Network-attached storage (NAS) is a physical or virtual machine designed to store local data for a home, business, or enterprise network. All business need to store their data securely. NAS is the ready-made solution to store the data.
While selecting the NAS, you can either go for a propitiatory solution or go with an opensource option. There are many NAS providers in the market. Netgear, Synology, QNAP are the some of the main providers. In opensource world end user will be forced to configure it themself. FCOOS is filling a gap here, which is best of both the the worlds.
The main advantage of going with standard NAS is their hardware. A NAS hardware comes with multiple hard-disk bays and back-plane interfaces. Instead of NAS, if we go with a Windows Server, it comes with overhead of server management and you also need an expertise. A ready-made NAS solves that problem. Most NAS comes with web based management interface and all basic functions can be configured without advanced knowledge.
FCOOS provides ready made hardware with Industry standard hard-disk bays and back-plane. Then comes the software. We provide main opensource options like TrueNAS, OpenMediaVault, RockStor etc. Customer has the freedom to choose the options they like. The options are wide. There are solutions from 2 bays to 24 bays.
Let us see what are the main challenges with propitiatory NAS solutions. And how we can overcome with FCOOS hardware with OpenSource NAS options.
Vendor Lock-in is a main challenge: Let us consider the fact that you have saved all your business critical data in the NAS and suddenly there is problem with your NAS hardware. It is not booting up!. What is the option to get your data back for business use?. If the box is under warranty, we can report to the customer support and initiate a request for replacement. In most cases it will take couple of weeks to get the replacement of the box. You can't access your data till you get a replacement box. Again, most NAS companies won't provide onsite support and you need to look for a third-party vendor service to do the reconfiguration and migration of data. If the box is not under warranty, then the situation is more severe. To retrieve your important data, you need to buy another box of the same make and model. No other option. Now let us consider the same scenario, with FCOOS NAS hardware and any of the opensource NAS solution. Say you have used our common deployment with OpenMediaVault. If there is problem with the NAS hardware, you can report the issue with our customer support. While we arrange for a replacement, you can use your data by simply connecting all the hard-disks to a desktop or server system with an installation of OpenmediaVault on the system. If the box is not under the warranty also you can retrieve your complete data with the same option.The bottom line is that your data is under your control at any time with our ready-made NAS hardware, even after hardware warranty is over.
Packages Freedom and Plugins: You can choose your favorite opensource solution. If one solution is not suitable for your requirement at later point of time, you can always change your software to the other solution. Say initially you want to use BTRFS File sytem and later your project requirement changed to ZFS.You can remove the Rockstor and install TrueNAS using the same hardware. Or most of the time the Opensource NAS solutions provide multiple filesystem solutions against single filesystem in other ready-made NAS hardware. Another scenario is using docker or container solution with NAS, you can simply install the additional package and configure your container service without any license restrictions. You can also make your NAS box as VPN server by simply installing the OpenVPN package from the repository. And everything through browser!.
Most Economical: You get the enterprise grade hardware for your NAS with less cost compared to other solutions in the market. This is because we import industry standard hardware and assemble it internally. After studying customers requirement we select the appropriate NAS software. Since opensource solutions are involved in our complete solutions, it comes with much reduced cost than the other available products in the market.
Year long Support option: One of the main reason, companies are reluctant to go for opensource solution is lack of commercial support. Here we fill the gap with initial consultation, installation and yearly support. We provide phone, email and remote access support across the world. In Bangalore and Ahmadabad we provide onsite support directly through our engineering staff. You can also avail second level support options with Rockstor. Also there is passionate community support for any issues through the corresponding forums.
Considering all, when you think about your next network storage purchase, FCOOS hardware with OpenSource NAS software is an ideal choice.