Synology, VPN, 10-20 users?

[Enquiries]

Hi,

we're having a small office with 10 users and currently we're using a DS218+ with 2x2TB HDD (mirrored) since 2015. The main usage is VPN server, file storage (mostly smaller office documents), file versioning & backup/sync to another DS using CloudStation.

We're now planning to add up to 10 more users and would like to know which way to go with the DS. Atm there are two main issues:
- speed in the network file shares: when all users access file shares at the same time, the performance drops
- the VPN server can only support up to 5 simultaneous connections: in the future we might need about 15 ...

For the VPN issue I see only using a more powerful DS, or do you think a hack like this (https://serverfault.com/a/803532) would work in the mid/long term? How can I find out which DS supports 15+ parallel VPN connections?

For the file share performance: would it be a good advise to replace the existing HDDs with SSDs (e.g. WD Red, Seagate IronWolf)?

If we opt for buying a new NAS, my initial idea would be a DS718+ or DS918+. The later would allow to use SSD Cache + the existing HDD - how would that compare to using SSDs in the DS218+ / DS718+ from a performance point of view?


Thanks a lot for your great site in general and the particular advice on this topic!

Regards
M

[ed]

The 1GbE port is most likely the bottleneck. DS718+ and DS918+ would speed up things since it has two LAN ports. Also, DS918+ with an SSD cache would improve things a little further, since all data would be read/written on SSD. But you might need to consider getting DS1618+ which features more LAN ports as well as an option for 10GbE.The VPN hack might help. But there should be no limits up to 30 connections on all plus series NAS.Replacing drives with SSD is an upgrade which will improve thing in every situation, but always think about bottlenecks.I hope this helps.