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Ask Slashdot: Stepping Down From an Office Server To NAS-Only?
First time accepted submitter rawket.scientist writes "I'm a full time lawyer and part time nerd doing most of the IT support for my small (~10 person) firm. We make heavy use of our old Windows Server 2003 machine for networked storage, and we use it as a DNS server (by choice, not necessity), but we don't use it for our e-mail, web hosting, productivity or software licensing. No Sharepoint, no Exchange, etc. Now old faithful is giving signs of giving out, and I'm seriously considering replacing it with a NAS device like the Synology DS1512+ or Dell PowerVault NX200. Am I penny-wise but pound foolish here? And is it overambitious for someone who's only dabbled in networking 101 to think of setting up a satisfactory, secure VPN or FTP server on one of these? We've had outside consultants and support in the past, but I always get the first 'Why is it doing this?' call, and I like to have the answer, especially if I was the one who recommended the hardware."
I highly recommend nas4free. Easy setup all around including windows shares. Plus zfs is a big plus and high on the geek scale
I just did the same for a client who had downsized. We moved from a rackmount Xserve and RAID solution down to a Mac mini server (for DNS and few other tasks) and a Synology NAS. It was my first Synology, but I was very pleased. It was fairly easy to configure, and has been trouble free so far. It offers excellent outside access via web interface, and has a built in SSL VPN. The largest issue I had with it was configuring a rotating backup. I ended up using the Mac mini for the backup. The client's been very pleased with the solution, which sits on a desk. The server room has been cleared out.
My experiences with a QNAP TS-459U-SP+ are quite good. With the QPKG-Extensions, you even get non-standard services installed.
I would still recommend to have a small 19 inch rack (on wheels) for noise protection and to have some space for expansion.
I recently installed a small DS212+ for a small office of 5 using around 1tb of data. The NAS was chosen as a low cost option but after running it for a few weeks it's actually better than a windows box for this use case, mostly because of its excellent software and ease of use. It has a built in VPN server and access to a host of 3rd party apps. Highly recommended.
If you just want networked storage, anything will do. Don't forget backups (several of those, some offline, some in a safe place), access control, intrusion detection... Probably get RAID too (RAID is *NOT* a backup) for higher availability and uptime.
You mention stuff your server doesn't do. Does it mean you'd like to do it ? Are you doing it another way ?
If you work in a law office (you said you're a lawyer, not that you're in a law office ?) are there specific legal requirements regarding auditing, security, confidentiality ... ?
Are you OK with people making backups of files and leaving with them when they are fired or resign ? ...
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
You're barely using the capabilities of the machine you have now and you don't have any reason to keep the server. Get a decent VPN-capable router or pay $20/year for LogMeIn Hamachi if that's a need and combine it with a Synology or QNAP NAS. Those have firmware that's relatively straightforward to support and if there's ever a need for more advanced file services, they're already baked into the device.
Do make sure you buy decent disk drives for it. "Green" or "Eco" drives from WD or Seagate work for shit in disk arrays.
This really won't be a downgrade for you. It will actually probably make your life easier.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
If you have any expectations of maintaining confidentiality for yourselves or your clients, a cloud service is not for you. All cloud providers make claims as to the privacy of your data - when put to the test they'll hand it over to the wrong people in a heartbeat.
// -- http://www.BRAD-X.com/ --
Do you have an Active Directory domain? Domain users and groups are much easier to manage for file access than a bunch of local accounts. I'd keep using a full server just for that, but that depends on your security model.
Most of the NAS boxes are embedded linux boxes, usually running on a low power CPU of some kind...
With most of these its possible to get shell access and install whatever you want on them, although for things like setting up a vpn on it you will probably need kernel level support which may or may not be present in the stock kernel supplied with the device.
That said, presumably you have some kind of router or nat device too, which will almost certainly have some level of vpn capability by default.
Running a DNS server should be trivial.. I personally run a couple of buffalo 4-drive nas boxes, and just looking through the package list i see bind and dnsmasq, both perfectly capable dns servers depending on your requirements.
I do take issue with the term "secure vpn", nothing is totally secure as such a name implies.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Use a service with client-side encryption (SpiderOak springs to mind, even if it has a terribad UI), or do your own encryption - problem solved.
