Essential things to remember before your NAS storage purchase – What should you consider?
Do you know which features NAS has in common? What are the main differences between them? There are several things to consider when comparing their features. Today, we look at some of the most important considerations for small business owners making decisions about buying an enterprise NAS.
NAS (Network Attached Storage) is one of the most popular ways to make your files accessible throughout your organization. However, since most NAS device manufacturers offer multiple models with different specifications, storage capacity, and price points, it is essential to research before purchasing one.
There are several things to consider when comparing their features. Today, we look at some of the most important considerations for small business owners making decisions about buying an enterprise NAS.
NAS storage capacity
Among all the other criteria, capacity is one of the most important ones. With an Enterprise NAS, you have more flexibility to expand your volume capacity with increased performance. But you shouldn’t worry too much about storage costs as you only pay as much as you need.
But before you decide to get even the smallest low-end NAS storage appliance, we advise you to survey the storage needs for your organization properly and only then make the initial investment. It is best to start low and then gradually increase the storage as your data grows.
The performance is all that counts.
Many businesses cannot afford high-end enterprise servers; in most cases, they need a solution that is less expensive but at the same time has enough power to drive their business needs. And that is understandable. NAS storage devices aren’t built to give you ultra-high performance like full-blown servers. And there is a good reason for that – they are meant to have an aggregated performance which increases as you increase your storage.
The performance increase is directly proportional to the increase in storage capacity, which is why scale-out storage is a more cost-effective solution for small and medium businesses that cannot afford to have full-blown servers. Moreover, the server capacity almost always increases than what is needed, which is not a good thing for small budgets.
Reliability and security
NAS devices are relatively secure. But all storage is insecure. Unfortunately, NAS devices are no different. Even the best NAS systems have security holes, and even though they’re better than consumer-grade devices, they’re no more secure than the average computer.
So try to look for additional security features like Anti-virus and anti-ransomware, Immutable delta-based snapshots, Write-Once Read-Many (WORM) volumes, AES 256-bit encryption, Sync/async multi-appliance/multi-site replication.
StoneFly’s super scale-out NAS appliances provide all these features by default at a very low price. It is recommended to check them out.
Bottom Line
Data storage plays a vital role for every organization, keeping business-critical data, financial records, digital assets, or other information. For this purpose, enterprise NAS solutions are deployed across numerous industries.
These storage devices are fast becoming the preferred choice of organizations; combining the benefits of server-based file sharing along with the strength and flexibility of enterprise storage.
These things should be taken into consideration before investing in a high-end NAS. It might sound simple, but these factors could make or break your business.
