Rant: Had to choose between local backup and cloud backup for a dental office near me

Last week I was setting up a small network for a dental office in town. The owner wanted me to pick between a local NAS or a cloud backup service. I went with the NAS because they have slow internet and can't afford downtime during a big restore. Set up a Synology with two drives in RAID 1, cost them about $400 total. So far it's been smooth, no complaints from the staff. But I keep wondering if I should have pushed for a hybrid plan. Any of you guys run into clients who insist on one or the other?

2 comments

2 Comments

felix4888d ago

Wait only $400 for the whole setup? That seems way too low for a Synology with two drives. Did you get them used or something? Around here a decent 2-bay Synology plus two 4TB drives would run closer to $600 minimum. Maybe I'm just shopping at the wrong stores though. Still, you made the right call with the NAS. Cloud backup for a business with slow internet is just asking for trouble. If they ever had a ransomware attack or server crash, they'd be waiting days to get their files back instead of hours. That kind of downtime in a dental office means rescheduling patients and losing money fast. Hybrid would be nice but for a small office on a tight budget, you gotta pick the one that actually works for their situation. Cloud can wait until they upgrade that internet connection.

perez.cole8d ago

Yeah but there's another thing nobody's talking about @felix488. A Synology can do more than just file backups for a dental office. They use imaging software right? Those X-ray files are huge. A NAS with the right setup can keep those local and fast. Cloud for that kind of data on slow internet would be brutal, takes forever to upload a single high-res scan. Plus you can set the NAS to sync to a secondary offsite NAS later on when they get better internet. Hybrid done right without the cloud drag.