I have two QNAP devices at $Work. One is dedicated as a B2D target for BackupExec and is doing essentially what you're talking about. It leverages AD for share permissions, and hasn't so much as burped since I set it up a couple of years ago.
Another nice feature is that it 'just works' with the APC UPS dedicated to it. (It's not in the main server area, so isn't protected by the big UPS.) On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Ben Scott <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > > >
