage of its own; instead, you bring your own. It costs around £80 and more information can be found here. Three NAS boxes suitable for small business for under £600 The briefing was not particularly detailed: the business owner said "We have 6 employees in the company and we're prepared to spend £100 a head for a server", but it was a start. So, off we went to take a look at 3 NAS solutions that cost no more than £600. At this price, NAS (Networked Attached Storage) is by far the best option for a small business or organisation. It is possible - just about - to buy a small Windows file server (say a HP Microserver, for example) at this price, but compared to a NAS it is considerably more complex and will require a great deal more care and attention. During the course of its lifetime, the cost of ownership will be a lot higher and there will be far more problems and heartaches. In contrast, once setup a NAS box is largely a matter of "fire and forget".
For a small business, the consumer-grade NAS boxes such as Buffalo, Netgear, Iomega etc just don't cut it. They are limited in performance, functionality and redundancy facilities. Instead, it is necessary to step up a notch and go with the likes of Synology and QNAP - companies that only make NAS equipment. To that shortlist we would also add the Western Digital DX4000; as the recommended retail price for the DX4000 is £799 that's a bit of a tall order, but by judicious shopping around it is possible to obtain one for the magic figure of £600. As this level, the build quality is noticeably a notch above the lower priced domestic units. The cases use metal and strong plastics. All these three are solidly made; the QNAP TS-419P II perhaps edges just in front with its metal case and metal caddies for the hard drives. All three candidates can take four hard drives. These fit into removeable caddies and in each case are 'hot swap', meaning a failed drive can be replaced without stopping the system. All three use standard 3.5" HDDs, but the caddies in the QNAP can also use 2.5" HDDs, or a mixture of the two. So once again, QNAP edges it in terms of flexibility. Once difference between the Synology, QNAP and Western Digital is that the first two come without any drives. This gives more flexibility, but it means that the drives have to be purchased separately, installed and then setup. This is not hugely difficult, but will discourage some people. Both models cost around £400; a 2TB WD Red drive (specially designed for NAS usage) is around £100. Buying a pair brings the cost to about £600, and enables the NAS to operate with 2TB of RAID-1 or 'mirrored' storage. The WD Sentinel is aimed at the buyer who wants a system that is largely ready-to-go. As such, it comes with a pair of 2TB drives already installed. In the model we looked at these were enterprise-grade WD Black drives. So, the Western Digital wins this round. Low cost NAS units have anaemic processors and small amounts of memory (RAM), but these three boxes are far better equipped. The QNAP has a 2GHz Marvell (ARM) processor and 512MB RAM; the Western Digital has an Intel Atom dual-core 1.8GHz processor and 2GB RAM; the Synology has a dual-core 1.07 GHz ARM processor and 1GB RAM. On the face of it, the Western Digital has the most raw power, but this doesn't mean very much as the quality of the software also determines overall performance. Therefore, this specification is not particularly important. Redundancy - the ability to cope with a component failure - is a consideration at this level. The Synology has a single power supply and a single network (Ethernet) port; the QNAP also has a single power supply but two network ports - these can be configured in 'failover' mode or aggregate mode for increased performance. The WD Sentinel has dual Ethernet ports and the ability to use two power supplies, albeit only one is provided as standard (a second one costs about £50). So, the Western Digital wins and the Synology is at the bottom of the pile. The final topic is software. The QNAP uses its own Turbo NAS operating system; underneath the hood this is a customised version of Linux, with what can best described as a web interface with some coverflow features, similar to iTunes. It is comprehensive as well as functional. Synology use DSM (Disk Station Manager); this is also Linux-based and accessed from a browser, but looks and behaves like a desktop operating system (it is sometimes compared to Mac OS X). The WD DX4000 is a bit of an oddity, as it uses Windows Storage Server 2008. This will seem very familiar to anyone use to Windows, and has a friendly front-end grafted on to make the networking facilities more accessible. Both DSM and Turbo NAS have a relatively large number of add-on packages to provide additional functionality (such as anti-virus, cloud computing, customer management software, email etc). Synology has the most, QNAP comes second and WD is a distant third. In terms of software, Synology is head and shoulders above the other two. So, what is the overall verdict then? Each of these NAS units is well made and provides superb capabilities for any small business, meaning any is a good choice. If they could somehow be merged into one box - Synology's software, QNAP's hardware and Western Digital's packaging and overall attention to detail - it would be awesome. As it is, the customer preferred the Synology, but ended up purchasing a Synology 412+, which has a more powerful 2GHz dual-core processor and twin network interfaces, albeit at an extra £100. NAS box from QNAP File servers and Network Attached Storage (NAS) boxes are usually equipped with 3.5" hard drives. In years gone by these were SCSI drives, but nowadays standard SATA drives offer high levels of price performance, more than sufficient for use in the small business environment. However, there is now growing interest in using standard 2.5" laptop drives instead... On the face of it, using laptop drives in a server or NAS sounds strange. 2.5" drives are generally perceived as being anaemic, with poor performance. It is certainly true that a good 3.5" drive will outperform a good 2.5" one, but there is a lot more to it than that. The overall throughput of a server/NAS doesn't just depend upon the raw, theoretical speeds of the drives, but also derives from the performance of the controller, the design of other circuitry, the operating system, the network adapter and so on. By way of analogy - a car with a 4 litre engine may well be faster than one with a 1 litre engine, but it's likely to be 50% faster rather than 400% faster. In short, the performance of an individual 2.5" drive is not the limiting factor. So, what is the case for 2.5" drives? Basically, they use less power (electricity) and are more reliable. The reliability stems directly from the reduced size and weight, as they vibrate less than their larger brethren (sisters?). Although vibration may seem minimal on modern disc drives, it is there and over time it has a significant physical impact on the drive: many of the drives that fail do so because they have literally been shaken to death. Again, because they are smaller and lighter, 2.5" drives use less power. Whilst this may be no more than a penny or two a day, consider a NAS that is on 24x7 for, say, 5 years and the savings are quite significant. One downside with 2.5" drives is that they are less capacious than larger ones. 3.5" drives are currently available in capacities up to 4TB, whereas 2.5" ones max out at 2TB. That means that in a server or NAS with a given number of bays, you can only get half the capacity. And it will cost more, too: a quality 3.5" drive costs around £80 at the time of writing, whereas a 2.5" drive is £130. Server and particularly NAS manufacturers are starting to cater for 2.5" drives. Whereas it is possible to use an adapter to enable the use of a 2.5" drive in any pretty much any NAS, some now come with drive bays that can hold either size (and it is even possible to mix the two sizes). An example of one supplier that is ahead of the curve is QNAP, most of whose models can use either. Arch-rival Synology even have a NAS - the DeskStation DS411slim - that is designed entirely around the 2.5" form factor. It may not fit in your pocket, but it's getting there! |
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