this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2023
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A NAS really isn't that much of a hassle once you get it up and running. I've got a Synology DS918+ and love it. Although I'm sure you'd want something bigger (and newer) for supporting a small business.
That would be fine from a storage standpoint, except that the up front investment is significant compared to what I've paid Dropbox so far. I have to be my own resilience, redundancy, security, and and integration specialist. Can you even connect to a NAS on Android? I'd have to set up tasker or something for auto photo upload. Our power is not reliable and goes out frequently. I would have to learn how to expose it to the world outside my network. I'd have to monitor and replace dead drives. And that's just me, while the other people on my account also need space and access, where they either have to set up their own NAS or use mine, so I'd have to look into file sequestration. I'll have to re-automate everything to not use Dropbox APIs. There's a much bigger mental load hidden behind "getting it up and running" that made paying someone else attractive. I'd've paid up to triple for continued unlimited storage, but now that there's no option entirely and the highest limit is stupidly low, I have to rethink my entire workflow.
You make excellent points. I think the key difference for me when I got the NAS was that I wasn't replacing an existing system. That and I actually enjoy playing with storage and networking, so I'm able to cover most of those bases you mentioned myself.
For the power issues, you may want to look into getting a UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) for anything you want to stay powered. Larger ones can get pretty expensive, but you can usually find some smaller ones for a decent price that I think would be fine for small business use. I've used and had good experience with UPSs made by APC.
I do have a UPS for some of my stuff. I was planning on getting another small one for some networking stuff, but no reason I couldn't get a bigger one to cover another device.
I'm on my 15 so I don't have time to list everything but a lot of your assumptions are wrong about what you'd have to learn/ need to set up on your own. Synology has a suite of apps for all your use cases that makes it quite easy to set up. And there's apps for your phone (yes android) to connect to it from outside of your network.
A good weekend of shmedium effort and you can have it all set up and running no problem.
If your powers unreliable btw you should invest in a battery backup UPS to protect sensitive products.
Ah, I do have a UPS for sensitive electronics, though I need another one for some other networking equipment anyway. That does make it feel more approachable. Maybe when my life stops taking a big steamy dump I'll look into this with more earnest. Thanks for the overview!