IMHO you shouldn't rely solely on cloud backup, though, bad things can happen even to datacenters... but it's a nice supplement to your local backup.
Coffee-driven development.
Find out what you need to do, first, I just spent a disastrous contract job with a company that said "get us bids, then we'll write the specs". And all the groundwork that was necessary for *whichiver bid they accepted*, including storage integration cleanup and getting formerly neglected projects onto backup, met tooth and nail resistance and insistent project review from the current IT staff who had *no idea* and couldn't be bothered to know what their current system did, they were "too busy". They had enough time to complain bitterly about how their old debris was better, when it didn't meet the most basic requirements of reliable backup, recoverability, or supportable technologies.
For someone being paid hourly and who was smart enough to write in the inevitable support calls as billable time, it made me a lot of money, but they made themselves unhappy because they acted like Java programmers. There's an unstated, unstable, never documented API, and they'd just throw it over the wall in one of their endless meetings of people who have nothing to do with the work, to someone in their group who didn't get to go to the meeting, and toss it out to me. "And Then A Miracle Occurs." And boy, did I make miracles occur behind the scenes!!! I'm looking forward like hell to when these clowns go to the Cloud. I am going to make *so much money* translating their last rounds of ill-conceived fractureware practices into the sort of large-scale, but limited API features that the Cloud is actually good at.
In your case, if I had time to take on the job, I'd separate security functions such as VPN from the storage system. Assess if you're an all CIFS storage shop, how much you need, and what your backup and archival storage requirements are. (In a law firm, that archival storage requirement is critical.) Assess your database and email storage backup requirements. (Again, as a law firm, your email storage requirements are important.) And assess ease of recovery of lost data versus the risk of having material your clients would prefer did not show up in a subpoena. (Lawyer/client privilege is vital, so is having only *half* the material show up in the subpoena, the half that makes your client look guilty, without the evidence that clears them.)
NAS's work very well: most of them are Samba behind the scenes, and many of them do NFS as well as CIFS. Don't do that: the privileges for CIFS access and NFS access are very, very different and had to resolve in real life. NAS's also work great for off-site backup: simply swap backup storage devices and take one offsite, then swap regularly.
Think hard about that VPN technology. All Windows boxes support PPTP built-in, and despite the great cries of "oooohhhh, IPSEC is so much better" I've seen no reliable reports that there's a genuine performance or security improvment. The big risks are that the software won't work (which is extremely common with IPSEC and peculiar Windows flavors still in use), and that people will leave themselves logged in with their screens unlocked or their remote systems rootkitted. (VPN's do nothing to address this: good firewall management of the VPN connection does, and this has *nothing to do* with the underlying VPN technology.) IPSEC supports lots of expensive RSA key technologies that you can spend a lot of money for, and which most clients *HATE, HATE, HATE* because they lose those damn funky keychain fobs, which could have been designed better by a bunch of random number generators taking a Java garbage collection break from writing Hamlet.
Since you want to be the IT admin guy off the side of your desk, the short answer is - can you manage it on a NAS? If not then stick with what you know and focus on your day job - the first time you have to spend 2 days fixing or configuring something that's new you'll have blown any cost savings from getting a server anyway. I run what you're describing, though I let the router handle VPN access. If you stick with Windows Server, everything you want to try and do will have a solution you can find in 2 mins on Google, if you go onto a proprietary NAS you will end up working around a lot of things to get them how you need them - Offline files for your users will be a little bit cranky, how you do backups will be limited to the NAS' interface, if you want your security settings 'just-so' (presumably important in your industry) you'll need to make sure the NAS software can cope with that.
For your own safety and piece of mind, do not do this. As a part-time support person in a small environment, you don't have the time to master the subtleties of effectively rootkitting a commercial server and maintaining special, out-of-band, non-vendor supported services on it. It's likely to break down at unpredictable times with basic system updates and network firewall changes associated with the NAS services themselves.
Strongly, strongly consider fragmenting the functions. A VPN and firewall box, running on a small physical applicance, is generally much safer to expose to the Internet than a Windows server that will requirely monthly major updates and possible reboots and possibly daily vital security updates that are too late to salvage the system from what it's _already_ been exposed to.
