Join Synology NAS to a Windows Domain for a Remote Office

Hi, I am looking at setting up a remote office and was wondering if using a Synology NAS connected to a Windows Domain across a VPN would be a viable option. The users would connect to the NAS at the remote office for files and such but the user management would be handled by the Windows Domain.

Some of my concerns would be:

What would happen if the VPN went down?
Would the users at the remote office still be able to connect to files?
Is the forest level required to be 2008 R2?
Set the NAS as a secondary DC or join it as a client?

Any experiences/thoughts with this type of setup would be appreciated.

  1. If the VPN went down it is possible the nas would have some caching but if it couldn’t see the DC then I would suspect they wouldn’t be able to open future documents until it reconnected.

  2. Forest level shouldn’t matter, but no one should be using 2008 because that has been EOL ages ago.

  3. I would have a read only domain controller at the other site and tell the SMB server to talk to the RoDC for authentication and security groups.

Thank you for the info.

Regarding the RoDC, would you be referencing adding a Windows server or utilizing the Synology Directory Server? I was hoping that the Synology Directory Server might be a more cost effective solution just for a small office. The Synology KB says that it can act as a RoDC but I do not have any experience with Synology Directory Server.