I am looking for a NAS for my small business. Budget $1,000 to $1,500.
The NAS would be hanging off the SOHO LAN, which in turn hangs off an unmanaged 16-port Gigabit switch close to where the broadband connection comes into the building. Cabling is Cat5e running straight from switch to LAN ports, with no cable run longer than 20 yards or so. Simultaneous access limited to 2-3 PCs on the network at once, all of which run Windows 7 or Windows 10.
The NAS will hold mainly documents, currently amounting to a few hundred gigabytes and growing by 100-200GB a year. As some of these are confidential documents from clients, I want the entire storage volume to be encrypted. This is important, and one main reason I am looking at ReadyNAS rather than Synology. (I am also looking at QNAP but somewhat worried by reports of poor support.)
Performance is not a major issue here, though of course faster is always better. It's mostly smallish Word and PDF files. Reliability and data protection are higher priorities.
I sometimes travel and would need to access files from anywhere around the world, as I work when I am on the road. My understanding is that there are ReadyNAS apps that allow this kind of access. This too is important.
I would like to have a small section of the storage dedicated to my own private (as opposed to professional) data, such as photos, mail and so on. I don't stream video, but may stream audio (not lossless) to the Rasperry Pi I use as a music player.
The two zones, professional and private, should have separate permissions so that family cannot access the work storage and users of the work storage cannot access the private area.
At some point in the future I plan to buy another (probably identical) NAS and site it in a location about 10 miles away so that I can mirror the SOHO NAS to the secondary NAS for off-site backup. I think the ReadyNAS OS has some kind of sync tool for that?
This all suggests to me that a 4-bay NAS, probably with 4 x 4TB drives configured as a RAID6 volume, would do the job (with a UPS of course). But which model in ReadyNAS lineup would fit this use scenario?
This all suggests to me that a 4-bay NAS, probably with 4 x 4TB drives configured as a RAID6 volume, would do the job (with a UPS of course). But which model in ReadyNAS lineup would fit this use scenario?
I think an RN314 will do the job,- though I'd also suggest looking at the RN516. The introduction of the RN526/RN626 might give you some good pricing on the 516. The RN500 series will give better performance (and the drive encryption is software-based). Also, having a couple of empty slots gives you easy expansion later on.
On public/private, you can set up a shared user account for your family (each user has a private share). Or you can create normal public shares, and set the network access so only your account can access it.
An alternative to RAID-6 would be to create two separate RAID-1 volumes, and dedicate one volume to family storage, and one to work. Though if you don't need to physically separate the storage, stick with one volume (it is more flexible).
I sometimes travel and would need to access files from anywhere around the world, as I work when I am on the road. My understanding is that there are ReadyNAS apps that allow this kind of access. This too is important.
ReadyCloud is one option. You are of course trusting Netgear to keep that secure.
I also work from home with some travel, and I've gone with a Nighthawk router that has OpenVPN installed. That gives me full access to my home network when I'm away, and doesn't depend on Netgear cloud servers. OpenVPN works with my Windows laptop, my Android phone, and my iPad.
I've also set up FTPS (encrypted FTP), so I have a second way into the NAS. Some hotel networks have security policies that can get in the way, so it is useful to have more than one remote access method.
Thank you for that very helpful reply. I had vaguely assumed that ReadyCloud basically offered a gateway to "find" the device and some kind of handshaking but if it actually requires access to the data then there is no point. I might as well give up and go with Dropbox (which I do not currently use without encrypting files beforehand).
For that reason your pointer regarding OpenVPN is interesting. I shall have to take a close and careful look as my setup is a little complex, with two phone lines, each with its own router and one 4G router, passing through a Peplink load balancer, then the switch. Homework time I guess.
Thank you for that very helpful reply. I had vaguely assumed that ReadyCloud basically offered a gateway to "find" the device and some kind of handshaking but if it actually requires access to the data then there is no point.
ReadyCloud acts as a NAT traversal server + VPN. The NAS connects outbound through the firewall to the server. You can access the NAS files either through a web portal, or from a client on your PC and/or mobile device.
ReadyCloud also requires use of Netgear user accounts for authentication. Netgear uses MyNetgear accounts for everything now, with SSO (single sign on) used here, Netgear Support, and ReadyCloud.
From a security perspective, if you use ReadyCloud you are trusting Netgear to keep your MyNetgear credentials safe, to ensure that someone can't access your NAS via the portal w/o your credentials, and to ensure that the data transfered on the path between the NAS and your remote device is securely encrypted and defended from man-in-the-middle attacks.
Note I'm not saying people shouldn't use it - I'm just trying to articulate what users need to trust Netgear to do.
