SHORT VERSION
Anyone here used the QNAP appliances as an SMB file server ("Windows
File Sharing") in an Active Directory environment? How'd it go?
(Not as an iSCSI target or other block-level protocol.)
LONG VERSION
I'm looking for what will basically be a network-attached disk
drive. Non-critical file storage for things like ISO images, hard
disk images, archives of old user files, installation sources, that
sort of thing. SMB will be the protocol. Clients will be Win 7, XP,
and that one Win 2000 computer I just can't get rid of. Permissions
will be pretty simple, basically a couple of groups,
read-only/read-write/none, pull from and authenticate to our Active
Directory. No interest in running any applications on the box, nor
doing anything more than file copies to/from it. We're not going to
be running application off it (unless you count installers). No block
level protocols like iSATA, ATA-over-Ethernet, etc. Hardware will be
twin mirrored 4TB disks, maybe a third sometimes gets attached to make
an offline backup. Rack mount.
One option would be a Dell R210-II running CentOS Linux, Linux
kernel software RAID, Samba, etc. I've done that before. It works.
But management here is concerned that good Linux people are harder
to find than Windows people. They don't like that my minions don't
have expertise with such systems. So I'm considering something that
comes with a bit more hand-holding, a bit more "ready-to-go,
out-of-the-box". And NAS hardware can be cheaper than general-purpose
server hardware.
Specifically, I'm looking at the QNAP TS-412U. Four bays, what
looks like a decent web UI, claims to do Active Directory integration.
All sorts of flashy bells and whistles we'll never use, but oh well.
It's significantly cheaper than most rack-mount general-purpose
servers will be. But if their SMB stuff is borken (I presume they're
using Samba, but how you configure Samba matters a lot), it's no good
to me.
Thoughts/suggestions/experiences/etc. welcomed.
-- Ben
