Did you test the Drobo 5N2's Time Machine support? It's the only one in the list that doesn't mention TM. The Amazon page says it supports TM, but I don't want to completely trust that. Oddly, it's a 5-bay system and Apple only sells configurations with up to 4 drives.
It supports it. We have one in our office and have 5 machines backing up to it.
How has no one mentioned FreeNAS yet? (at least I looked through the comments before I started typing this, and no one had mentioned FreeNAS yet)
can build your own from a simple 2 drive mini-NAS up to large storage arrays. It supports Time machine, AFP & SMB support (and more) ZFS for the filesystem has advanced data protection features, has snapshots to protect against things like cryptomalware. It's resilver/rebiult times are faster than most RAID systems after replacing a drive. Speeds are near maximum theoretical for gigabit ethernet - and if you have enough drives it can pretty much get up to 10 Gb speeds as well.
I built one that started with 6 drives, but the case could easily fit 15 drives to allow for expansion as I needed and the initial price was less than a pre-built 8 bay system - even with the XEON processor and ECC ram it was still cheaper, with better data protection/integrity. (Built it in 2014, added 6 more drives in 2017 - which also required a PCI card to support them as well as more ram to keep speed optimal. Each group of 6 drives has 2 drive redundancy - both seamlessly are part of the same storage pool to the computers that connect) Not only can you add on more groups of drives to increase storage capacity, but you can also replace existing groups with larger drives to then expand the pool size (one at a time, and the expanded size doesn't become available until all of the drives in that group are replaced - so not as convenient as DROBO for example, but the speed and reliability more than make up for it)
How has no one mentioned FreeNAS yet? (at least I looked through the comments before I started typing this, and no one had mentioned FreeNAS yet)
can build your own from a simple 2 drive mini-NAS up to large storage arrays. It supports Time machine, AFP & SMB support (and more) ZFS for the filesystem has advanced data protection features, has snapshots to protect against things like cryptomalware. It's resilver/rebiult times are faster than most RAID systems after replacing a drive. Speeds are near maximum theoretical for gigabit ethernet - and if you have enough drives it can pretty much get up to 10 Gb speeds as well.
I built one that started with 6 drives, but the case could easily fit 15 drives to allow for expansion as I needed and the initial price was less than a pre-built 8 bay system - even with the XEON processor and ECC ram it was still cheaper, with better data protection/integrity. (Built it in 2014, added 6 more drives in 2017 - which also required a PCI card to support them as well as more ram to keep speed optimal. Each group of 6 drives has 2 drive redundancy - both seamlessly are part of the same storage pool to the computers that connect) Not only can you add on more groups of drives to increase storage capacity, but you can also replace existing groups with larger drives to then expand the pool size (one at a time, and the expanded size doesn't become available until all of the drives in that group are replaced - so not as convenient as DROBO for example, but the speed and reliability more than make up for it)
I like FreeNAS. It's a good solution for the fiddler and tech-oriented.
But, this article is more about network storage as appliance, and FreeNAS is not that.
None of the mentioned NAS is also a router/wireless-router as an Airport Time Capsule (ATC) does. Most of the NAS processors are too slow for Time Machine sparse files structure. ATC, being a router/wireless router, provide internal storage (2TB/3TB) giving SATA read-write speed of reliability to the Time Machine backup sparse files. NAS mentioned can’t do that. None of them can. Sooner or later, NAS users will hit the verification error and TM backup will be scrapped and needs to be rebuilt. Conclusion: don’t use NAS to do TM backup. Use USB external drive, if ATC is no more available, or USB-C/Thunderbolt-x external drives are not affordable.
