NAS for Small Business

4TB storage (Raid so failover if drive fails)
ideally acting as domain controller / AD (only 5 users on LAN currently)
VM – run 3 x virtual machines, each windows 10, 2 of which are for users to RDP into to run sage accounts and 1 is running Ubiquiti wifi controller (would be nice to be able to run 2 more machines, again not high usage). Need these to run smooth for the users, they only use them occasionally but I know I’ll get greif if they are not smooth !)
ideally, rack mount as we have a rack 🙂
VM’s backed up automatically
reliability is key – I did look at the RS818 but believe the CPU is weak for VMs (the idea being I could buy a 2nd one later and run in HA mode)
Sync main data on the NAS to Dropbox

I think that’s it, it seems synologys rack units don’t have the CPU power for the VM’s, and Qnaps range is vast and confusing – should I wait for the Synology 19+ units?

The RS818 will do the job. It is not the fastest NAS but it is not that bad either. Its benchmark score is 2.5K which is very common score among Synology and Qnap flagship NAS. If you want users to experience very PC like performance, then you would need to look at Xeon featuring NAS models like DS3617XS or rackmount variant. But his will already cost around 2000. If this is an investment for next 5 years it works out around 40/a month. What is very useful with RS818 as well a DS3617xs is that they come with 4 LAN ports which you can link aggregate or do load balancing. Or you can even upgrade 3617xs with a 10GbE card for even faster data transfer and IOPS.

You can enable HA mode with either of these NAS as well as do a cloud disaster backup to the Dropbox or Amazon or other providers. Also domain controller function can be done from any NAS.

Synology comes with free office suite and amazing drive app- which is similar or even better then Dropbox. But you don’t pay for this one. Every computer in the office can have their own Drive app installed and get data syncronized with no limits.

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