Before I dive into my personal stuff, I want to extend my appreciation to Spacerex and this platform for all the amazing information that I have been getting even before making my account. Thank you! I have been watching and listening to a lot of things about Synology systems and watched many Spacerex videos. It has given me the confidence to recommend Synology systems to my day job and more. So again, thank you.
Diving into my personal post from this point on. I recently secured my LLC and have been toying with the idea of using Synology NAS systems as a local small business backup/restoration business. I am hoping some of you smarter and more experienced people who are more familiar can tell me if I’m on the right path or not.
For starters, I have already picked what I think is the best hardware for the moment. I know my hardware could be bigger/better but right now I need to have a sell off contingency plan if this were to fail and the bigger units would be terribly hard to sell locally or ship. Thus, my current plan is using RS2423rp+ (SHR-2 or RAID-6), full of 16tb PLUS drives and run the remote connections through the Synology gateway (until things take off and I can secure a static with additional protections in place) to store data at 2 locations (my main unit & my backup offsite). These units support a 100% sized expansion unit, so I really liked these as my starter units. I will be deploying Ubiquity enterprise firewalls at both locations. I know there is more to this topic but there is a lot still in the works, recommendations are appreciated.
Software wise I believe is simple. Servers and/or PCs will get active backup for business. They will back up to my main system location. Each company will get a user name and encrypted space made on the NAS with the size of their choosing and will be billed per TB. Finally, I’ll back up my main with maybe hyper backup to my secondary location. Again, its never this simple so if I missed/glossed over a detail, let me know.
I am open to all information. I really like this idea and have been getting a lot of traction from the local companies I talked to. Especially ones who are not fans of the “cloud” idea or having no idea of where the data is stored or if it’s even in the US at all. However, if there are huge holes in my plan that were missed or things I didn’t think of/plan for then feel free to pop that bubble for me. Any and all feedback would be greatly appreciated!
P.S. - I have not ruled out hiring Will. I like to learn and being hands has a far high retention value for my brain than having someone else do it for me.
I appreciate the feedback. Can you give me any sort of specifics or information of which that makes this high risk or has you concerned? IT services, data storage, and networking working is inherently risky to some degree. Then again several jobs are like that. But without specifics to the situation that applies, it’s hard to understand which part you’re saying is the high risk for me to consider.
Maybe I misunderstood you post, but I read it as you are offering to provide backup services to small businesses. The concern I have is that when the backup is needed, your client finds it corrupted. Now whether that’s due to client mishap, or yours, it’s not a scenario I would want to be part of.
As well, you would need to ensure that the backups cannot be accessed by other parties.
While the LLC may protect you financially, reputationally, being blamed for a business loss would be painful. It’s not an experience I would want to be at risk for.
Rather than cobbling something together personally, I would be more assured to have Will involved, to identify vulnerabilities, and to make provision to manage those as best possible (I’m not on commission for Will, btw).
Thank you so much for your response. Yes, you did understand that correctly. Providing solely for local small businesses is my objective. Also I understand you are not working for Will .
From what I have understood with the materials I have read, I think i have addressed these issues:
-Corrupted or failure rates are very small and I have not read a lot about them happening enough to be worried. Would it be horrible, yes, but seems extremely rare and unlikely. Could it harm my reputation absolutely. I would also take that on the nose and very personally but would do everything in my power to make it right.
-Access will be highly restricted. Each company will have their respective partitions made with their distinct usernames having access to it and it alone. No one beyond my custom admin user can see or confirm any other data on the system.
-You are right. Cobbling is not good. I have actually done a lot of research and had multiple calls with Synology sales and my MSP to confirm that what I want is possible with this hardware and can even be upgrade exponentially. As a starting point, this seems valid.
While I may not have detailed all of this in my original post, these were also concerns of mine that I feel have been quelled. I am very happy you brought them up and even more fortunate that I feel comfortable at the moment with most of the answers. If you think of more possible questions/conflicts/problems I would be happy to see if i have addressed them as well. Your thoughts were greatly appreciated!