Oh, yes. Lose the FTP server, unless it's only for upload from your clients and there is no "browsing" function for the files already uploaded. FTP packets are sniffed on a frequent basis on poorly manged, publicly exposed routers and network switches for login names and passwords. It exposes you and your clients to all sorts of security issues if they're using their Windows login names and passwords for FTP access. There are numerous ways to do this better: gather your requirements first, and you can assess whether HTTPS, SFTP, FTPS, or something else might be better. The only reasons to use FTP now are obsolete clients that cannot be upgraded, technical people who refuse to be educated, and publicly accessible download sites with anonymous access.
I'm more familiar with Synology NASes (albeit on the consumer side) and Dell servers (instead of that NAS). Coming from a Linux sysadmin background, I was impressed with how the Synology combined pretty easy GUI management while not preventing you from doing stuff on the back end Linux side. You can play around with Synology's web interface yourself online. It's pretty cool what they can do with a bunch of javascript.
These things are built for file serving, and it's about as easy as it gets to set up. They also package all sorts of stuff as add-on services, though I don't personally use DNS. My complaint with the home-designed versions in the past is that they skimped on RAM, making them less useful for any kind of real server application. The higher end models like the 1512+ do better, and for just DNS and file serving it should be more than sufficient. Don't expect it to compete with a $1500 server in terms of computational performance, obviously, but it should be able to pretty much max out the drives' performance.
I had a drive die on my personal NAS, and the process went exactly as it should: it emailed me saying there might be problems; I did an extended SMART test via the GUI to double check it; I obtained an RMA for the drive and installed it; it restored to the new drive without incident.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
I do take issue with the term "secure vpn", nothing is totally secure as such a name implies.
Only a noob thinks that anything is totally secure, but there's definitely a difference between "secure" and "not secure." The term is not invalid just because it is not absolute, any more than the word "safe" is invalid to refer to a firearm with the safety on. Do safeties fail? Yes. Do they not make a huge difference in the probablity of an accidental discharge? Also, yes. Thus, the term is valid and holds utility because it does define a meaningful state where risk is significantly reduced. The same is true of secure solutions in the IT sector...the fact that there are no magic bullets that are entirely without risk does not invalidate an entire lexicon of security.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Unfortunately, you are not familiar with technical ineptitude of the laws of the US. There is a quite a debate within legal communities regarding whether storing data in the cloud (encrypted or not) breaks lawyer client confidentiality.
I haven't seen it here, but you could pick up something like a dell optiplex 755 for dirt cheap on ebay, put a raid card in it, a couple 1tb hard drives, and put linux on it, and make shares using samba. That's exactly what we do at our IT shop, and it works fine for us. We install windows servers all the time, but we just don't need it, and our email is gmail, our web services are VPS servers at a host. If you are worried about replacement parts you could just order two of the exact same machine and keep one dark :)
My suggestion no matter what people here say is to then do a backup to the cloud using Jungledisk as a client, and Amazon or Rackspace as a storage provider. If you generate your security keys and opt not to give them to Jungledisk the keys to store for you then I'm not exactly sure how they are going to cough up your data to the "wrong people." The only people that could legally get them to turn over data would be the feds, and that would be your dream since it would mean they invaded your client attorney privilege thus pretty much self destructing any case they might have had. If they were going to get your data from a cloud service, it would be a lot easier to just bust into your office, but that doesn't happen at least by the government as it's self defeating.
I'm a full time IT consultant and run the legal department for our admittedly small firm. We've recently been sued for breech of contract and was wondering if you could suggest the best approach to defend ourselves. Hmm, maybe not don't you think? I probably don't need to tell you that records and files are a critical asset to the success of any legal firm. Your requirements for security, confidentiality, recoverability are core to your business and each of these need to understood before selecting the right solution for your firm, and to be honest that requires the someone with the appropriate knowledge and expertise to advise you. I'm sorry to say, that in my experience, doctors and lawyers are the worst offenders for not bringing in outside expertise to advise them on technology issues. It's frustrating because they, more than anyone, know the value of professional expertise. Spend some money to obtain professional IT advise (just like you expect people to spend money on legal advice). It's better than having to explain to the partners how someone hacked your "secure" FTP server and posted all your client records to Wikileaks.
