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.
Sometimes Microsoft ships operating systems that a lot of people don't like and which are widely perceived as being dogs. Examples that come rapidly to mind over the years are Windows 8, Windows Vista and Windows Me. But sometimes they produce real gems that don't get the sales or publicity that they really deserve. One such product was Windows Home Server, which was withdrawn from retail sale on 31st December 2013 (but stocks are still available, so move quickly). Windows Home Server - WHS - started life in 2007 with an announcement at the CES show, although it was the best part of a year before it was readily available. It was based on a slightly cut-down version of Microsoft's then flagship server operating system, Windows Server 2003 R2, supplemented with a number of innovations to make it more useful and easier to use in a home environment. These included the Dashboard, providing at-a-glance status information and a simplified way to manage the system, and the highly-acclaimed Drive Extender. Usually on a Windows computer, each disk drive has its own letter to identify it. So, the first drive is C, the second is D, the third is E and so on. In a server environment there might be multiple drives; what Drive Extender did was transparently merge them all into one single pool. Add another drive and it became part of the pool, without any need to worry about whether it was G: or M: or whatever. Additionally, WHS would make multiple copies of files and store them on different drives, such that data would not be lost in the event of a drive failure, must like the way a RAID system operates. At the same time, HP announced a range of 'baby servers' running WHS. They were joined by a handful of other, smaller manufacturers, but it was painfully obvious even in the early days that there was no widespread support for this innovative product. A few years later, Microsoft released a follow-on product in the form of Windows Home Server 2011 (WHS 2011). In some ways this was more of the same, but updated to use grown-up Windows Server 2008 R2 and with additional polish. But - to the shock of enthusiasts and pundits - the innovative Drive Extender technology was gone. This time round HP did not launch a supporting server, and shortly afterwards pulled out of the market altogether. An even bigger shock took place in 2012 when Microsoft announced there would be no further editions of WHS. Instead, home users were pointed in the direction of Windows Server Essentials - at ten times the price... Retail sales of WHS 2011 would end on 31st December 2013, although the product would be supported until 2016. Intriguingly, manufacturers can still supply "embedded" versions until 2025, although none appear to have chosen to do so. Much of the technology pioneered in WHS has subsequently appeared in other Microsoft operating systems. For instance, the Dashboard appears in other server products and Drive Extender has re-appeared in Windows 8 under the name Storage Spaces. WHS failed for several reasons. Firstly, it was ahead of its time. There is now a proven market for home storage solutions, but it is satisfied by NAS products that are simple and easy to use. Secondly, because of its complexity, WHS appealed mainly to technical people and enthusiasts, who appreciated being able to purchase a "real" server operating system for a fraction of the normal price. And thirdly, Microsoft did not really put a lot of weight behind the product in terms of marketing. As stated at the beginning of this article, stocks of WHS 2011 are still available from the likes of eBuyer, CCLonline, Amazon and others. It costs between £35-£40. Some people are buying it not for use as a server, but for use as a general purpose operating system on a desktop or laptop. This is an attractive proposition for people who really do not like Windows 8 and are prepared to put in the effort to get it working. WHS 2007-2013. R.I.P. 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). We recently had a call from a customer who had bought a pair of Powerline 500 adaptors. According to the box, they run at up to 500 Mbps. Yet, reading the specification sheet inside the box he noticed that they contained a "10/100 Mbit Ethernet socket". His question was logical enough: if they only have a 100 Mbit Ethernet adaptor inside them, how on Earth can they run at 500 Mbps? And the answer is: they can't. We've covered Powerline (Homeplug) adaptors previously (see http://ctacs.weebly.com/1/category/powerline/1.html), but things have changed a bit since then. Firstly, they have come down in price and it is now possible to buy a pair of 200 Mbps adaptors for as little as £19.99, or a pair of supposed 500 Mbps ones for around £40. Secondly, new wireless routers (hubs) often just don't seem to be as good as they used to. You'd be surprised at the number of times we hear people saying things like: "My internet used to be okay but since BT upgraded me to Infinity it's been a lot worse!". In fact, what this usually means is that the raw