Multiple Time Machine backups to NAS

[Flannelist]

I presently work for an Apple Authorized Service provider and it's a pretty frequent occurrence for certain types of repairs that we have to perform data backups. Our present method of doing this is an old 2 TB external hard drive that gets passed between us two Apple techs to process Time Machine backups onto. This is less than ideal for a few reasons. Firstly, the drive we are using has one of those USB 3 micro b connectors on it (that I hate because in my experience they do not hold up well). I have been here 5 months and I have to fight with the thing 50% of the time to get the drive to be recognized. Secondly, if both of us need the drive at the same time it holds us up from getting repairs done. It also creates situations where backups might be deleted prematurely because it's been on the drive for a while and one of us (not me) doesn't realize it's still there for a reason. And we retain these backups for a few weeks post repair just in case. Plus 2TB isn't huge depending on how many backups are on there and what devices we've backed up recently.

We have a Synology diskstation at our bench that one of the other techs fixed at some point (it's a bit of a story). But I like the idea of all 4 of us (the two PC techs included, who have their own external hard drive) being able to backup to a NAS rather than an external drive that gets passed around. Plus we've been slow this last week or so and I'm chomping at the bit to mess around.

Configuring single use time machine backups for multiple users that change often on an external hard drive is no big deal. But my biggest concern is, how annoying would that be for the same thing on a Synology. I have little to no experience with them personally and am totally comfortable tooling around, but some outside feedback would be appreciated.

[NelizMastr]

You can create a share on the Synology just fine and connect time machine to it. You can do this on multiple devices at the same time, no problem.

 

The biggest slowdown factor is usually the 1gigabit network port on most models, which comes down to 100MB/s transfer speed.

 

I use my Synology DS218 to back-up our Macs and it's always been fine.

[Flannelist]

5 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

You can create a share on the Synology just fine and connect time machine to it. You can do this on multiple devices at the same time, no problem.

 

The biggest slowdown factor is usually the 1gigabit network port on most models, which comes down to 100MB/s transfer speed.

 

I use my Synology DS218 to back-up our Macs and it's always been fine.

Yes, speed of backups I think is my biggest concern. The Synology we have is a DS415+ which has 2 Gigabit ports, but even if we aggregate them (I don't know enough about our internal network topography to know if that's even something our network could benefit from), I would bet it still won't be as fast as plugging an external drive into the machine and backing up like we do now.

I think I will just have to play around. We have drives for it, but they are not new and one we already confirmed is failing so I don't want to rely on it yet anyways until I know it will be better than the current system, and reliable enough to use on client units.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Flannelist said:

Yes, speed of backups I think is my biggest concern. The Synology we have is a DS415+ which has 2 Gigabit ports, but even if we aggregate them (I don't know enough about our internal network topography to know if that's even something our network could benefit from), I would bet it still won't be as fast as plugging an external drive into the machine and backing up like we do now.

I think I will just have to play around. We have drives for it, but they are not new and one we already confirmed is failing so I don't want to rely on it yet anyways until I know it will be better than the current system, and reliable enough to use on client units.

If you want fast backups Id get a few external usb 3 ssds. Should be much faster than the nas or external hdds.