Home Forums Discussions General Discussion NAS for P2P Networks

Question;
To those who know better than I, what's your thoughts on NAS, like these new Terastations, Hammer, and other similar little sharing RAID systems? It seems to me that it would allow our main machine that "used" to have the AC main folder on it, to work more as a work station with it's own programs on it, while not slowing down others in the office who need to share in on AC. Do I have this correct? And then I could set it up, ala RAID 1, let's say and immediately get the add saftey of a mirrored copy of our important data. I'm just getting concerned as this tower works as both a work station and a server, and soon we will probably be adding a quality PM program of some sort which will only have people sharing more data across this one machine and it's drive, things could get pretty sloooow around here. So I was hoping that by separating out the data that we all need to share, both AC and the PM program, that this would allow us to maintain a somewhat more respectable amount of speed around here.

Any thoughts, ideas or further suggestions short of us, buying a real server and MS SBS software? Best way to set it up for speed and reliability? Does this sound like a good set up and solution? My other thought was to bump the old tower's RAM up past 2 gigs with some Micron add-ons. Back when I bought the thing in 2003, 512 was fairly big, but not anymore. Obviously the idea of doing both is a distinct possibility that might make a lot of sense. 4 years now and not one hardware hic-up (now I've done it). Who says Gateway doesn't make quality stuff? Thanks much for your feedback.
Paul

Hmm.. well, I bought our current server on e-bay for $300 bucks, and it is running Fedora Linux which cost $0. It has dual gigabit NIC's and just screams. I currently have 4 300gb drives in it.

My personal choice is to avoid the Microsoft tax. I'd also avoid NAS boxes for now. RAID 1 gives you mirroring, so your space costs twice as much. RAID 5 gives you the ability to not loose data if a drive dies, without quite the cost hit and with a definite speed advantage.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID

Regards,

V.

Perhaps I shouldn't be, but I'm a bit server shy. Seems like there would be a lot of new stuff for me to learn quickly while my office gets stuck in the mud thru my learning curve. I know that you are a very tech savvy and smart user and so you may wonder why an old audio engineer would doubt himself so, but I sort of do. That combined with our "on the outside, looking in" status right now at AC tech, makes me all the more leary about purchases and learning curves. Sure wish you lived on our side of the state (like you've got the time to be our tech too). Is there a crash course, "Severs and their OS's for Idiots" out there for someone like myself?

So why do you NOT like NAS devices so? And how would a newbee like me buy all our stuff at such bargin basement prices, not knowing what I was shopping for? I know I should get over this fear of these things, but....

Hockey, you sound like me. I don't want to fall off of a cliff of technical stuff that I'm no longer able to handle. So I'm kinda server shy too. But I sounds like its a better way to go if you already have gone thru the learning curve.