internet speed is indeed better, but the range of the new super-duper BT HomeHub is so poor that they can't enjoy it (a replacement router from Apple or Billion usually fixes this complaint). These two factors have led to a big growth in the market for powerline adaptors, such that far from being the technology of last resort they are now an incredibly useful resource in many situations. But the issues of speed and performance as quoted by manufacturers remain deliberately opaque. As our original article revealed, the quoted speeds are duplex, meaning they are the total simultaneous speed of both directions. In other words, if an adaptor is rated at 200 Mbps then this really means 100 Mbps in each direction. Inefficiencies in the mains wiring system and the distance between the adaptors means that the rated speed can never be approached, must less reached. Under good circumstances you might achieve up to half of the rated speed, but it could be as little as 10%. Which brings us back to the original question. Suppose a 500 Mbit adaptor was capable at running at more than 100 Mbit/sec in the real world; the limiting factor now becomes the 100 Mbit Ethernet adaptor inside it! The solution to this is to buy powerline adaptors that have the word Gigabit on them; this doesn't mean that they can run at Gigabit speeds (i.e. 1000 Mbits/sec), rather that they have a Gigabit Ethernet adaptor inside them so it no longer becomes the bottleneck that limits the speed to 100 Mbit/sec. Does any of this matter? If your main purpose in using powerline is so you can access the internet or connect a smart TV or set top box, normal 200 Mbit adapters will usually be fine. However, if you have a network with a file server or NAS box then you want powerline adaptors that are rated for Gigabit operation. Western Digital have introduced their first file servers. That is, conventional file servers that run Windows Server, along the lines of those sold by Dell, HP, IBM, Fujitsu etc. Earlier in the year the introduced the highly regarded Sentinel DX 4000; this did run Microsoft software but was configured as a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device (see http://ctacs.weebly.com/1/post/2012/10/how-much-but-at-least-its-available-for-sale.html). The new servers are the DS 5100 and DS 6100. They look remarkably like the DX 4000, in fact it appears to be exactly the same case. But inside there is more oomph; both use Intel Xeon processors, the CPU of choice for file servers, and can hold up to 16GB RAM and 16TB of storage. The operating system is Microsoft's Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials; this is the latest version of Server 2012 but features a simplified interface to make it more friendly to a small business. It is also restricted to 25 users and 50 devices, although this is not an issue in the sort or organisation being targeted by Microsoft and Western Digital. As with the Sentinel DX 4000, the kit is not exactly cheap. The DS 5100 with 8GB RAM and 4TB storage is £1918, whereas the DS 6100 has 16GB and 16TB storage and costs £3418. This makes them about 1/3rd more expensive than comparably specified Dell kit, although they are a lot cuter. 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. Er, yes, you read that correctly. For just £164 you can now buy a hard disc worth a full £57! Here's how...
At the time of writing (1st May 2013), Dell UK are doing a special deal on some of their file servers. As they are one of the 'big three' server suppliers, make good boxes and have a very convenient online ordering system, it's worth considering. For instance, the entry level Dell PowerEdge T110 II starts at just £249 (it's usually £453). It comes with a single 500GB hard drive. That's not very much storage these days, plus it's common to have more than one drive for redundancy or backup. So let's add another 500GB drive; the price for that is another £164. If you think that's rather steep for just 500GB you're right. Last couple of times we opened up a PowerEdge T110 II it contained Western Digital Caviar Black drives. These are rated as 'enterprise' drives; they are extra reliable and relatively high performance, specifically intended for use in file servers. That means they are a bit more expensive than regular drives, but not that much. Specifically, a 500GB Caviar Black costs £57 at eBuyer. Actually that's £57 including VAT whereas Dell's £164 price excludes VAT, meaning that the same drive from Dell costs three times as much! Looking at things from a different angle, if you could buy the T110 II without a drive at all it would be just £85! (i.e. £249 minus £164). That would be the bargain of the decade; unfortunately, they won't let you do that. We'll re-emphasise that overall this is a good price for a entry level server from a proven, quality manufacturer. But a cynic might well think that Dell are using very high prices on hard drives to create a possibly misleading view on the price of their kit. 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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