Can a NAS handle 25+ simultaneous connections?

[Madhattan]

I would like to add a NAS to an office I work for that has ~25 workstations.

It would have a large 'shared folder' that would be occasionally used by all employees.

I would also like to use Syncback to backup each workstation to it.

Could a sub-$1000 Netgear ReadyNas handle this sort of use?

Any recommendations besides a full-blown server?

Thanks

 

[zerogear]

Should be fine. Having that many connections, I think problem will only arise (depending on the NAS) if all of the 25 workstations are pulling data at the same time.

 

[gsaldivar]

Some, but not all, NAS products can handle this. You should direct this product-specific question to Netgear before you buy.

Some NAS systems, especially if they are based on proprietary hardware/software, may impose a limit on the number of concurrent connections. This is done for performance reasons, but also to encourage an upsell a to a higher-end product. Also keep in mind, that traversing directories, opening/editing/printing files, etc. may cause computers to open more than one connection per PC to your NAS.

As Zerogear said, you should be fine. But in my experience - its always better to ask these questions before you buy!

Good luck

 

[zephyrprime]

Should be fine. ~25 users isn't very many as far as file sharing is concerned.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have a "Gigabit NAS" (Yes, that's the name on the box), and according to the manual, it supports 5 connections, but up to 32 connections if "swap" is enabled. I haven't tested it to that many. Sometimes I have to reboot it, because my workstations will no longer connect to it, gives errors about incorrect credentials, even though the credentials are correct and haven't changed.

 

[DaveSimmons]

A "full-blown server" could be a cheap little box like an MSI Wind, with 2 HDs in software RAID-1, running Linux.

A Windows desktop OS might also set connection limits to make you buy a server OS (XP used to limit to 10 connections I think) but Linux has no reason to do that.

 

[RebateMonger]

It's too bad there's 25 computers. Dell T110 servers, INCLUDING Windows Foundation Server 2008 R2 for 15 (maximum) users, can be gotten for less than $1000. With "Full" Server 2008 R2 for 25 users it's, unfortunately, a bit more....

 

[0roo0roo]

depends.
for small files sure.
for very random usage and if speed doesn't matter that much yea. but if all 25 try to get gigs of files at once a drive is going to simply die from all that random read/write requests. regular drives take a dive when doing random read writes.

 

[piasabird]

With license issues it might be better (cheaper) to just buy 2 servers. It depends if you want everyone to be able to see all the documents or some such thing. Even if you have a server, you may want to back that up on tape every night. The more data that you store in one place the more need you may have to back that up. A lot depends if you want to store items on the server as a primary location, and then put a backup on your desktop.

 

[dmw16]

I think you'd be better off building a NAS machine based on a Linux distro. I don't have anything super solid to back that up, but in using my ReadyNAS duo I get the sense that 25 users would crush it.

On top of that, I think a Linux box based on something like FreeNAS offers better performance and expansion options.