Asked before but topic was closed as it was deemed a tech support question more than a hardware recommend question, but I contest this, as we're looking to buy new hardware to solve problems, not reconfigure existing hardware, so...We are a small GIS consulting company with 8-10 users in the office working most of the time. Our network setup has been very piecemeal up until now and we are feeling the growing pains as we start to access larger datasets (LiDAR).I have identified a few bottlenecks keeping our workflows slow and hope people here can offer some advice on best gains for least dollars.Here is what currently exists and what we are looking to replace with new purchases:-First is our router/switches, after the cable modem the network goes to a TP-Link TL-WR941ND, from there it goes to a TP-Link TL-SG1008D gbit switch, and that splits off to two TP-Link TL-SG1024D gbit switches.-Second is our main NAS drive. We have an older Synology DS207 drive which is the main data storehouse. Everyone is constantly accessing it through the day, so it gets a lot of read/write calls from many sources. It would be nice to split up this drive so the data is in more locations and we're not all trying to get through the same door to the same data, or at least get a NAS that can spread data across a few drives and handle everyone in the office all hitting it at once all day.-Third are the other NAS drives, mostly WD MyCloud & Buffalo devices meant for home users, but we use them at work. Not ideal, but that's what we could afford as we band-aided problems. Ideally we would replace this array of drives with another NAS, or even the single main one if it has 8 bays of drives. etc. On that note, is one big 8 bay drive or 2 4 bay ones a batter approach?Not looking to go to 10gbit ethernet as we barely max out a 1gbit ethernet connection, and costs to upgrade all PC's is prohibitive.So I am looking for hardware suggestions for ethernet switchers, unless the TP-Link ones we have should be doing the trick, and NAS drives to house 4-10TB of data (ie. either one big brick or a few smaller devices). Would be nice to have a NAS with some RAID redundancy, but we already back up our data every night to external drives and take them off site, so the NAS's can be all production space, unless the drives are hot-swappable and we could pop out the backup drive each night.Any thoughts?
Advice for amll GIS shop looking to replace network bottlenecks
networking;router;nas