How to get started with Server orNAS to share files in non-domain LAN?

glnz said:

NavyLCDR - Hello again and hope you are doing well.

Your post above is interesting but I don't understand any of it.

Is there a guide to what that NAS and its OS do, and how to get started? For beginners?

I appreciate that there is a physical chassis frame that holds a bunch of drives and that they copy themselves automatically via RAID. But that is all I know, and I have no detail into what I just said. I don't know anything about its OS or how one gets started loading it up with active files (documents) or how the three or four employees in my wife's mini-office would access those files and re-save there.

And the website in your link is 25 stories above me.

Need a starting point.

Thanks.

Network Basics: Network Attached Storage - dummies

This The Best NAS (Network Attached Storage) Devices for 2022 article offers a very good introductory explanation of what a NAS is plus links to reviews of devices for both home and small office use.

The advantage of a pre-built 3rd-party NAS over a home-built one using an open source NAS OS is that the pre-built ones are little more than plug-in-and-go, with handholding each step of the way... plus you get a warranty.

The downside of course is that it costs more to purchase for the convenience.

Hope this helps...

glnz, My apologies. I'm going to have to delay my response a day. I threw out my back this morning so I'm going to be flat on my back for today, not in front of the computer. Apologies for the delay.

glnz said:

NavyLCDR - Hello again and hope you are doing well.

Your post above is interesting but I don't understand any of it.

Is there a guide to what that NAS and its OS do, and how to get started? For beginners?

I appreciate that there is a physical chassis frame that holds a bunch of drives and that they copy themselves automatically via RAID. But that is all I know, and I have no detail into what I just said. I don't know anything about its OS or how one gets started loading it up with active files (documents) or how the three or four employees in my wife's mini-office would access those files and re-save there.

And the website in your link is 25 stories above me.

Need a starting point.

Thanks.

Install TrueNAS

TrueNAS is an Operating System that you install on any computer, just like any other OS. My NAS computer boots TrueNAS from a USB flash drive. (and it also allows mirroring of the flash drives too, so I have two USB flash drives inserted all the time, if one fails, the computer will boot from the other flash drive and send me an email that one of the flash drives has failed). Once the TrueNAS Operating System is running, then you designate which drives you want to add to storage pools. I can be as simple as two standard hard drives plugged into SATA ports. How you set up the storage pool determines the fault tolerance (what happens when one drive fails). If you set up a pool with mirrored drives, you get the storage capacity of the smallest single drive in the pool, but all of the mirrored drives are exact copies of each other so if one fails, your data is still available from the other drive until you replace the defective drive and it completes the mirroring process.

Once you have your storage pools set up, then you create folders on the pool to store files in, and you can set access permissions for the shared folders.

TrueNAS let's you do much more than just a NAS. I have a Plex Media Server running on mine. If I want to share a large file or bunch of files, I just copy them into my FTP folder and send the person I want to share them with an FTP link to my server. TrueNAS also has a hypervisor allowing you to run virtual machines.

It may be more than you need right now, but as long as you have a spare computer and the hard drives, the TrueNAS Operating System is free. It does like to have 16GB of RAM, but it will run on just about any x86 CPU (not ARM, though).

I know that some have suggested the use of a dedicated NAS server. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that idea, in fact, it can offer a lot of advanced capabilities. However, you need to ask yourself whether you want to take the time to work through the learning curve to set up such a system as well as normal management and maintenance tasks.

If your needs are very simple, another strategy might be to simply set up a Windows system with shares that the employees might access. This might be a lot simpler, especially if you have some familiarity with Windows.

You could always start off simple, and as your needs grow, you could take your time and learn everything needed to eventually migrate to a dedicated Windows server or a specialized server such as the previously suggested True NAS.

I'll admit that I've not personally used True NAS, so I won't be able to be of assistance with that, but I can start by making some general suggestions that would be related to setting up another Windows system for this task.

Since there are currently only about four users involved, the administrative overhead should be minimal.

Here are some general thoughts that I have:

Among the first things that you will want to determine is how much data you have that needs to be stored. Are we talking about just data that each user currently has stored on their local computer or are there many hard drives full of information that needs to be stored?

In addition, you may want to develop a rough scheme for organizing your data. For example, if you have documents that everyone should be able to have access to, you could create a top-level folder that everyone has permission to access. Within that folder, you could organize your data however you see fit. For example, you might create a top-level folder called "Shared Data" with subfolders like this:

Sales Documents
Product Documentation
Customer Records

etc.

The "Shared Data" would grant everyone access to these folders.

In addition, you could create other shares that are to be accessed only by individual employees. As an example, suppose that you have folders like this:

Bob
Jane
David

For each of those folders, only the named employee would have access. In other words, this would be data that would be accessible only to each individual user.

A part of this plan should also include a solid plan for making backups. With any backup plan, it's always a good idea to have a series of backups available. As an example, suppose that an employee accidentally deletes a file and only 2 weeks later realizes that this was a file that they now need access to. If you only had a single backup that was made after that file was deleted, you would be in trouble. So, a plan to keep and store data for a period of time is essential. Backup programs these days will make tasks like that simple, but you do want to get a handle on questions in advance like this:

How much new data is generated by the employees every day, week, month? This will help you determine how much storage space you will need.

What about a plan for an offsite backup copy? If your site burned to the ground, the fire sprinkler system destroys all the computers, etc. you will want a second copy of your data kept somewhere offsite so that it is safe from events at that site. This could take the form of an external hard disk that you take offsite, or, increasingly common these days, a cloud backup using a service such as OneDrive, etc.

As you determine what you would like to do, I can certainly assist. If you experiment a bit, for example, just take a test computer, create a bunch of shares, and test them with your employees, I can provide step-by-step instructions. In addition, there are a lot of great tutorials that can be found here, so I may point you to some of those well. They typically include lots of examples, screenshots, everything needed to make various tasks a breeze.

In the meantime, please feel free to ask as many questions or make as many comments as you wish