My parents are looking into getting their own NAS to replace iCloud. I don’t really have much experience with that, and zero experience with apple stuff. They are also not very techy, but at least enthusiastic.
Can sombody recommend easy NAS products where you basically just buy a device, do some basic setup, and then it functions as your at-home cloud? I don’t want to get roped into doing too much admin for them, but they do already have DDNS for some other smart home crap. Bonus if it’s non-US tech.
Personally I run a nextcloud server on a VPS that I could expand, that’s not quite selfhosted, I don’t know if that integrates well with apple though, are they better off if I just onboard them onto that?
Cheers in advance
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What do you all think of the Buffalo brand? I’ve been thinking about one of those for a while now.
This will be an unpopular suggestion here but why not just go all in on iCloud? It’s reasonably inexpensive for not data-hoarding amounts of data, reasonably secure and E2E encrypted. Given the low cost, zero setup if they’re already Apple people and lack of admin I think it is ideal for them.
I pay for iCloud storage because I want HomeKit Secure Video cloud storage (I also have a local copy on disk).
can you verify that it’s E2E encrypted?
Do a deep trace and you’ll see that all of Apples off shore data centres are Alphabet owned. There’s encryption but Apple is just renting from the least privacy focused company. Also Apples privacy is really not much more than marketing. All you need is a CEO change or hey how about the current one embracing nazism casually from his own wallet?
Low cost is the only argument here, but once you go NAS + VPN you never go back.
One reason I would give is that apple and google makes it incredibly hard to leave. I had to use some third party script (and give it my credentials or token…) Just to export pictures with the exif metadata from iOS. Even Google’s obnoxious “select a few thousand pics at a time” was easier (Google takeout puts the metadata separately, so it was also not an option).
Another reason is that big tech companies are complacent with kidnappings and oppressors and don’t want to give them money.
I could see apple breaking the tool or throwing their legal team around in the future if it keeps some people on their platform, why not leave while you can more easily.
Fair enough, I knew my take wouldn’t be a popular one here. In all fairness if you are using Apple products the iCloud sync brings all of the metadata with the data on every device that accesses it.
While I don’t have any illusions that Apple has my back they do have a lot invested in keeping people’s trust in their ecosystem. The automated on-device CSAM scanning kerfuffle that they backed away from shows that they are sensitive to the threat of people leaving their walled garden.
Another fairly easy to implement local solution that wouldn’t be an admin headache is to put a Mac mini with a bunch of attached storage on the network and use it as a file server. I do that for my PleX.
I haven’t used them but umbrel looks promising: https://umbrel.com/
I’m using a synology and as others have said, it’s pretty friendly to non-techies, with lots of point and click configurations
@piyuv @PotatoesFall I mean its running a proprietary os software and its terms of service say “the company is under no obligation to provide support or maintenance services.” … so I woukd say rather than being dependent on a random company that may disapear in a puff of smoke. Why not just use opensource software on commodity hardware and use something like #yunohost?
@piyuv @PotatoesFall Actually their licence is Polyform noncommercial github.com/getumbrel/umbrel/bl… and their app packaging is docker based github.com/getumbrel/umbrel-ap… @888coop - have you seen this?
@PotatoesFall i’m a bit shocked to read so many Synology recommendations. Are you all living under a rock or did you already forget the stunt they tried to pull off with their branded HDD vendor lock-in?
QNAP, UniFi or Ugreen would be my picks.
Synology, with QNAP as a close #2. There are other decent options, but they aren’t quite as polished so they may require more “actual computer knowledge” to troubleshoot from time to time.
Whichever one you go with, don’t expose it to the internet directly.
@PotatoesFall Good to hear your parents are aware of the issues with ‘cloud’ services and choose to invest in a NAS. To be honest any off the shelf NAS will do. Important is to determine the storage capacity they will be needing for the next five years and add a good 50% to that number. For instance, you expect they need 2.5 TB then you should get 4 TB netto storage.
Depending on your backup strategy and how robust you want the NAS storage to be you can choose a single bay or a multi bay NAS.
@PotatoesFall A good off-site data backup is definitely something to look into. Where will you place the NAS and where will the backup be stored? Let me know if you need any guidance on this topic.
Synology. Although I’m sure other ready made NAS machines will probably work and be chapter if you want to explore.
QNAP gives more bang for the money.
I have an old surplus QNAP. I love it. Very capable, easy to setup, easy to use it and forget about it. Mine is set up for RAID5.
Be certain to get a reliable UPS for it. And have a spare drive on hand.
This. Everyone starts off thinking they’ll buy a NAS and it will just exist for years to come. There is some maintenance and monitoring involved, and if you “set it and forget it”, you can say goodbye to all that data.
Please consider RAID6 or ensure your data is fully backed up. RAID5 falls flat if a drive fails during resilvering the array.
And, because a resilver involves significant load on the remaining drives, it’s more likely than you think. If you have drives from the same batch, they likely have the same MTTF.
I’ve had a Synology NAS for 15 years or so, and I think it’s ideal for this kind of use-case.
It has a point and click configuration UI that you access from a web browser.
There’s a reasonably large ecosystem of packages you can install.
I’d have a super-serious talk with them about backing up their stuff.
