Which method of sharing is best for your small business?

The appliance pros
Industry-standard servers are very flexible one-size-fits-all, solutions.

Server appliances, on the other hand, are more specialised, typically designed to perform a small sub-set of server tasks.

Far from being a limitation, however, this can be an advantage as it allows appliances to be made both cheaper and simpler to deploy, with most configured and monitored remotely via a browser.

On a small network, for example, you may only want to add basic file and print sharing. If that is the case it makes sense to buy a Nas (network-attached storage) appliance rather than a conventional server, not least because of the price differential.

A Readynas Duo from Netgear, for example, is available for around £170 ex Vat.

You’ll get 500GB of storage which can be plugged into the Lan and shared between Windows users with no additional client licences required.

Add a second disk and you get instant backup of all your data, with the contents of the first disk constantly mirrored to the second.

The only management concerns with this kind of Nas appliance are making sure network shares are available and deciding who is allowed access to what.

Plus there’s less to worry about on the security front with the (mostly) Linux-based firmware involved, as it is less vulnerable to attack than Windows.

Another advantage is that because Nas appliances are designed primarily to share storage and little else, they don’t need high-end processors or lots of memory.

Hence they tend to be less expensive and, as a result are a popular small-business option.

There are lots of products available, from single/dual disk products from Buffalo, Netgear, D-Link and others to larger multi-disk devices from companies such as Dell, Iomega, Lacie and Synology, with Raid protection and optional expansion facilities, if needed.

At the high end the Snap Server 650 from Overland Storage, for example, can be expanded to support up to 84TB using ordinary Sata disks.

The appliance cons
Unfortunately, it’s not always possible to expand or upgrade an appliance.

Run out of space on many of the smaller Nas boxes and you can’t just pop in an extra or bigger hard disk.

Instead you have either to replace the entire device, or add another alongside it, neither of which is totally satisfactory.

That said, some do let you plug in external disks to boost capacity, and on the larger, more expensive, models install extra disks.

As with the Snap Server, Buffalo’s Terastation and some of the Synology products.

Adding extra applications can be an issue, too.

The low-cost Nas servers will do little other than share files, take backups and, in some cases, let you plug in a printer and share that on the Lan.

If you want to host your own email, web or database server that means either looking for an appliance dedicated to those tasks (which aren’t nearly as plentiful or affordable as Nas appliances), deploying an industry-standard server, or subscribing to a hosted service.

One recent development, however, has been a move towards building extra applications into the firmware of Nas servers.

Most are geared towards home users ­ as with the streaming media servers bu ilt into Netgear’s Readynas, but some have more widespread appeal.

Synology, in particular, stands out in that it includes an optional web server and MySQL database in its Diskstation software and, in the latest release, a simple SMTP mail server.

Decision time
When it comes to the crunch what you should buy will depend on how many users you have, the type of applications you want to run and the level of technical expertise available in your company.

If file sharing is the principal requirement Nas appliances make good sense, both financially and because they tend to be ‘fit and forget’ solutions, requiring little more than regular checks to ensure your data is being backed up.

Good news if you’re a small business with limited resources, but worth having in larger companies too.

When it comes to application sharing, appliances aren’t such a good idea.

There aren’t that many available and those that are tend to be limited in what they have to offer, delivering few cost or management advantages compared to a general-purpose server.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that appliances and traditional, industry standard servers can co-exist on the same network.

A good compromise is, therefore, to deploy appliances to handle the bulk of your file sharing, leaving general-purpose servers to look after the apps.