Second hand NAS for small organisation

Forums › IT Pro and developers › Second hand NAS for small organisation - backups / filesharing

deadlyllama

988 posts

Ultimate Geek

#268172 3-Mar-2020 13:02

Our small church needs something to host a fileshare on (we have a specific app that stores a JET database there). A VPN server to get in would be good. Also I'd like to make sure the three PCs get backed up. I have dreams of hosting a Nextcloud instance on there too but that's nonessential.

There are reasonable looking two bay NASes on Trademe -- but which one to get? Is QNAP or Synology better for our needs, or are they all much of a muchness? All I know is I'm not buying another Seagate NAS, the one at home is rubbish.

networkn

22700 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#2431759 3-Mar-2020 13:07

Synology are the Gold Standard in my view. QNAP are ok too.

DS218+ Would be my recommendation.

deadlyllama

988 posts

Ultimate Geek

#2431929 3-Mar-2020 15:00

Would I regret buying an older DS215j, which sounds similar apart from a CPU that's a bit slower? Are Synology OK with firmware updates for older models, and do their products, in general, last?

littlehead

149 posts

Master Geek

#2431945 3-Mar-2020 15:29

deadlyllama:

Would I regret buying an older DS215j, which sounds similar apart from a CPU that's a bit slower? Are Synology OK with firmware updates for older models, and do their products, in general, last?

I purchased a Diskstation 413j in late 2012 and it is still going strong. I've replaced two of the hard drives in it to increase storage but apart from that nothing has needed to be done, at least that I remember. Synology have said that there are no more feature/upgrades for the model now, however there are security/critical updates until June 2023. Over 10 years support is a good stretch I think.

I do regret getting the J series model though as while it works ok as a file server, there isn't the grunt to do really anything else. Even navigating the UI is a slow frustrating experience and file transfers could be a bit faster. There are also storage/hard disk size limitations with that model. I've converted an old PC into a Unraid server and use that for my primary storage now but also for VPN, PiHole, Duplicati, Syncthing, Nextcloud etc. the 413j is now a secondary backup/archive. I'm really enjoying the capabilities of Unraid.

So I would recommend Synology, however personally would go with a plus or "normal" model, not a J series if you want more than a file server.

RunningMan

5972 posts

Uber Geek

#2431950 3-Mar-2020 15:33

You're probably fine with an older one, they seem pretty reliable. Just make a list of what you want to do with it first, as some packages (like docker) won't run on models with low end CPUs. The low end models are perfectly fine, but if in the future you (say) want to run a UniFi controller instance in a docker container on the NAS, you might not be able to.

froob

554 posts

Ultimate Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#2432044 3-Mar-2020 19:33

Just to echo the comments above, I have an old DS110j which is now retired but still runs after about a decade. It has however always been very slow, and I would avoid the J series.