Network Attached Storage

Best NAS (Network Attached Storage) Solution (For Me)

I recently found myself looking for a NAS solution for my backups and put a lot of time into the research before making a decision. I decided to go with FreeNAS and I will tell you why.

I looked at Western Digital(WD), ASUSTOR, D-Link, Buffalo, QNAP and Synology. However they all had the following flaws in my mind:

• Underpowered (Low RAM and CPU spec's)
• Limited upgrade-ability
• Disaster recovery nightmare (Need to buy the same unit to recover data in case the hardware fails)

So I decided to go with FreeNAS on custom build hardware or HP Proliant MicroServer G8 for the following reasons:

• Xeon CPU (High powered & ECC (Error Correcting Code)
• ECC RAM + More GB of RAM
• Protection of Bit Rot or Data Degradation (ZFS will compare the checksum of each data block on the mirrored drive pairs and fix the corrupt data.)
• Disaster Recover (DR) (In the event of a hardware failure I can boot into FreeNAS on ANY computer and get my data back. As long I as my RAID is mirrored or I have the config file).

The price actually works out to be about the same for the custom build or server grade hardware as with the off the shelf consumer ones, however you will have a more powerful machine and peace of mind. You can purchase all the parts individually such as case, Motherboard that supports ECC RAM, Xeon CPU and that has built in web management interface similar to iLo, DRAC or CIMC (Cisco). The remote management is quite useful as you can remote power on/off your device from a web browser, remote KVM (Keyboard Video Mouse), remote diagnostic, etc. Or go with an off the shelf product like the HP Proliant MicroServer G8 or Dell PowerEdge T130.