Enterprise NAS buying guide

Enterprise Network Attached Storage (NAS) is the essential technology for companies that deal with massive data. Such companies require file sharing, email, print server, and a Web server. These systems are designed to provide high availability, reliability, and flexibility. They are used for many purposes ranging from general file storage to video streaming and more.

The enterprise NAS market is fiercely competitive. Established players smaller specialist companies are taking on the market. Furthermore, the lines between certain products are becoming increasingly blurred to make matters more confusing. But there are some basic things you need to consider before buying any of them.

In this guide, we’ll guide you on choosing the best for your business.

Capacity – How many bays do you need?

How many bays do you need? Enterprise NAS devices come in different sizes. Most enterprise NAS devices can hold up to 24 to 36 drives or more. However, adding more bays increases the cost, and you might not even need them. For example, if you’re a small business, you would only need six bays at most. If you plan to expand your storage capacity by adding more drives in the future, you should consider more bays for future expansion.

StoneFly’s super scale-out NAS appliances can host up to a petabyte of storage in a 36 bay rack mount. If you are interested, do check them out.

What kind of performance do you need?

Are you using your NAS only to store data? In this case, you may not need much performance. Prioritize capacity over performance. However, if you are processing heavy data, you might need to prioritize performance over capacity. We recommend at least a dual-core processor with decent RAM to get the best performance. Adding SSDs is a plus. They have high random I/O rates and can reduce latency 20 times more than traditional drives.

How much drive capacity is required?

Storage capacity is the easiest metric to understand because it’s easy to quantify. You need to know how much storage space you need before comparing solutions. Still, this matter is purely subjective. Drive capacity depends on your needs. The best way to determine how much storage space you need is by performing a simple calculation based on annual data growth and  peak data usage per day.

Enterprise NAS Network connection speed

NAS storage is heavily reliant on the network. The speed of your network connection determines the overall speed of your NAS. If your network is slow, so is your NAS. You will have to decide what kind of connection you have available and how much data throughput that connection can support. NAS devices typically come with one or more built-in Ethernet ports. However, a standard Ethernet port won’t cut it even if your drives are fast. A 10 Gigabit port is necessary if you deal with heavy-duty workloads.

Do you need data redundancy?

Redundancy is essential for businesses dealing with sensitive data. Financial institutions are a good example. In such cases, data availability and security are important. Redundancy ensures that your data is available at all times. It also minimizes the chances of data loss.

Drive redundancy is achieved through RAID arrays. A RAID array is Redundant Array of Independent Disks. The best NAS systems include multiple disks connected to create a single logical unit with improved performance and fault tolerance. NAS devices also use other methods to increase redundancy. For example, redundant power supplies and multiple memory controllers are used to provide high redundancy.

How many users access the system concurrently?

The number of users accessing the system will also affect your storage speed. For example, if you have only a few employees handling massive data, you are probably good with a standard performance NAS solution. However, if you have over 1000 people accessing your storage, you will need a lot more juice. In such a case, scale-out type NAS works best. Just add more nodes to your storage clusters to achieve aggregated performance, and you are good to go.

Do you need encryption?

Most of the high-end NAS systems have a hardware encryption engine. This means they can encrypt user data on the device and decrypt it again as it is accessed in real-time. StoneFly’s NAS appliances use AES 256-bit encryption. This is military-grade super encryption that is almost impossible to break. If you deal with sensitive data, AES 256-bit encryption is a must.

How often your data changes

Your choice will also depend on how often your data changes. If it’s static and rarely changes, you can store it on low-cost spinning drives. However, if your data is dynamic and accessed frequently, you should use high-performance drives like NVMEs.

Bottom Line

This guide is not intended to be exhaustive in any way. However, It will provide a high-level overview of what NAS devices do and introduce some of the features you should look for when making your choice.

Be warned: If you’re looking for a simple answer to the question “what’s the best NAS,” this isn’t it. The truth is, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer. NAS comes in a wide range of shapes, sizes, capacities, and prices. They are evolving at such a rapid pace that any sort of recommendation would be obsolete soon.

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