We’re a small but growing company. Started off with a single user (me) and now 2 licenses and 3 users (fortunately we don’t spend all our time staring at a screen )
We used to work off Dropbox, then it switched to OneDrive, as you can imagine it’s causing problems
I know virtually nothing about this stuff but have been told a NAS could be good for us.
So I have 2 questions
Is it going to work?
If so, any recommendations?
I have done some hasty research and the price range is enormous. Money is tight at the moment, so I don’t want to over or under spec
We started with OneDrive and that is an absolute disaster.
We don’t have the network infrastructure to support a NAS, so we are still using cloud storage. It’s called Gladinet by Centrestack if you want to check out a different cloud storage solution. We’ve been mostly happy with it.
Recommandation is taking a deep look at how you work and then projecting how long it could take to fill up whatever size you’re looking at, and then see if the time frame is appropriate for you.
I could have sworn I posted this already but I don’t see it.
When I had my business I always used a “Poor mans Server”. I’d build a rather robust PC and use that as a server. I used it for everything including Vault (At the time I was using Inventor but it would be SW PDM), license server for CAD, CAM and accounting software and essentially it was the home for all of our files. Eventually I hooked that system up to a NAS and mirrored the entire system to it as a backup.
At one time we had five designers and two people CAM programing and two people using the accounting software. Never had any major issues.
I started out with a PC and a RAID card set up in RAID 5. That machine was only used for that purpose, no users used it and no unnecessary software installed on it.
To me the advantage doing it this way was that it allowed you to head any direction you wanted with it and in many cases for less than a NAS that could do similar functions.
As I upgraded over the years the system obviously changed but the idea was similar.
I asked about NAS on the other place, and I got some great suggestions to just get some IDE/USB cables and hook up drives externally. Not as permanent, less expensive, more flexible.
For even one user I set up a second machine as a simple server (just Windows 10 Professional on it) then installed PDM standard on it with out paying any install help other than talking to my Var support. It comes with the SolidWorks Professional and Premium licenses. The advantage is you get to check in your designs in to s vault and have a Version history, you can have your templates, Library, Toolbox, Projects, macros all in it. You can set permissions, like User , admin. so that things like teh library parts are only Read only. the only down side is that you have a local cache on each work station that is used for your design work and this can get to be as big as the Vault! the result is way faster response when designing and you get a real vault the protects your designs. I would go back to a file based system any more because the version history have saved me from loosing work which happen in a straight file based system. Oh by the way you don’t need a fancy PC for the server either!
We had a NAS when we started up, before the server. Also were not running Solidworks at the time.
I’ve watched tech news for a decade. If I were buying a NAS today, I would review which manufacturers got hacked and not buy those. Sorry that I did not do this for you. search terms: NAS breach, NAS vulnerability, & NAS zero-day
Tom G has a good point. I believe Synology is a good company, but I have no idea of their security record. Definitely set it up to auto update when security updates come out. These NAS devices are incredibly complicated these days, any one of them is capable of all kinds of things such as webserver, email server, music streaming, video surveillance, etc. So, with all of that comes all the security problems. It’s probably best to enable only the minimum you need.
I had a Synology that got so old that the processor couldn’t keep up with the updates they were pushing to it. I went with a QNAP to replace it because it was cheaper. I’m not sure which is better, but I believe Synology has been around longer and has a better track record.
Yes. You should be able to disable the features you aren’t using. We did. Also you must alter its access password from the default.
One other thing about my NAS experience broadly as a primary data drive - it is an appliance, not a PC. DO NOT interrupt its power cycle. That is, turning it on and off. Let it do what it needs to. I killed ours once by interrupting this. I think its firmware was wiped. Extracting the drive for data recovery was only marginally useful. Good thing that I had good backups of it.
Hi,
I have been running Synology for 11 years now. Second device in use. One broken HDD during that time…no data lost (raid). Really happy with it. Using it to backup 2 PC’s etc.
Our cloud storage solution can be set to sync files locally. Everything was working pretty well until about 2 months ago, when something changed and now every time a file opens, it syncs. This means opening an assembly that used to take 1 minute not takes 10. They are working on a solution, but for now my workaround is just to turn off the sync when I’m working in Solidworks.
The problems with Onedrive were numerous. (Some of these issues may have improved in the last 4 years.)
There is a limit to the number of files in a folder.
There is a limit to the total number of files.
Special characters aren’t allowed in the file names.
Any hiccup causes the sync to halt. Nothing gets synced until that problem is resolved.
At the time, trying to get information was impossible. There was the new onedrive, the old onedrive, onedrive for business and sharepoint. Good luck searching for a solution when you can’t even figure out which version they are talking about.
This guy does a good job of summing up how I feel.
I’ve used Dropbox for years; it’s version history is very good, I use it all the time to correct my mistakes. Obviously if more than 1 person using files at a time will be the big driver of available options. Also if you need to access files remotely from local server you’ll need to consider a VPN. Complicated.
(Aside: I listen to podcast “security now” - they have a web-page “shields up” that will test your open ports etc - ie will try to breach thru open ports and tell you what you need to fix from a security POV. My old router (apple) was wide open. Doing this made me get synology. )
I converted my old Dell workstation into a Linux server for my backups etc so I use that (for now) instead of synology for NAS.
Can highly recommend Synology. Used to spend 30% or more of my time managing a windows server on a small 10 computer network. For the last 4 years our Synology NAS file server, network/Domain management, onsite backup, online real-time cloud syncing… takes me a few hours per month to manage. The Synology interface is great, documentation is good, forum is helpful. You can make the device security as open or as locked down as you like. Synology has a software store full of free add-on services and utilities. Best IT investment our small company ever made.
)