Which file storage to choose for a small business?

Question

Samba

What you need:
You need some place to store data: excel spreadsheets, small mp3/wav videos, backup archives.
The amount of information is about 1TB.
Local network access, clients - Windows 7/10, it is desirable to be able to work with TotalCMD.

What we have:
the OS on the CentOS 7 server, it has raid 1 of two 6TB disks.
Nextcloud was installed on a virtual machine (4 cores, 4 GB of RAM), MariaDB with a standard config, nginx + php-fpm.

What we tried and what problems arose:
We tried the share via SMB :
Pros: easy to use, no extra clients on windows are needed, quick access without freezing.
Minuses:problems with the distribution of access (this is trivially inconvenient), as well as with versioning, since it does not exist, and sometimes it happens that, through negligence, someone can delete the wrong thing or erase the contents (there was a case with deleting an entire folder, it was not possible to restore) .

We tried Nextcloud :
Pros: convenient access settings, you can easily distribute what and to whom to open and what to close.
Minuses:inconvenience arose with clients - WebDav does not run on Win 7 in any way. I had to come to terms with this. Further, the same WebDav is not connected automatically after the client reboot. And the last thing - if you upload large files (about 3-5GB archive is uploaded about once a week), it takes a lot of time, and also causes the entire server OS to freeze, I don’t know what exactly happens at this moment, but when uploading through a browser or nextcloud client there is no such problem.

We tried to synchronize through the application from nextcloud, but there is a problem with the speed of synchronization - checking for changes takes several tens of minutes, that is, if someone corrected the file, then the other person must force the synchronization to start and wait.

Questions:

1. Does it make sense to try SeaFile for such tasks?
   
2. Or is it better to return to the SAMBA option and implement a backup of all information by other means, and reconcile with the distribution of access?
   
3. Are there any other protocols besides WebDav so that the files are still on the server, but they can be accessed from TotalCMD on Windows and there are no such freezes and restrictions in operation (for example, a file larger than 4 GB cannot be downloaded)?
   

There may be other storage systems that I don't know about, I'm waiting for suggestions

Answer 1

problems with access distribution (this is corny inconvenient)

It is very inconvenient to hammer screws with a hammer, although of course you can adapt :) You are trying to solve a problem that has never been hung on samba. Distribution of the rights is AD, it for this purpose also is thought up. If you already have samba, just raise the DC on its base and drive all the machines into the domain - that will be the centralized distribution of rights.

and also with versioning, since it does not exist

of course, it is not, because versioning does not happen in file servers. Versioning is a property of repositories.

to implement by other means a backup of all information

Backup, of course, needs to be organized by other means

(file over 4 GB cannot be downloaded for example)

Working over a network with files of 4Gb or more is suicide. Even backups to drag over a network of this size - and then there is already a chance to run into a broken archive.
I think you need to change something in your planning.