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Nice And Safe
Agreed, NAS drives are often a far better solution than a server for a number of reasons not least of which is the longevity of the device and the removal of the need for specialist help at every twist and turn.
They are also great for business continuity if you get a RAID enabled version. Most RAID configurations keep data on more than one disk inside the same NAS drive so if one disk breaks the rest can keep going and no data is lost. As mentioned, you also have a single point of backup. I'm afraid I therefore disagree with them being described as less robust in your last paragraph.
Everyone has a network already if they have a broadband router, but it may be worth introducing a switch into the network as the router will probably slow down the data transfer between the PC and the NAS drive. An additional consideration if planning to use them from outside the office, over the internet. Your broadband speed could severely limit the practicality of reading and writing large files unless you are on 20Mbs or more. (see note below)
If there are going to be a number of users accessing the data on the NAS drive consideration needs to be given to security set-up. Files can usually be secured per user but the security on them tends to be more heirarchical than the standard MS server and can require a little work if you want complex access rules. This is a plus for the NAS drive in my opinion as it enforces a certain amount of organisation and simplicity.
So my vote is for them in business as well as at home as they protect your data as well as helping you organise it. And they reduce the complexity and support issues which are often unnecessarily introduced by having a server.
Roy Sharp (www.roysharp.com) Note re broadband speeds: these are normally quoted in Mbs = mega (million-ish) bits per second you need to divide by 10 to get a rough guide to the number of characters which you can send and receive per second. A typical broadband speed of 7Mbs download and 0.4Mbs up will therefore receive data into your building at 700,000 characters per second and send them out to you working remotely at 40,000 characters per second. In windows explorer files are usually shown as kilo- (000) or mega- (000,000) bytes (characters).
Why not Cloud?
I've only skim-read this article, but the one thing that kept coming to mind is why would you not use a cloud computing model if designing an IT infrastructure from scratch? Although costs are recurring rather than one-off, you can effectively abdicate responsibility for all hardware / software / tech support issues, and future-proof your IT.
cloud?
The cloud is just another tool in the box. But, among other things, make sure you
know where your data is stored (UK, EU, elsewhere) so that you don't breach the data protection actknow who has access to it - there are a number of 'levels' of service, abdication also means accessible to the support teamsare happy to be reliant on internet connectivity and broadband speed to access your filescheck the SLA regarding backup and support from the service provider - is it frequent enough, can they get your data back or do they just restore the whole server
It works in some circumstances, it can be tied down tight enough for most DPA scenarios, and it can be fast enough. Put it in the pot when you are making your decision.
Thanks and cloud
Thanks for the comments and all the additional information. With regard to the cloud, it is our intention to cover this in more detail in another, separate article (as mentioned in Robert May's companion article).