Way OT - I need a new NAS
I recently had a Western Digital 3TB My Cloud NAS die. I have temporarily replaced it with an old, slow WD 2TB MyBookLive NAS which is no longer under active support. So I am looking for a replacement. In my current configuration, size is not important - the NAS hosts a 200GB public share accessed by 4 Windows computers.
The NAS could host files or databases accessed by something other than SMB, but I have no need media servers, video steaming, or other hot items in the how NAS marketplace. I had intended to use the FTP server on the My Cloud NAS but the FTP server included in my version of the firmware was incompatible with the ATI FTP client. (The FTP server in earlier firmware was compatible.) If the FTP support had worked I would probably have had another 200GB of data on the NAS.
Obviously, capacity is not an issue; the 3TB was overkill. I could live with the 2TB MyBookLive except that it is very slow, does not support SMB 3, and is pretty old.
So now I'm looking for a new NAS. I think I'll avoid WD because of the FTP server issue. I'm familiar with Synology, have read good things about QNAP, have read bad things about Buffalo, know nothing about Asustor or NetGear... Any opinions?
For my current use I certainly need nothing more than a single bay 1-2 TB NAS but if I add the FTP support I may want more reliability and go with a 2 bay NAS in a RAID config - 2 2TB drives.
Oh, another issue. Some NAS devices now need access to the vendor's website in order to do device configuration. I would prefer to have the configuration process be dowe via a web server in the NAS itself; no internet connectivity required.
Any suggestions?
If you are interested in using the Acronis mobile app for mobile backups, then check out the Synology and QNAP models listed in KB 60200: Acronis True Image 2018: how to install Acronis application for mobile backup to a NAS as these are the only ones that are supported.
I have a Synology DS215j NAS with 2 x 3TB WD drives in a RAID config which has been my main backup box, plus a WD MyCloud and a couple of older, smaller WD USB drives (non-NAS).
Patrick,
The Synology devices offer a solid solution. I would also recommend that you have a look at the Thecus Pro models of Consumer NAS devices. I am providing link to a 2 bay model, the N2810PRO model. There is also a 4 bay model, N4810PRO available. These devices do not come with disks that is left up to the user. I like that approach so that I can choose my own disks.
The Thecus offers some powerful and unique features including FTP and SFTP server capability. The OS uses BTRFS filesystem so it supports snapshot backups of the entire device. It also offers secure VPN for access via the internet, It also supports DDNS allowing for a secure free way to access the device via the internet. It also comes bundled with ATI I believe, not that you would use that.
These are not cheap but are a mid-price solid alternative to other devices in the space.
Thank you all for your input. I decided that I really needed to redesign my NAS configuration rather than just replace my dead My Cloud device. For one thing, I am taking backups from two laptops to a very slow (and unsupported, I think) WD MyBookLive.
The Thecus N2810PRO sounds very interesting - especially the VPN part - but I have no intention of accessing my NAS config from beyond my LAN so that would be overkill. (Even my 3rd level backup in a semi-offsite and eventually to be harden location - a Synology DS218 NAS with 2 x 6TB WD drives in a RAID config - is Ethernet-connected.) Since I am already familiar with the DS218 I decided to get another (2 x 4TB Raid) as my NAS-based backup storage. (I was aiming for 3TB drives but the 4TB drives were almost the same price.)
For hosting public share - the thing that precipitated this whole scramble - I decided to go with a single bay QNAP device - a TS-128A with a 2TB drive. If it dies, well, I have experience recovering it to a difference NAS now - not too painful. I could even recover it to my 3rd level backup NAS if I needed; none of my computers has an SMB connection to it so I won't run into the Windows credentials restriction.
Sounds solid to me Patrick. I understand redundancy of NAS. I run 3 myself! I do use SMB shares and have run into connection issues with them but never credential woes. I believe that many users reporting credential issues in actuality have connection issues with permissions, DNS resolves, etc. that cause them problems.
I didn't mean to imply I did not use SMB shares - just none on the 3rd level NAS. It currently contains just FTP backups of backups - either by WinSCP on the PCs copying from local drives, or wget on the 3rd level pulling from the 2nd level NAS. With the 2nd and 3rd level NAS devices soon being Synology I can switch to the native Synology backup process.
Gottcha, the native Synology backup from nas to nas should work well for you.