Need more capacity, performance and backup? How to set up a RAID NAS.

 

What to do with all these disks?

“Augh! My business is growing! I need lots more storage, and I need always-on backup! … Do I really have to learn how to set up a RAID??”

What to do with all those disks? Do you know the difference between RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, and RAID 10? Which kind fits your workflow, your data set, and your performance and backup needs?

If you don’t … how can you begin to know what kind of Network Attached Storage or RAID system to buy?

For some folks who are NAS-server savvy, it’s not a problem. For others, maybe you can take a class, or study up as much as you can on the web, and use RAID calculators like this one.

For the rest of us? Don’t worry — a few years ago you’d have to study deep on this technology before shopping. But today, you just need to know what kind of NAS or RAID system to buy.

Look for a storage server system that’s simple, flexible, quick to set up, and easy to scale:

Simple

If you’re like me and can’t keep straight the differences between RAID 0, 6 or 10 — let alone how to set them up — fuhgeddaboudit! These days you can choose a plug-and-play RAID system that automatically configures the RAID to fit your exact needs, balancing how much performance you want to get from the system and how much redundancy you need (do you want enough protection in case of one drive failing? Two?).

So, you can just focus on getting your real job done, instead of learning to be your own in-house IT support department.

Flexible

With most RAID systems you have to use hard drives of all the same capacity, and choose one priority: performance or redundancy. And once you settle on one option, changing it later it is like starting all over again.

But these days you can find NAS systems that make it easy to include various capacity hard drives, and to mix and match your options redundancy and performance.

Quick to set up

Did you know that after you set up a RAID, the data can take many hours, or even days, to compile? That means you can’t even use your precious storage until after the RAID build is done.

Small businesses can’t afford that kind of down-time. And these days you don’t have to — look for a modern NAS solution that can conduct its RAID builds in the background, even while your team keeps using the storage.

Easy to scale

Your business is growing, and one thing you can count on with any small business is that your business will keep changing. So you need to be thoughtful when you invest in systems or technology — you don’t want to buy into something that won’t work for you a year from now. You need systems that can grow and change with you.

Like any technology you choose, your RAID system needs to be flexible. With some RAID systems, it’s difficult to add more capacity once you’ve set up a certain RAID level — if that happens, to fix it you’ll either risk losing your data, or waste a lot of time carefully changing the setup.

Choose a NAS system that lets you add new storage easily, however much new storage you need — and preferably one that automatically updates your settings to match the new capacity.

How about you — have you successfully set up a NAS? Was it easy, was it hard — what did you learn?

Who is John Paulsen? A former small-business leader myself, I feel your pain (and joy) and hope you’ll enjoy the blog. I launched and ran a well-regarded production company in San Francisco with a team of 9 brilliant, hard working people. I learned to manage a wide array of tasks a small business must handle — business strategy, facilities design, HR, payroll, taxes, marketing, all the way down to choosing telecom equipment and spec’ing a server system to help my team collaborate in real-time on dense media projects from multiple production rooms. I’ve partnered with and learned from dozens of small business owners.

 

2021-10-05T16:48:29+00:00

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One Comment

  1. Rick M. November 12, 2014 at 7:37 am - Reply

    I have not set up RAID on a NAS, but have for a desktop system. With a RAID 0 system, I had access to my data while the array was synced, but I took a huge performanc hit while the array was recovered. So, this was when I realized that I need to get an NAS, so a least my O/S is available during recovery

    At one point my array became broken. It was difficult to determine which physical drive was removed from the array…and why? Even during the recovery process I was fearful that I was recovering FROM the bad drive. I am hoping when I move to an NAS that the recovery process is more intuitive if I encounter a failure.

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