Time Capsule's use(d) the same sparse disk images and could end up with corruption as well - sometimes recoverable if you wanted to spend enough time - frequently not worth the time, or unrecoverable error. Heck I've even had customers with directly connected drives end up with corruption (power outages/failing disks and more) that weren't easily recoverable - formatting or replacing the drive was required (attempting Disk First Aid repairs would take hours and typically fail because the filesystem damage was too bad, although I think I had one succeed after running for around a day)
So far in 4 years since I built my FreeNAS I haven't had a Time Machine failure from the iMac and Mac mini that backup to it (each computer as well as the NAS and main gigabit switch are all on UPS). I have verification failures/corrupted sparse Time Machine disk images at work with backups to mac servers a handful of times in the same time span - but many more computers involved with a variety of causes (including a hardware failure causing the server to crash while computers were actively backing up causing the disk image corruption for 2 macs)
Sweet article, thanks. I’m going to get one. Probably a Synology model, since it supports “packages” for particular use cases such as a Plex server, and one for IP security cameras, in addition to the normal file serving. Also has USB ports for additional external drives.
Question on Time Machine support — how does this typically work? Do you make a logical partition just for TM use? With the Synology I may just plug in an additional USB external drive and make that the TM target, since you could (hopefully) unplug it and connect it to a Mac directly for restores or such.
Sweet article, thanks. I’m going to get one. Probably a Synology model, since it supports “packages” for particular use cases such as a Plex server, and one for IP security cameras, in addition to the normal file serving. Also has USB ports for additional external drives.
Question on Time Machine support — how does this typically work? Do you make a logical partition just for TM use? With the Synology I may just plug in an additional USB external drive and make that the TM target, since you could (hopefully) unplug it and connect it to a Mac directly for restores or such.
It really depends NAS to NAS. For instance, the Apollo Promise device just asks you if you want to use it for TM, and makes the sparse image itself.
Sweet article, thanks. I’m going to get one. Probably a Synology model, since it supports “packages” for particular use cases such as a Plex server, and one for IP security cameras, in addition to the normal file serving. Also has USB ports for additional external drives.
Question on Time Machine support — how does this typically work? Do you make a logical partition just for TM use? With the Synology I may just plug in an additional USB external drive and make that the TM target, since you could (hopefully) unplug it and connect it to a Mac directly for restores or such.
It really depends NAS to NAS. For instance, the Apollo Promise device just asks you if you want to use it for TM, and makes the sparse image itself.
QNAP allows you to enable Time Machine backups and directs them to the TMBackup folder that it creates on the storage volume of your choice. This could be one of the storage volumes based on the NAS' RAID group(s), or this could be an external drive mounted via USB. Access to the TMBackup folder is available via the QNAP's file manager called File Station or via QNAP's backup utility called Backup Station. The sparse bundles are created by each Mac for which you select TMBackup as the Time Machine target in the macOS Time Machine utility.
The TMBackup folder can then be copied to any location, if needed. So, if you want to take it off premises, you can just back it up to an external drive. The backup jobs created in Backup Station can be activated with a button on the front of QNAP, so you don't have to go to the web GUI to start the backup job from a RAID-based volume to an external drive, but instead just press the button on the front of the NAS. You can then rotate the external drives and keep one drive off premises, e.g. in a safety deposit box.
Those sound neat. I’m just not clear on whether you have to dedicate an entire HDD or volume to the TM use, or if you can allocate only a portion of the whole, or if it entirely depends on the kit being used.
Those sound neat. I’m just not clear on whether you have to dedicate an entire HDD or volume to the TM use, or if you can allocate only a portion of the whole, or if it entirely depends on the kit being used.
This isn't how my QNAP UI looks, but the options are effectively the same. I can dedicate as much as I want to Time Machine. I think most other services, like enabling an FTP server, iTunes server, Plex server, etc. all have similar options for limiting how much of the total capacity they can utilize. I would assume that all modern NASes from reputable companies offer the same thing.
Those sound neat. I’m just not clear on whether you have to dedicate an entire HDD or volume to the TM use, or if you can allocate only a portion of the whole, or if it entirely depends on the kit being used.
In case of QNAP, you specify the total space that is dedicated to Time Machine backups in the web GUI. This limits the size of each sparse bundle to the indicated space. If you start backing up several Macs to this Time Machine target, they share the space you indicated, and each sparse bundle cannot be larger than the indicated space. I know it doesn't make much sense, but that is how Apple designed Time Machine.
