Is this possible? NAS question

[Charle4]

My needs are as follows:

1. File server (most likely AFP as all machines are Macs) for:
*centralized iTunes library
*large iPhoto library
*streaming large movies and tv
*stream library to networked mac mini acting as HTPC, and networked iMac

2. Time Machine backup for mac mini, iMac, and two macbook pro's.

3. Remote file access from work on iPhone (if possible) and work PC, and access NAS files from college. If any more info about the college network and system, i can provide some info, but not a lot. As a primary priority, I need the connection to be secure. What protocol would this likely be? FTP(secure)?

Can an NAS deliver for me?

 

[corndog]

Hi There,

A Good NAS can do a lot of this - I would recommend a QNAP because they are very user-extensible. One option for very secure remote access that you can put on your QNAP is OpenVPN.

A word of caution though: Some of the things you are trying to do are difficult, but not because of the NAS. Centralized iTunes is tough because iTunes doesn't really work that way. Sure, you can move all your music to the NAS, but it isn't the "default way". So, every time you buy a new song, you have to manually move it to the NAS too, and you have to be disciplined about this and not forget - so if you lose stuff, it's mostly because you forgot to do something (because iTunes is not a centrally-designed beast)- not because of a NAS limitation. iPhoto is even worse. Apple just simply doesn't think about centralized stuff. Frustrating really.

I have been amazed how many times I find Mac people sitting there with a pile of single-drive Lacie devices hooked up to their mac, wondering why they can't find their files, when their mac is on a network with a perfectly good file server (with proper backups) they could use instead. Similarly I was amazed at how excited everyone was about BeOS, when it could barely access a file server at all!

Anyways, I'm digressing.

Advice: check out QNAP, and OpenVPN, and all of the other user-software-mods that you can add to your QNAP NAS. Most importantly, learn by doing. And please report back to this forum how it works for you, so others can learn from it too.

 

[ntepperman]

Charle4,

I came across your post as I'm trying to do some similar things, and was researching the forum before I posted my own questions.

I came across a few different sources that I think you might find useful- I know I'll be using some of this information myself.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=554489
"I've accomplished a similar thing, simply by having my "music/video" hard drive as a network share on my vista machine. Then, the three macs in the house run a script at startup that has them connect as a smb share. This way, they can all share a central iTunes database, and if one computer purchases a song, they all know about it and can access it."

These other 2 threads/ pages just might be interesting reads for you:
http://www.ehmac.ca/archive/index.php/t-80249.html
http://www.atpm.com/14.07/howto.shtml

 

[corndog]

... bearing in mind of course, that Vista doesn't do Mirroring, so the day that "music/video hard drive" dies, it's all over. Make sure your backups are reliable...

 

[Charle4]

Thanks for all of the input. I have been scouring the QNAP site looking at some of their consumer/prosumer NASes to get a feel of what I am really needing.

Any additional suggestions are greatly appreciated, and I will report back with any more info I find.

Thanks

 

[Charle4]

Actually I was wondering if this would be a more elegant solution...As I have a 2009 Mac Mini( 2.26 GHz, 2GB Ram, 160GB HDD, OSX 10.6.2) would it make more sense to have the mini as the iPhoto and iTunes repository?

It is hardwired to the rest of the house via CAT5e, so it already has homeShare and uses the iMac iPhoto library currently. Would it make sense to have the NAS acting as the backup for the MacMini, and general file server for documents and other miscellanea?

It would also need to act as the TimeMachine target for the four machines, mac mini, iMac, and two macbook pros.

And one more thing. Is that OpenVPN application relatively user friendly? My parents aren't that keen troubleshooting computer problems, and as I am not here too often, it needs to be somewhat straightforward.

 

[kot1rc5]

Vista DOES do software RAID1 (mirroring) so did xp!

Windows will not let you set the boot drive in software RAID. You must use 2 additional drives.

 

[Charle4]

Also here is a link to another similar post I had regarding this topic

http://forums.smallnetbuilder.com/showthread.php?t=2727