I completely agree with the idea of breaking this up into multiple machines. Keeping everything together on the same machine is often referred to as a busybox and means that any security holes in the pieces may be used together to compromise the machine and once that machine is compromised the attacker has full control over the family jewels.
I'd keep the router, VPN, DHCP, and DNS functions on its own box. I went with a barebones Supermicro box for around $300 bought from Newegg and installed the pfSense router/firewall on it. Once you get past some learning curve it is very easy to administer through the web interface and the entire config is saved to one file and easy to keep a copy of, so if things go horribly wrong you can rebuild it easily and quickly.
I suggest taking a look at Windows Server 2012 File Server role - W2K12 - deduplication is an in box feature
- SMB Multichannel - better performance uisng 4 TCP channels
- Storage Spaces - SAN like features with no special hardware (this is not dynamic volume)
- Thin provisioning - using Spaces, Windows can create TP LUNs
- NFS 4 server - in box role in W2K12
- Resilient File System (ReFS) - high degree of compatibility with the most common NTFS features, but has resiliency and scalability features that go beyond NTFS
- Windows Server Backup - now supports backup to the cloud (in box feature)
- Support for Hyper-V VMs - now Hyper-V supports running VMs using a file server and SMB 3.0
- Scale-out - with more than one server, File Server can be configured in a scale out mode for better scalability
Sources:
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Overview-File-Server-Role-Windows-Server-8-Failover-Clustering.html
http://www.windowsitpro.com/article/windows-server/top-ten-windows-server-2012-storage-enhancements-143157
http://blogs.technet.com/b/windowsserver/archive/2012/03/28/microsoft-online-backup-service.aspx
http://blogs.technet.com/b/bettertogether/archive/2012/07/21/windows-server-2012-part2-virtualization-enhancements-scalability-amp-flexibility.aspx
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/server-cloud/windows-server/2012-editions.aspx
Full disclosure: I do work for Microsoft. I am a senior program manager on the Virtual Machine Manager team. I work on Storage Automation using SNIA SMI-S/ My blog is: http://blogs.technet.com/b/hectorl
Question to OP: Are your workstations joined to the domain and using the 2K3 server as a login server? Are login scripts, group policy etc used on the ten computers? Or are they all standalone?
If they are standalone, replacing the 2K3 with a NAS I'd say is a very good option.
On a consulting basis I've converted a couple Windows SBS environments over to using a NAS. Users have been very happy with the change and these devices have performed well and been able to take over the function of the SBS provided they weren't using Sharepoint/Exchange.
I have to say, the QNAP and Synology are very effective, and easy to setup appliances. A typical slightly tech-savvy person could set this up without a problem -- it's little more difificult than a home router. The interface is very intuitive.
I've found the QNAP is a bit more robust in its feature set, and if you go with the Pro+ models (starting at like $400-$500 w/o disks) based on the intel Atom processor. This is like getting a linux box with an x86_64 architecture. The thing can run a mySQL server/webserver etc.
After the initial setup, the NAS appliances need little/no maintenance. It can handle its own backup, or you can plugin an external disk and copy the array to it, alert you via-email if there's a drive/SMART issue,
Now, if you do already have a domain/ADS environment, you'll have to bring in some slim little machine to replace the 2K3 server as a Domain Controller. Both QNAP and Synology can join a domain and use AD logins and groups as credentials, making login seamless if the computers are domain members (no prompt for login/password etc)
Otherwise, you'd have to unjoin all the computers from the domain and make them standalone, and then migrate profiles back to local etc -- quite an IT expedition.
If this is your situation, I'd recommend going ahead and upgrading to a 2K8 R2 server on a slim machine, and perhaps just using that rather than a separate NAS appliance.
We also went through this a while ago, but the other way around. After kitting out a small office network, the one purchase we really regretted was the NAS (a Cisco-branded device, which in fact is a rebadged QNAP).