Let's say you specified 2 TB and you are backing up two Macs to this destination. Neither Mac's sparse bundle can grow larger than 2 TB, and combined, the two sparse bundles cannot exceed 2 TB. If they approach 2 TB combined, Time Machine will start thinning the sparse bundles to free up space for the next backup. The same thing happens if the size of each sparse bundle approaches its provisioned limit of 2 TB.
However, once you have run the first Time Machine backup from both Macs, so both sparse bundles are provisioned with the maximum size of 2 TB, you can increase in the QNAP GUI the size dedicated to Time Machine to 4 TB. At this point, each sparse bundle will still be limited to 2 TB, and the total size dedicated to Time Machine backups will be 4 TB. The space dedicated to Time Machine backups on the QNAP doesn't have to be on separate volume. It CAN be on a separate volume if you create a volume specific to Time Machine, but it is normally located on the same volume where network shares live. Alternatively, you can also create the Time Machine target on an external drive via the same Web GUI by selecting the mounted external drive in the drop-down box as the volume where Time Machine backups will live.
QNAP has flexible volumes, where the volume itself could be thinly provisioned and grow in physical size as it gets filled with data, so you have many different options. You can build your volumes so that they consist of one RAID group, or alternatively, you can have several RAID groups (of same or different RAID type) in the same volume. You can go as fancy or stay as simple as you wish. I think you can even build volumes across several NASes nowadays, but that's beyond what I do in my environment.
Those sound neat. I’m just not clear on whether you have to dedicate an entire HDD or volume to the TM use, or if you can allocate only a portion of the whole, or if it entirely depends on the kit being used.
You do not have to dedicate an entire drive to it, universally. It doesn't even require a partition, and will grow the space you give it on its own.
Ah, awesome, thanks all. I’m in. I’m looking at the Synology DS218+, which is a couple tiers up — it has 64-bit architecture and upgradable RAM. Bit pricey but I intend to use it for TM, plex, and a DIY security camera setup — Synology has a NVR security package and it’s comaptible with Amcrest PoE IP cameras. So a single device will solve three use cases I’ve been mulling over for some time (my Time Capsule drive crapped out months ago). Thweet!
I’m not into a bunch of crap in the living room so i’m pulling an ethernet line into the attic to a PoE switch, where the IP cameras and NAS will be. In theory this stuff should all just work on one big happy network on my iDevices and Apple TV. Are we in the future yet!?
Ah, awesome, thanks all. I’m in. I’m looking at the Synology DS218+, which is a couple tiers up — it has 64-bit architecture and upgradable RAM. Bit pricey but I intend to use it for TM, plex, and a DIY security camera setup — Synology has a NVR security package and it’s comaptible with Amcrest PoE IP cameras. So a single device will solve three use cases I’ve been mulling over for some time (my Time Capsule drive crapped out months ago). Thweet!
I’m not into a bunch of crap in the living room so i’m pulling an ethernet line into the attic to a PoE switch, where the IP cameras and NAS will be. In theory this stuff should all just work on one big happy network on my iDevices and Apple TV. Are we in the future yet!?
1) Just to be certain, you know that Synology (and other NAS systems) have security camera SW built-in to ease connecting and recording from IP cameras, right?
2) One issue I found with my QNAP was that using it as a Plex Server where it did a local re-encode for streaming was very inefficient. My suggestion is to encode content with your Mac before storing it on the NAS so that you can just push the content as needed. I've been using iVI for many years (available on Mac App Store, or a free trial on their website). It uses Handbrake and other open source SW for the app and pulls all the metadata and cover art automatically, but most convenient is being able to to take, say, an H.264 or H.265 encoded video file, strip the MKV container and replace it with an MPEG-4 container that is playable on Apple devices without touching the content. IOW, no re-encoding required.
3) Having the NAS in the attic (assuming it doesn't get too hot) sounds like a great idea in case you house is ever robbed. The chances of a thief going up there to grab the camera footage seems exceedingly rare.
Speaking of allocating a maximum size to a TM backup on a NAS, I wish this was an option built into macOS.
