Home office network advice please

[Sp!ke]

The advantage of using a NAS is that it offers something called redundancy, a fancy word basically meaning that your data is better protected against drive failure. A simple but effective setup involves a NAS containing 2 drives which are 'mirrored', meaning that each drive contains exactly the same data as the other. The NAS writes to both drives automatically when you save a file.

That's all very well until the cleaner knocks it off the shelf and kills all the drives in an instant, or you have a flood or a theft or an electricity spike or whatever.

You *need* comprehensive off-site backups of your data and by that I also mean personal data as the most precious thing that we all have now is years and years of electronically stored photos and videos which are priceless.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

That's all very well until the cleaner knocks it off the shelf and kills all the drives in an instant, or you have a flood or a theft or an electricity spike or whatever.

You *need* comprehensive off-site backups of your data and by that I also mean personal data as the most precious thing that we all have now is years and years of electronically stored photos and videos which are priceless.

Very true Sp!ke, very true.

As I think I said earlier, despite having a RAID-based NAS, one still needs backups.

Some people take a full backup and put the backup drive(s) at a family member's house, or a Cloud backup is another possibility, or both even for even greater data security.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

Yes, *offsite* backup deffo good idea in case of a house fire.

 

[Sp!ke]

I should also mention that many home NAS boxes and home routers that allow you to attach USB storage devices have widely known back doors.

Worse still, it is possible to search the internet for specific http headers of these devices and even narrow down the search to an area and specific file types. It takes only seconds to find literally thousands of NAS boxes where the data stored on them is only a couple of clicks away.

I did a bit of research into this a few months ago and I found businesses and private individuals alike inadvertantly sharing very sensitive data with the world.. even schools were exposing sensitive child data.

My advice is to steer clear of home NAS boxes completely unless you've satisfied yourself that your equipment isnt one of those affected by spending sone time researching the problem. Some brands of Router and NAS boxes are best being scrapped.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

Yes, mainstream devices often try to compete against each other by offering more features. By trying to release devices quickly onto the market, the features are often not tested thoroughly, leading to security holes / back doors.

In general, strong security is best achieved by turning off every feature, unless absolutely required.

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

We currently use a portable hard drive as a backup plus a memory stick for the critical stuff so we have two copies of things held in different places.

The power supply is not something I'd considered though.

For power surge-protection and power smoothing/conditioning, I use these. So far, so good:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00009RIP6/?tag=amazon0e9db-21

 

[Red C220]

Thank you all for all your advice on this.

We went with an 8 port switch, a Seagate NAS, two new Dell 3020 Optiplex computers (Win7 Pro) and it's working fantastically. We have three gateway phones set up with 9Eons who are very helpful.

We back up the NAS onto a Portable hard drive that leaves the building.

It's perfect for us.

In hindsight we should of bought a 16 port switch as we've already filled the one we've got.

 

[Biglee]

You can buy another switch and daisy chain them together losing one port on each for an uplink. Those ports sure get used up quick. This way if you lose a switch through failure you can still have one for critical networking.

 

[markjay]

...We back up the NAS onto a Portable hard drive that leaves the building...

What you really need is two portable drives, rotating. This is to ensure that you have a recent backup away from the building at all times.

Otherwise, there will be times where both the NAS and your only portable drive are in the same room in the same building. In the event of a fire, you will not go back to rescue the drive...

That, or Cloud backup.

 

[coupe addict]

At the risk of dragging some highly professional discussion down to the merely mundane, remember that the outside office, even if well insulated, will lose heat relatively quickly in winter when not in use. You should never allow the temperature to drop so low that condensation within your various gizmo boxes becomes possible, so background heating is needed 24/7.
Steve

 

[Dieselman]

At the risk of dragging some highly professional discussion down to the merely mundane, remember that the outside office, even if well insulated, will lose heat relatively quickly in winter when not in use. You should never allow the temperature to drop so low that condensation within your various gizmo boxes becomes possible, so background heating is needed 24/7.
Steve

Alternatively, leave said Gismo's on so they will be warmer than the rest of the room.

