Hello to all
I would like to widen my knowledge and understand from the ground (opp reading reviews) what is the pro & cons, trade-offs, benefits, etc. of
Having a standalone NAS e.g. QNAP/Synology vs. attaching the HDD to PC as storage..
etc. in terms of remote access, features, functions, etc.
Any view is welcomed!
From a pure storage standpoint, consolidated storage such as NAS or SAN are to encourage aggregated usage across various parties and centralize management. This are Enterprising notion of how resources are managed. For consumer, the benefits while still exists are not the priority of most consumers.
When one consolidate numerous storage requirement into a single system, obviously it ressembles "Putting All Eggs in One Basket". In Enterprises, this Basket is normally a very robust basket. This basket comes in Active/Passive setup, also known as Master-Slave configuration. Between these 2 nodes (Master and Slave), realtime or sometimes near-realtime replication happens. Which means one normally have highly available configuration to cope with the master node going down. In each node, storage disks redundancies also exists, as machines are normally at much lower failure rate than disks. Disks are stored in something known as Array Groups. Each Array Groups may comprise of various RAID configurations. It can be RAID 1, RAID 5, with or without spare. You can even find consolidated storage solution able to cope with disaster of the whole data centre when they replicated their data offsite into another geographically different location.
Now back to consumer storage consolidation. It would not have that kind of robustness as the Enterprise notion, yet it does cover some to a certain extent.
1) Redundancies - Your NAS would allow for multiple disks per RAID configuration. This would cover redundancies to prevent single or multiple disks failure from compromising the data integrity. RAID 1 and RAID 5 would only cover 1 failure disk, RAID 6 covers 2, and RAID 10(1+0) covers 1 or 2 depending on situation.
2) Backup - Proconsumer NAS I have come across normally have backup capability to backup into another NAS, another system, externally mounted disks, or even into cloud providers with storage capability such as AWS. This feature will cover backup plus versioning control if your backup feature supports that. Another advantage is this centralize system can function as the backup target for all your other systems. You can backup the whole system to the NAS and in the event any of your systems failed, you can restore the system data back(dependent on backup software implementation)
3) Monitoring - Proconsumer NAS supports data scrubbing and S.M.A.R.T monitoring on the disks to ensure they are in normal condition. These tests can be perform periodically to detect possible hardware failure occurring. So you should change the disks when they are going to fail.
4) Low wattage - Due to the fact that these proconsumer NAS are mostly for storage purpose instead of a general purpose system, they do not have requirement for high power usage and also they can be online 24x7 all year long. Coupled with a dedicated UPS, you can be more sure that it will not suffer from sudden power outrage or electrical spike. Pairing with UPS will also allow for graceful shutdown for prolong power outrage.
5) Sharing - Having a consolidated storage will allow for purpose hosts sharing on a single piece of data. This is good to ensure the version of this data is consistent across all participating hosts.
I guess the cons is as follows
1) Pricey - Compared to most simplest backup using attached devices to your system, this solution is more expensive. One thing is most proconsumer NAS comes with applications in it for various functionalities like bittorrent, private cloud storage, authentication system etc. Even if you are not using it, you are paying for it. But I think people that failed to see the beauty of having an automated system is they thought they are machines themselves that are so regimental, and also they failed to see the importance of their data. They also failed to see the volatile nature of machines and materials.
2) Learning curve - More knowledge required to handle such system. It is more complicated as it entails configuration of the system to get to the point of stable usage. There is learning curve and would normally required certain level of technological savviness.
3) Network requirement - Definitely require a planned network layout within the family for best usability across all devices may it be physical or wireless network. May require good Internet connectivity for backup to cloud or service applications
4) Speed - Network devices are normally of slower speed compared to DAS of same technology. The network latency of network cable is higher and involved more network nodes like routers, switches and quality and length of the cable. DAS have much higher speed connectivity like USB3.0, SATA3, Thunderbolt 2 etc. Unless you can afford Fibre Connectivity or Infiniband and other such network solution, you wouldn't be getting anything that can easily surpass DAS connectivity solutions at the same price level.
to go in details, it take some times.. well, pro and cons depends on user usage.