When TM first appeared I had a 1 TB(?) external HDD, but I also had other files on it. Eventually, with all the backups for multiple machines the drive became full and I couldn't use for other storage. TM is smart enough to know when to remove one or more of the oldest backups to make room for the newest backup, but I wish it was also smart enough to keep the maximum size of the sparse image within a certain parameter.
The solutions were to either get multiple external HDDs or create a Volume in Disk Utility that was only used for TM backups. While the latter is probably a simple task for nearly all readers of this forum, it still seems less user friendly than I'd expect it to be for an Apple product. And it's not like this concept is alien to Apple as they already employ it for partitioning a drive with Bootcamp.
Ah, awesome, thanks all. I’m in. I’m looking at the Synology DS218+, which is a couple tiers up — it has 64-bit architecture and upgradable RAM. Bit pricey but I intend to use it for TM, plex, and a DIY security camera setup — Synology has a NVR security package and it’s comaptible with Amcrest PoE IP cameras. So a single device will solve three use cases I’ve been mulling over for some time (my Time Capsule drive crapped out months ago). Thweet!
I’m not into a bunch of crap in the living room so i’m pulling an ethernet line into the attic to a PoE switch, where the IP cameras and NAS will be. In theory this stuff should all just work on one big happy network on my iDevices and Apple TV. Are we in the future yet!?
1) Just to be certain, you know that Synology (and other NAS systems) have security camera SW built-in to ease connecting and recording from IP cameras, right?
2) One issue I found with my QNAP was that using it as a Plex Server where it did a local re-encode for streaming was very inefficient. My suggestion is to encode content with your Mac before storing it on the NAS so that you can just push the content as needed. I've been using iVI for many years (available on Mac App Store, or a free trial on their website). It uses Handbrake and other open source SW for the app and pulls all the metadata and cover art automatically, but most convenient is being able to to take, say, an H.264 or H.265 encoded video file, strip the MKV container and replace it with an MPEG-4 container that is playable on Apple devices without touching the content. IOW, no re-encoding required.
3) Having the NAS in the attic (assuming it doesn't get too hot) sounds like a great idea in case you house is ever robbed. The chances of a thief going up there to grab the camera footage seems exceedingly rare.
Yep that Synology security camera software is the NVR package I’m referring to - not a HW product but SW that makes an NVR out of it.
I’m definitely not into re-processing all my stuff, if I had to do that I’d just keep the Plex server on my Mini. But the DS218+ has up to 6GB ram and a hardware transcoding engine:
...so who knows, maybe it will stand up to the job.
Yeah no way would anybody go into the attic, even if they were to guess that the cameras were recording to a NVR and not onboard, or in the cloud, in a closet somewhere, etc.. Heat is only possible problem but I’ll get a reading first and see if it’s in range. I could even get a HomeKit-powered thermometer for alerts, power on the exhaust fan, etc.. The fun is just beginning 😎
Speaking of allocating a maximum size to a TM backup on a NAS, I wish this was an option built into macOS.
When TM first appeared I had a 1 TB(?) external HDD, but I also had other files on it. Eventually, with all the backups for multiple machines the drive became full and I couldn't use for other storage. TM is smart enough to know when to remove one or more of the oldest backups to make room for the newest backup, but I wish it was also smart enough to keep the maximum size of the sparse image within a certain parameter.
The solutions were to either get multiple external HDDs or create a Volume in Disk Utility that was only used for TM backups. While the latter is probably a simple task for nearly all readers of this forum, it still seems less user friendly than I'd expect it to be for an Apple product. And it's not like this concept is alien to Apple as they already employ it for partitioning a drive with Bootcamp.
Locally to directly connected HDDs, using a single dedicated drive for Time Machine is the recommended method - partitioning would be second best and isn't recommended honestly - storing anything else on the same drive/partition as a time machine backup is risky - the massive number of files and links that go on with the filesystem means repair/recovery is difficult or impossible compared with a separate disk or partition. If the user is putting other data on the external disk - they likely have removed it from the Mac, which now means it isn't backed up - only a drive failure away from being gone. (The number of times I've had a user tell me they "backed up a file" by copying it to an external disk, then deleted it from the mac... way too many, just frustrating - it seems to have gotten slightly better over time to convince people that drives do fail - even SSDs so any important data needs to be in at least 2 places, if not another off-site - cloud or using something that allows easy sync to a friend/family members computer.)
