First time building NAS need help

[Zuri]

A couple days ago I was talking with a friend who had his laptop stolen and with it, all is information. For this reason he wanted to build a home server with wich he could connect everywhere he went. So I suggested him if he wanted a NAS and he liked the idea but both of us have never mounted one. Investigating and doing a little bit of googling we now know more or less how to do it but there is some things we couldn´t find and wanted some help.

What we want to do is to instal a NAS with 2 HDD of 4 TB in Raid 1 so we´ll have some redundancy and schedule snapshots every day. That´s the easy part. But we also want to have his work folders in his computer sync with the NAS sort of how google drive desktop application does, so it will sync whenever connected and wait for the next time it his connected. We have figured that we could use simple programms like Dsynchronize but we don´t know how to connect throught another network. The idea is for him to have is personal cloud at the end but we don´t know what programms to use for that purpose.

Also another quick question. When a computer is connected to the same network as the NAS, does the speed of transference is limited by the internet connection or the router network speed (or computer network card aswell)? Could we have an improvement if we bought a better router?

 

Sorry for the ignorance, I´m completly new in the matter but nonetheless it fascinates me.

[Razor Blade]

If you buy an off the shelf NAS solution a lot of them come with software to do what you're wanting. If not Netgear has a free utility called "readySHAREvault". It is supposed to be used for USB drives plugged into their routers or using their readyNAS systems. However you can configure it to backup files to any kind of drive. I believe it does an Incremental or differential backup...I don't remember which. Here is a link to it.

 

http://www.netgear.com/support/product/ReadySHARE_Vault.aspx#ReadySHARE

 

Also your in network speed will have more to do with your wireless connection. If you already have a gigabit router you're using wireless N the best transfer speed you'll get is probably around 10MB/s while wired you'll easily get over triple that! For better performance use wireless ac or a hardwire connection. If neither is possible and you still want high speeds on a wireless ac router you could purchase another wireless ac router and run it in bridge mode to get your gigabit connection.

[Zuri]

Thank you for your quick reply. At the moment we only have the router our internet provider installed a couple years ago and it´s pretty bad. That´s why I´m interested to see if it would be a goog idea to purchase another one. Again, I´m very new at this so correct me if I´m wrong. If I bought an AC gigabit wireless router with my NAS connected and set up a bridge with my actual router, would it go faster when I´m on the home network and later it will go at the internet speed when I´m outside, or would it always be limited by internet speed even when I´m directly connected to my router?

Does it have any advantage the bridge configuration or should I change the router directly?

 

Thanks for the support.

[GhostHitWall]

26 minutes ago, Zuri said:

Thank you for your quick reply. At the moment we only have the router our internet provider installed a couple years ago and it´s pretty bad. That´s why I´m interested to see if it would be a goog idea to purchase another one. Again, I´m very new at this so correct me if I´m wrong. If I bought an AC gigabit wireless router with my NAS connected and set up a bridge with my actual router, would it go faster when I´m on the home network and later it will go at the internet speed when I´m outside, or would it always be limited by internet speed even when I´m directly connected to my router?

Does it have any advantage the bridge configuration or should I change the router directly?

 

Thanks for the support.

For your network speed question,

When you say bridge, do you mean your NAS in LAN is connected to your router wirelessly?
Either in LAN connected wired or wirelessly, as long as you are within the same LAN, preferably the same subnet, you should not experience any speed limit besides your lowest LAN speed, which in most cases, it's your wireless connection, assuming 1Gbits wired speed.
However, if you go outside of LAN, or even VPN back in, you are limited by your Upload or Download speed of both your home and the accessing location.

FYI, AC standard is the theoretical speed, it won't be identical to actually real world application.

 

For your NAS question,
IMO, if you like to learn and spend time on it, build a DIY pc with LINUX and install proper distro to do what you want, such as FressNAS, OpenMediaVault, NAS4Free.

If all you need is to get it done, buying off-the-shelf product will save you lots of time.

For your sync need, what platform is it on?  Is the work computer cross platform?

[Zuri]

4 hours ago, GhostHitWall said:

For your network speed question,

When you say bridge, do you mean your NAS in LAN is connected to your router wirelessly?
Either in LAN connected wired or wirelessly, as long as you are within the same LAN, preferably the same subnet, you should not experience any speed limit besides your lowest LAN speed, which in most cases, it's your wireless connection, assuming 1Gbits wired speed.
However, if you go outside of LAN, or even VPN back in, you are limited by your Upload or Download speed of both your home and the accessing location.

FYI, AC standard is the theoretical speed, it won't be identical to actually real world application.