The hardware has not failed and supports hot-swapping drives if necessary, but those are about the only good things I have to say about this unit. It is in all other respects just a very limited and relatively expensive Linux server, where essential operations like scheduling regular, secure off-site back-ups are absurdly difficult, and where you can't easily install other server software (e-mail, calendars, DHCP, RADIUS, whatever) unless whoever supplied your NAS happens to make some sort of plug-in available for their particular style of firmware. Even Cisco gave up trying to provide any meaningful support in this area within a few months of the device launching, eventually just providing a mechanism for people to upgrade their firmware to QNAP's own.
When we were investigating options for a new device earlier this year, it looked like more recent NAS devices from other suppliers were little better, maybe differing in some of the details but essentially still the same old story.
My conclusion: NAS devices are for non-technical home users who want to plug in and go. If you're running a real business with serious requirements, and you have moderate Linux skills and/or a modest budget to bring in someone who does when you need them, then buy a real server with a specification suitable for your requirements. There is absolutely no advantage to buying a NAS for someone in that position, IME.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Don't know about client-attorney privilege, but anything medical is a HIPAA no-no. We actually used a "cloud" vendor who we caught using our info for their marketing purposes. We called them on the carpet about it, but they denied all such use, and they had the balls to threaten us with slander lawsuits. The doctors decided that they couldn't afford to make a big stink about it, but we immediately stopped using them.
A huge old Windows 2003 machine is sucking power like a highly paid prostitute. And you aren't using exchange? Why did you even consider Windows 2003 when you could have built/bought a Linux/Unix based server for quite a bit less. I mean, the license per seat of a Windows server is probably upwards of $1K for about 10 people. Isn't it? I know Dell and others were selling non-Windows servers over 10 years ago.......
I'd wholeheartedly recommend getting a NAS. I have a Synology DS1512 that I got in April, upgrading from a ReadyNAS NV that I had for 5 years. Nothing against ReadyNAS/Netgear, that unit was robust and I never lost a single byte of data even though a few hard drives failed on it (gotta love RAID5). It is now serving as a backup device for my Synology unit.
Anyhow, the Synology unit is LIGHTYEARS ahead of the Netgear stuff in terms of software and hardware. They have a whole line of stuff from 2 disk units to like 16 disk units. All of them run the same software. They are easy to configure, and maintain. You can easily set it up to be able to share files over a VPN with it. Or your can log in via the web and get documents. Or have it stream music and videos over the internet for you. Macs, PCs, whatever can hook up to it. They even have iOS/Android apps to monitor or access files from it (like a streaming audio app, video app, etc).
The software and hardware is sound. I had a flakey DS1512 initially, buying it like the day after it was available. Some sort of ROM patch was needed. Synology was fairly good about providing me with a replacement (I did have to complain a lot to their support people). And the current 4.1 beta of their software is causing random crashes on my unit......but it is BETA after all. The release version is rock solid (DSM4). My DS1512 was running that since I got it and it never had any issues at all.
I'd say that hands down, when I was researching a replacement to my aged ReadyNAS NV, the Synology software and hardware was the winner. And it has proven so far to be true. And I still have two more drive bays to fill on it......;-)
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replace the word "cloud" with "mainframe" if you want to know all the problems with this approach when you search the internet. Mainframe problems have not changed, just the marketing.
If you can afford it ($700, diskless) Drobo is easily the best storage small business storage solution out there.
As a lawyer you should not even consider it. Lawyers must guarantee confidentiality of all client work, you remember that part from law school right? You need a departmental server that says who gets access to what and you need to track who authored and who modified. You must ensure it is not only backed up and those backups safely stored, but discoverable.
You also need a completely bullet proof journaling file system so you can un-delete documents that are inadvertently deleted and we are not even talking deliberate acts here, just and oops because the judge is not going to be very sympathetic and your opposing counsel will smile appreciatively when you don;t meet a filing deadline ( I forget the exact word when you must file by a certain date in order to have standing ).
The above is the very reason most lawyers have not gone paperless. AFAIK, the only two products out there that meat the above criteria are a Windows or a Novell ( OES2 - linux with the Novell layer on top ) server. Now you can download Novell OES2 for free ( you have to create an account ) and they will try and get you to purchase support, but you are not required to but you would be a fool not to.
The bottom line here is don't play fast and loose with your clients information if not for their sakes then for your own. Fucking this stuff will not only get you slapped with a huge malpractice suite but could damn well get you disbarred, but I figure you know that.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!