Ah, awesome, thanks all. I’m in. I’m looking at the Synology DS218+, which is a couple tiers up — it has 64-bit architecture and upgradable RAM. Bit pricey but I intend to use it for TM, plex, and a DIY security camera setup — Synology has a NVR security package and it’s comaptible with Amcrest PoE IP cameras. So a single device will solve three use cases I’ve been mulling over for some time (my Time Capsule drive crapped out months ago). Thweet!
I’m not into a bunch of crap in the living room so i’m pulling an ethernet line into the attic to a PoE switch, where the IP cameras and NAS will be. In theory this stuff should all just work on one big happy network on my iDevices and Apple TV. Are we in the future yet!?
1) Just to be certain, you know that Synology (and other NAS systems) have security camera SW built-in to ease connecting and recording from IP cameras, right?
2) One issue I found with my QNAP was that using it as a Plex Server where it did a local re-encode for streaming was very inefficient. My suggestion is to encode content with your Mac before storing it on the NAS so that you can just push the content as needed. I've been using iVI for many years (available on Mac App Store, or a free trial on their website). It uses Handbrake and other open source SW for the app and pulls all the metadata and cover art automatically, but most convenient is being able to to take, say, an H.264 or H.265 encoded video file, strip the MKV container and replace it with an MPEG-4 container that is playable on Apple devices without touching the content. IOW, no re-encoding required.
3) Having the NAS in the attic (assuming it doesn't get too hot) sounds like a great idea in case you house is ever robbed. The chances of a thief going up there to grab the camera footage seems exceedingly rare.
Yep that Synology security camera software is the NVR package I’m referring to - not a HW product but SW that makes an NVR out of it.
I’m definitely not into re-processing all my stuff, if I had to do that I’d just keep the Plex server on my Mini. But the DS218+ has up to 6GB ram and a hardware transcoding engine:
...so who knows, maybe it will stand up to the job.
Yeah no way would anybody go into the attic, even if they were to guess that the cameras were recording to a NVR and not onboard, or in the cloud, in a closet somewhere, etc.. Heat is only possible problem but I’ll get a reading first and see if it’s in range. I could even get a HomeKit-powered thermometer for alerts, power on the exhaust fan, etc.. The fun is just beginning 😎
I don't know where you live, but in my attic the temps stay in the 110 F range in summer with the attic fan working. This would kill the NAS.
Ah, awesome, thanks all. I’m in. I’m looking at the Synology DS218+, which is a couple tiers up — it has 64-bit architecture and upgradable RAM. Bit pricey but I intend to use it for TM, plex, and a DIY security camera setup — Synology has a NVR security package and it’s comaptible with Amcrest PoE IP cameras. So a single device will solve three use cases I’ve been mulling over for some time (my Time Capsule drive crapped out months ago). Thweet!
I’m not into a bunch of crap in the living room so i’m pulling an ethernet line into the attic to a PoE switch, where the IP cameras and NAS will be. In theory this stuff should all just work on one big happy network on my iDevices and Apple TV. Are we in the future yet!?
1) Just to be certain, you know that Synology (and other NAS systems) have security camera SW built-in to ease connecting and recording from IP cameras, right?
2) One issue I found with my QNAP was that using it as a Plex Server where it did a local re-encode for streaming was very inefficient. My suggestion is to encode content with your Mac before storing it on the NAS so that you can just push the content as needed. I've been using iVI for many years (available on Mac App Store, or a free trial on their website). It uses Handbrake and other open source SW for the app and pulls all the metadata and cover art automatically, but most convenient is being able to to take, say, an H.264 or H.265 encoded video file, strip the MKV container and replace it with an MPEG-4 container that is playable on Apple devices without touching the content. IOW, no re-encoding required.
3) Having the NAS in the attic (assuming it doesn't get too hot) sounds like a great idea in case you house is ever robbed. The chances of a thief going up there to grab the camera footage seems exceedingly rare.