 

[wongl]

I use a Drobo NAS drive which I have setup to sync with Copy.com so that I have all my files in the cloud and also on my NAS.

I have found backing up the NAS to be too recursive as some members have mentioned - a proper backup plan requiring different backups for daily, weekly and monthly. Too much for a small business to cope without a part-time or even full time staff dedicated to administer this.

I chose the Drobo as it can continue to run with up to to two drive failures without loss of data. This with the auto sync with Copy.com (plus the data on my two laptops) probably give me sufficent redundancies - only problem is that if someone accidentally or deliberately deletes a file, this will be synced across all devices! So not a full proof solution by any means!

 

[Red C220]

At the risk of dragging some highly professional discussion down to the merely mundane, remember that the outside office, even if well insulated, will lose heat relatively quickly in winter when not in use. You should never allow the temperature to drop so low that condensation within your various gizmo boxes becomes possible, so background heating is needed 24/7.
Steve

It's built from Sips panels (extremely well insulated), double glazing and is heated. So the temperature won't be an issue.

 

[markjay]

I use a Drobo NAS drive which I have setup to sync with Copy.com so that I have all my files in the cloud and also on my NAS.

I have found backing up the NAS to be too recursive as some members have mentioned - a proper backup plan requiring different backups for daily, weekly and monthly. Too much for a small business to cope without a part-time or even full time staff dedicated to administer this.

I chose the Drobo as it can continue to run with up to to two drive failures without loss of data. This with the auto sync with Copy.com (plus the data on my two laptops) probably give me sufficent redundancies - only problem is that if someone accidentally or deliberately deletes a file, this will be synced across all devices! So not a full proof solution by any means!

...or Cryptolocker virus.

The professional term for what your current setup is lacking is Retention Policy and Multiple Backup Restore Points.

Said that, the OS on your PC or Mac should have that, but it will only be local (not remote/offsite).

 

[bolide]

...auto sync with Copy.com (plus the data on my two laptops) probably give me sufficent redundancies - only problem is that if someone accidentally or deliberately deletes a file, this will be synced across all devices! So not a full proof solution by any means!

That's because this isn't backup solution, it's syncing solution. If you want backup you need a regular backup of all changed files and retention of old versions

This was the norm when tape drives were common. Now most people backup to HD it's less used as the backup set (obviously) increases in size over time

One way round this is to use grooming, where older versions are deleted after a specific period of time

In the specific case of the OP I'd recommend a second NAS in the house, on the same network and backing up to a schedule. That way you have two backup sets in different locations. Easy enough to secrete a NAS somewhere

Nick Froome

 

[ItalianTuneUp]

ZFS employs snapshots as a way to reference the state of the file system at any particular point in time.

The snapshots can be used to send incremental changes between snapshot versions to remote or local systems, including cloud.

ZFS also uses a system called copy on write which ensures any file changes create a new version of the file so a virus cannot destroy a file, as you'll still have the original unaffected file referenced by a snapshot.

ZFS probably represents the most significant advances in file system design currently available. Winner of best file system award in 2008 if I recall.

 

[Red C220]

In the specific case of the OP I'd recommend a second NAS in the house, on the same network and backing up to a schedule. That way you have two backup sets in different locations. Easy enough to secrete a NAS somewhere

Nick Froome

Actually that's a really simple and inexpensive solution. It also saves plugging and unplugging. Just site it in the house with the router.

 

[markjay]

Two NAS are better than one, but the house and the shed are still to close to each other - fire, burglary, lightning etc.

In Central London we have the 'Outside the M25' rule-of-thumb for offsite data storage, and while it might be a bit of an overkill for home users, a good Cloud backup solution is not a bad idea for offsite backup.

(Just don't go taking nude pictures of yourself! ).

Have a look at Amazon Glacier (AWS), it is very cheap though you need to be a bit of a techie to make use of it.