NAS Question

[JfuckinC]

Hey,

I have a QNAP NAS at work that we use as our server obviously.. should i be rebooting it every once in a while? i know it's not good to leave a computer running for days on end and you should turn them off at night, but i feel like this thing is always running, and it's essential just a computer too no?

Thanks :D Small company means i'm IT as well as everything else haha.. and my knowledge is very limited..

[GQBalla]

Reboot it if it's giving you issues. Otherwise i would just leave it on.

Actually tell you the truth this is just from my experience. The computers that lasted the longest for me were the ones i never turned off.

[pheoxs]

A NAS is meant to run 24/7 without issue, there isn't the same bloated software that windows has running. It shouldn't need to be rebooted ever unless it starts giving you issues.

[taemo]

yup, my QNAP NAS has been running for 3 months straight until I had to to patch the shellshock bug.
my home PC and entertainment PC are also on 24/7 at home as well.

is your QNAP NAS setup for AD, security groups?
any unnecessary services running on it?
I pretty much disabled all services on mine except for the bare minimum to have it running as file server, no FTP, Itunes crap, SSH, etc.

[revelations]

With NAS, a couple of suggestions for long life:

- disable all HDD powerdown/NAS energy saving features (this also depends on the model of drive you are running)
- UPS
- reboot (and check for firmware updates) every 3-4 months
- dont cheap out on drives
- keep drive temps <50c but >30c (happy zone, lol)


Shockingly, manufactures arent interested in longevity and will never tell you this.

[eblend]

Whoever told you to keep the computer powered down at night is misinformed.

Hard drives don't like to spin up and down all the time, so it's best to leave it running.

I remember back in the day working on an OLD server that was running NT still and we needed to virtualize it, glad I did a hot capture vs powering it off and then booting off the capture disk, because the server never came back up after it powered down :)

I have moved 4 datacenters so far in my career, and the biggest failure after the fact are hard drives, especially on enterprise arrays. The vendor who usually does the move (usually the same company that built the array for warranty purposes) always had a stack of disks on hand during the move weekend, just for this reason, for both arrays and servers.

[JfuckinC]

Thanks for the info guys..

I will reboot and check for a firmware update right away....

If i wanted to do nightly backups would a solid state drive be the most reliable thing to connect to my NAS?

I have RAID 5 running.. i think that means its backing up no? but i would like to have an external back up as well..

I have it hooked up to a good UPS, and the temp seems to sit around 35*c

[revelations]

RAID 5 means you have a bit of redundancy, but I would definitely invest in an external to back that up as well.

Honestly, Amazon Glacier is an even better choice these days. A one time backup of 300GB to send to the Oregon servers cost about 20$ (after, you can just add files incrementally for pennies). You ONLY pay for data to/from the server, not for storage space.