Yep that Synology security camera software is the NVR package I’m referring to - not a HW product but SW that makes an NVR out of it.
I’m definitely not into re-processing all my stuff, if I had to do that I’d just keep the Plex server on my Mini. But the DS218+ has up to 6GB ram and a hardware transcoding engine:
...so who knows, maybe it will stand up to the job.
Yeah no way would anybody go into the attic, even if they were to guess that the cameras were recording to a NVR and not onboard, or in the cloud, in a closet somewhere, etc.. Heat is only possible problem but I’ll get a reading first and see if it’s in range. I could even get a HomeKit-powered thermometer for alerts, power on the exhaust fan, etc.. The fun is just beginning ߘt;/div>
I mentioned Plex and accelerated video transcoding further up the thread. I'm not sure you will have access to the hardware on the NAS (via Plex) but I haven't been able to find a crystal clear answer.
My current understanding is that only the Synalogy Video Station app gets to use hardware acceleration for video transcoding.
I was looking to have everything in one place and available without a computer up and running and a large part was going to be video streaming from Plex Server. When I couldn't find a definitive answer to the hardware acceleration question I put it on hold and started looking at a mixed solution including a Shield TV but I'm still waiting for the price to come down. It was on offer on Black Friday and since then zippo.
Currently I have a workable solution (Android TV box taking content from an old LaCie Cloudbox unit) but I would prefer a completely centralised solution in the shape of a real NAS.
Before that though I'm waiting to get a mesh system to clear the way for better WiFi distribution.
Just make sure you find a definitive answer to the hardware acceleration for transcoding before going ahead with the purchase. Just to be on the safe side.
Ah, awesome, thanks all. I’m in. I’m looking at the Synology DS218+, which is a couple tiers up — it has 64-bit architecture and upgradable RAM. Bit pricey but I intend to use it for TM, plex, and a DIY security camera setup — Synology has a NVR security package and it’s comaptible with Amcrest PoE IP cameras. So a single device will solve three use cases I’ve been mulling over for some time (my Time Capsule drive crapped out months ago). Thweet!
I’m not into a bunch of crap in the living room so i’m pulling an ethernet line into the attic to a PoE switch, where the IP cameras and NAS will be. In theory this stuff should all just work on one big happy network on my iDevices and Apple TV. Are we in the future yet!?
1) Just to be certain, you know that Synology (and other NAS systems) have security camera SW built-in to ease connecting and recording from IP cameras, right?
2) One issue I found with my QNAP was that using it as a Plex Server where it did a local re-encode for streaming was very inefficient. My suggestion is to encode content with your Mac before storing it on the NAS so that you can just push the content as needed. I've been using iVI for many years (available on Mac App Store, or a free trial on their website). It uses Handbrake and other open source SW for the app and pulls all the metadata and cover art automatically, but most convenient is being able to to take, say, an H.264 or H.265 encoded video file, strip the MKV container and replace it with an MPEG-4 container that is playable on Apple devices without touching the content. IOW, no re-encoding required.
3) Having the NAS in the attic (assuming it doesn't get too hot) sounds like a great idea in case you house is ever robbed. The chances of a thief going up there to grab the camera footage seems exceedingly rare.
Yep that Synology security camera software is the NVR package I’m referring to - not a HW product but SW that makes an NVR out of it.
I’m definitely not into re-processing all my stuff, if I had to do that I’d just keep the Plex server on my Mini. But the DS218+ has up to 6GB ram and a hardware transcoding engine:
...so who knows, maybe it will stand up to the job.
Yeah no way would anybody go into the attic, even if they were to guess that the cameras were recording to a NVR and not onboard, or in the cloud, in a closet somewhere, etc.. Heat is only possible problem but I’ll get a reading first and see if it’s in range. I could even get a HomeKit-powered thermometer for alerts, power on the exhaust fan, etc.. The fun is just beginning ߘt;/div>
I mentioned Plex and accelerated video transcoding further up the thread. I'm not sure you will have access to the hardware on the NAS (via Plex) but I haven't been able to find a crystal clear answer.
