Mirror Two NAS Devices on Separate Networks

[JayRad]

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to see what you networking guru's have to say about this situation. My friend would like to take two of his NAS devices (Lenovo ix2's), one being at his business and the other at his home. He would like them to be mirror images of one another. It would be beneficial if the files that were being changed during the day were reflected on the other drive instantaneously (kinda like a differential backup), rather than having it backup the files and all of the changes made throughout the day at a set time of night. He would like it to work both ways, so no matter if he was making changes on the NAS at home or the NAS at work, the changes would reflect from either location to the other. Multi-user file access is not a huge deal, as one person will likely be editing any single file at any given time. 

Is there a simple solution to set this up? I have explored some options including cloud software and VPN's but wanted to see if I am overlooking anything that might make for an easier and clear cut solution. Both locations have top of the line routers for network access and features/functionality (ASUS RT-N66U's) and both locations have great Upload and Download bandwidths available. 

 

Thanks a bunch peeps

 

Jared 

[dalekphalm]

Many NAS devices have built in NAS Replication/Disaster Recovery modes, where you can pair two of them together and your master NAS replicates to the slave NAS, however, looking through the manual, I cannot find such a feature.

 

You could use the "Copy Jobs" feature of the ix2 to manually replicate data to a second NAS. I don't think you can automate this though. If the second NAS is offsite, you would also likely want to create a VPN connection for the second NAS, so it is treated as if it's another local device (Setup a VPN server on the network, and VPN connect the second NAS into your LAN - the NAS might support connecting to VPN already, but if not, you'll have to use an intermediate device, such as a Router, or a computer with 2 NIC ports).

[F4S4K4N]

Also consider you're internet upload speed. Moving 1TB of data over a 10mbps uplink (which is faster than most uplinks) would take almost 10 days.

[AshleyAshes]

You want to use the Rsync feature in NAS4Free and other NAS systems. This is pretty easy to do with multiple machines on one network, the real trick would be setting up a VLAN of some sort so as both machines can talk to each other across the internet.  you also don't mention what kind of work this person does, depending on the importance of the date, you'll need to look at an encrypted connection to ensure additional security.  Though thinking about it, ANY customer data should be encrypted.

[JayRad]

Thanks for the help peeps.

 

This will mainly be used for spreadsheet, pdf and word processed documents. (Payroll, Scheduling, Back office shenanigans etc...) There isn't much data to begin with so implementation of mirroring should be a rather quick process. 

 

I'll also check out the Rsync options this week. With Rysnc, I would need to set up an Rysnc server on one of the end point PC's ya? 

 

Thanks again,

 

Jared