Replacing NAS Storage - Dell Powervault NF500

[SHimmer45]

One of our ageing NAS's is due to be replaced shortly so have been looking at what to replace it with, and the cost of Dell NAS's is rather steep compared to "none storage based servers"

are the added features of Storage Server over standard 2012 server worth that much, seeing as the box isnt going to be used for anything other than file serving for users and shared area's. As a normal Server comes in quite a bit cheaper (the price of Dell disks is rather steep as well)

[SHimmer45]

would anyone recommend something like a QNAP NAS over a Dell box for file storage or actually gone down this route

[SHimmer45]

looks like settling on an NX3200, does anyone have one of these and can comment on performance and how they have it setup.

i see Dell no longer recommend R5 (but still sell the powervault with this supported in the specification) so the other level would be R6 as according to the documentation these are the only 2 levels of RAID supported unless im reading it wrong and the PERC 710 is the same fitted to other poweredge's in which case the card will run other types of RAID.

As im trying to find a sweet spot between space/performance/cost...... and R6 is going to need a couple more disks thrown at it to get the performance near to an R5 array.