My current understanding is that only the Synalogy Video Station app gets to use hardware acceleration for video transcoding.
I was looking to have everything in one place and available without a computer up and running and a large part was going to be video streaming from Plex Server. When I couldn't find a definitive answer to the hardware acceleration question I put it on hold and started looking at a mixed solution including a Shield TV but I'm still waiting for the price to come down. It was on offer on Black Friday and since then zippo.
Currently I have a workable solution (Android TV box taking content from an old LaCie Cloudbox unit) but I would prefer a completely centralised solution in the shape of a real NAS.
Before that though I'm waiting to get a mesh system to clear the way for better WiFi distribution.
Just make sure you find a definitive answer to the hardware acceleration for transcoding before going ahead with the purchase. Just to be on the safe side.
According to redditors the 218+ and 718+ (which have Intel Celeron CPUs) support Intel Quick Sync Video and work with the Plex hardware transcoding option:
...but even if it didn’t I still want it for my TM and security cameras. Will give it a shot when time permits, currently doing a build-out of the living room.
Comments
can build your own from a simple 2 drive mini-NAS up to large storage arrays. It supports Time machine, AFP & SMB support (and more) ZFS for the filesystem has advanced data protection features, has snapshots to protect against things like cryptomalware. It's resilver/rebiult times are faster than most RAID systems after replacing a drive. Speeds are near maximum theoretical for gigabit ethernet - and if you have enough drives it can pretty much get up to 10 Gb speeds as well.
I built one that started with 6 drives, but the case could easily fit 15 drives to allow for expansion as I needed and the initial price was less than a pre-built 8 bay system - even with the XEON processor and ECC ram it was still cheaper, with better data protection/integrity.
(Built it in 2014, added 6 more drives in 2017 - which also required a PCI card to support them as well as more ram to keep speed optimal. Each group of 6 drives has 2 drive redundancy - both seamlessly are part of the same storage pool to the computers that connect)
Not only can you add on more groups of drives to increase storage capacity, but you can also replace existing groups with larger drives to then expand the pool size (one at a time, and the expanded size doesn't become available until all of the drives in that group are replaced - so not as convenient as DROBO for example, but the speed and reliability more than make up for it)
So far in 4 years since I built my FreeNAS I haven't had a Time Machine failure from the iMac and Mac mini that backup to it (each computer as well as the NAS and main gigabit switch are all on UPS). I have verification failures/corrupted sparse Time Machine disk images at work with backups to mac servers a handful of times in the same time span - but many more computers involved with a variety of causes (including a hardware failure causing the server to crash while computers were actively backing up causing the disk image corruption for 2 macs)
Question on Time Machine support — how does this typically work? Do you make a logical partition just for TM use? With the Synology I may just plug in an additional USB external drive and make that the TM target, since you could (hopefully) unplug it and connect it to a Mac directly for restores or such.
The TMBackup folder can then be copied to any location, if needed. So, if you want to take it off premises, you can just back it up to an external drive. The backup jobs created in Backup Station can be activated with a button on the front of QNAP, so you don't have to go to the web GUI to start the backup job from a RAID-based volume to an external drive, but instead just press the button on the front of the NAS. You can then rotate the external drives and keep one drive off premises, e.g. in a safety deposit box.
Let's say you specified 2 TB and you are backing up two Macs to this destination. Neither Mac's sparse bundle can grow larger than 2 TB, and combined, the two sparse bundles cannot exceed 2 TB. If they approach 2 TB combined, Time Machine will start thinning the sparse bundles to free up space for the next backup. The same thing happens if the size of each sparse bundle approaches its provisioned limit of 2 TB.
However, once you have run the first Time Machine backup from both Macs, so both sparse bundles are provisioned with the maximum size of 2 TB, you can increase in the QNAP GUI the size dedicated to Time Machine to 4 TB. At this point, each sparse bundle will still be limited to 2 TB, and the total size dedicated to Time Machine backups will be 4 TB. The space dedicated to Time Machine backups on the QNAP doesn't have to be on separate volume. It CAN be on a separate volume if you create a volume specific to Time Machine, but it is normally located on the same volume where network shares live. Alternatively, you can also create the Time Machine target on an external drive via the same Web GUI by selecting the mounted external drive in the drop-down box as the volume where Time Machine backups will live.
