Best-Practices

Scope

This article provides some best practices when working with one of Datto's DNA appliances.

Best Practices

Connect the router to an uninterruptible power supply (UPS)

Most modern UPS devices not only protect against power outages, but also serve as power conditioners. Power conditioning - surge protection, noise filtering, etc. - is important for all microelectronic devices because it prevents unnecessary wear on their internal components and greatly reduces signal noise introduced through AC power.

Centrally locate the appliance

Wireless and cellular signal strength are both impacted by distance and physical barriers. For best WiFi performance, locate the the router as centrally within the office as possible unless you have additional Access Points or Wireless Extenders. Different protocols and bands will exhibit different results, as well, so ideal placement for Wireless N at 2.4GHz may not be ideal for Wireless N at 5GHz. Similarly, LTE Cell signal strength may vary depending cell tower location and availability.

Always enable security on wireless networks

Always enable a security protocol such as WPA or WPA2 to ensure a minimum level of security on your network. Additional configurations like Guest Networks that have a security protocol enabled and are isolated from the company LAN and MAC blocklisting/allowlisting will improve security.

Create small broadcast domains for each department

Separating network traffic into vLANs provides many benefits such as ease of administration, confinement of broadcast domains, reduced broadcast traffic, and enforcement of security policies.

Segregate SAN and LAN traffic

Isolating the storage and end user traffic (SAN and LAN) should help to improve response times, prevent bottlenecks, reduce potential performance issues and help with security. LAN environments tend to be much more dynamic than SANs. As faster host IO is needed, coupled with faster end user computers; sharing bandwidth unnecessarily can impact overall system stability.