 

For your NAS question,
IMO, if you like to learn and spend time on it, build a DIY pc with LINUX and install proper distro to do what you want, such as FressNAS, OpenMediaVault, NAS4Free.

If all you need is to get it done, buying off-the-shelf product will save you lots of time.

For your sync need, what platform is it on?  Is the work computer cross platform?

I meant my NAS connected to another router wich is connected to the main router that provides internet. I want to know if there’s any advantage over just changing routers and having the good one connected to internet and to the NAS.

 

Also I think I’m going to play with FreeNAS to get a deeper undestanding of home networks, thanks for the suggestion. But my friend needs something right away for his work so I think I’ll get him a NAS for the easy setup and maintanence.

 

His lap works with windows 10 if thats the question.

 

My idea is to buy a gigabite ac router and change the actual router with it. I would connect my NAS to this new router. Whenever he is at home he could connect by ethernet and by wireless connection. Also whenever he is not at home he sould be able to connect himself througt the internet but I dont know how to do that or what programm to use.

 

He would have in his NAS 2 drives in RAID 1 with shcedule snapshots. One of the volumes would serve the sync function with his work files on his computer. For this I’m planning on using Dsyncronize. The rest of the volumes would be for snapshots and more media he doesn’t need in his computer.

 

Would all of this be possible if  there is something I have to rethink or have another better option?

 

And how could I manage to connect to the NAS throught the internet?

[Razor Blade]

Think of a bridge like a wireless to wired connection adapter. Older hardware may have a fast wire connection but not a fast wireless connection. A bridge would only help when you're home. The router the ISP provides is generally sufficient if you're not running any fancy encryption, custom firewalls, vpn, etc. For the time being I would spend your money on necessary hardware to get you up and running then look at how best to optimize your existing setup.

 

For accessing your nas outside your home network check out the sticky at the top of the forum tree.

[GhostHitWall]

On 3/7/2018 at 3:30 AM, Zuri said:

I meant my NAS connected to another router wich is connected to the main router that provides internet. I want to know if there’s any advantage over just changing routers and having the good one connected to internet and to the NAS.

 

Also I think I’m going to play with FreeNAS to get a deeper undestanding of home networks, thanks for the suggestion. But my friend needs something right away for his work so I think I’ll get him a NAS for the easy setup and maintanence.

 

His lap works with windows 10 if thats the question.

 

My idea is to buy a gigabite ac router and change the actual router with it. I would connect my NAS to this new router. Whenever he is at home he could connect by ethernet and by wireless connection. Also whenever he is not at home he sould be able to connect himself througt the internet but I dont know how to do that or what programm to use.

 

He would have in his NAS 2 drives in RAID 1 with shcedule snapshots. One of the volumes would serve the sync function with his work files on his computer. For this I’m planning on using Dsyncronize. The rest of the volumes would be for snapshots and more media he doesn’t need in his computer.

 

Would all of this be possible if  there is something I have to rethink or have another better option?

 

And how could I manage to connect to the NAS throught the internet?

hey, sorry for the late reply,

1. You won't see speed boost by simply change a new router.  Modern Router serves as an all-in-one solution which includes, router, switch, access point.  Some of them can also be a modem. 
   I think for a nas solution, unless wireless connection is must, most likely you want a wired connection from NAS all the way to your router.  Client devices can connect to your router wirelessly either directly or through wireless APs.
    
2. If you would like to use your NAS via the internet, you could consider buying routers that supports openVPN natively like those ASUS products.  Then, VPN back into your home network.  Use your NAS as in LAN (speed is still limited, just the way you access NAS is simpler). Or you can set up your own VPN on your NAS as well, but that's trickier since you need to know how to configure your router and gateway to accommodate with VPN setup.   Alternatively, Port forward certain protocols to your LAN IP address on your router, such as FTP, HTTP.  I still think VPN is better due to security and versatility tho.
   Does your ISP give you a static IP?  If not, you will likely need to pay for DNS services to keep tracking your dynamic IP. 
   My suggestion is to get a static IP.  Get a feature-rich router, to setup port forwarding and VPN for different services.  Ideally, you don't want to use the default ports on the internet for your private NAS.
    
3. I am not familiar with Dsyncronize, the reason I asked about OS was because that's usually the difficult part to set up, if you want to sync cross platform.  I think in the linux world rsync is the most popular choice.  There's tons of softwares utilize it.  In the nut shell, they are the same.

FYI, raid configuration is a whole other topic.  File quantities, size, physical drive numbers etc.. are the major factors.

Good luck, I hope my experience will help you in some way while you are doing this.  It took me a lot of time to actually figure it out while I was in college.