QNAP has flexible volumes, where the volume itself could be thinly provisioned and grow in physical size as it gets filled with data, so you have many different options. You can build your volumes so that they consist of one RAID group, or alternatively, you can have several RAID groups (of same or different RAID type) in the same volume. You can go as fancy or stay as simple as you wish. I think you can even build volumes across several NASes nowadays, but that's beyond what I do in my environment.
I’m not into a bunch of crap in the living room so i’m pulling an ethernet line into the attic to a PoE switch, where the IP cameras and NAS will be. In theory this stuff should all just work on one big happy network on my iDevices and Apple TV. Are we in the future yet!?
2) One issue I found with my QNAP was that using it as a Plex Server where it did a local re-encode for streaming was very inefficient. My suggestion is to encode content with your Mac before storing it on the NAS so that you can just push the content as needed. I've been using iVI for many years (available on Mac App Store, or a free trial on their website). It uses Handbrake and other open source SW for the app and pulls all the metadata and cover art automatically, but most convenient is being able to to take, say, an H.264 or H.265 encoded video file, strip the MKV container and replace it with an MPEG-4 container that is playable on Apple devices without touching the content. IOW, no re-encoding required.
3) Having the NAS in the attic (assuming it doesn't get too hot) sounds like a great idea in case you house is ever robbed. The chances of a thief going up there to grab the camera footage seems exceedingly rare.
When TM first appeared I had a 1 TB(?) external HDD, but I also had other files on it. Eventually, with all the backups for multiple machines the drive became full and I couldn't use for other storage. TM is smart enough to know when to remove one or more of the oldest backups to make room for the newest backup, but I wish it was also smart enough to keep the maximum size of the sparse image within a certain parameter.
The solutions were to either get multiple external HDDs or create a Volume in Disk Utility that was only used for TM backups. While the latter is probably a simple task for nearly all readers of this forum, it still seems less user friendly than I'd expect it to be for an Apple product. And it's not like this concept is alien to Apple as they already employ it for partitioning a drive with Bootcamp.
I’m definitely not into re-processing all my stuff, if I had to do that I’d just keep the Plex server on my Mini. But the DS218+ has up to 6GB ram and a hardware transcoding engine:
https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/compare/DS218/DS218+/DS218j
...so who knows, maybe it will stand up to the job.
Yeah no way would anybody go into the attic, even if they were to guess that the cameras were recording to a NVR and not onboard, or in the cloud, in a closet somewhere, etc.. Heat is only possible problem but I’ll get a reading first and see if it’s in range. I could even get a HomeKit-powered thermometer for alerts, power on the exhaust fan, etc.. The fun is just beginning 😎
if you are backing up to another mac, with High Sierra you can now set a quota (it moved to the core macOS from Server)
https://www.kirkville.com/how-to-use-time-machine-server-in-macos-high-sierra/
My current understanding is that only the Synalogy Video Station app gets to use hardware acceleration for video transcoding.
https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/
I was looking to have everything in one place and available without a computer up and running and a large part was going to be video streaming from Plex Server. When I couldn't find a definitive answer to the hardware acceleration question I put it on hold and started looking at a mixed solution including a Shield TV but I'm still waiting for the price to come down. It was on offer on Black Friday and since then zippo.
Currently I have a workable solution (Android TV box taking content from an old LaCie Cloudbox unit) but I would prefer a completely centralised solution in the shape of a real NAS.
Before that though I'm waiting to get a mesh system to clear the way for better WiFi distribution.
Just make sure you find a definitive answer to the hardware acceleration for transcoding before going ahead with the purchase. Just to be on the safe side.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/7h4gmp/hardware_transcoding_not_working_on_diskstation/
...but even if it didn’t I still want it for my TM and security cameras. Will give it a shot when time permits, currently doing a build-out of the living room.