Our New NAS – Upgrading Our Office File Server

A few weeks ago we rehomed 2TB of files onto a shiny new Synology NAS (Network Attached Storage) and retired our clunky old file server. Why? Because it was slowing down our whole production workflow as well as using up time with maintenance and problems.

We are already seeing the benefits

Speed is a big issue when working with large files and we can now move files around the office with ease. We no longer have to restart the server every couple of days to keep it running fast(ish), it just keep churning away we don’t even have to touch it. Most of the time we don’t even realise it is there.

Moving files to our new magical NAS was no easy task and we spent a few days dragging and dropping files to and from an external hard drive which we had spare in the office. The transfer rate was limited because of the old USB 1.0 port on our old server and several drives on the brink of failing. Looking back it would have been quicker to transfer everything over our network and leave it running over the weekend.

So what does this mean for the team?

We can now share files around the office in seconds without having to watch progress bars slowly moving, and better still, everything and everyone is in sync.

Why Synology?

We were looking at various options but we decided to go with the DiskStation DS415+ which, at the time, was not in stock anywhere. This must be a good sign right? The DS415+ is a more than capable little machine to hold all of our data with a lightning fast quad-core processor and a very nice Synology hybrid raid feature to store and secure all our files from hard drive failures. The GUI is very easy to use and everything can be done from a web browser. No more VNC or SSH commands to administer the server, just point and click.

The NAS sits there quietly running unlike our previous server that you could hear as soon as you walked through the office entrance. Bliss.