Windows moving to Mac - home network planning

[MVCronk]

Hello,

I am new here and am hoping people will indulge me a few questions that will get me pointed to where I can read about what I am hoping to learn ...

I am an old (50) windows user (not an administrator) and am moving my family computing environment over to Mac based one from a simple Win 7 network with wireless and external FW storage for backup and network printing.

I spent a little effort today looking around for threads on networks/NAS/Mac Mini Server/TimeCapsule/etc and quickly came to the conclusion I am not in a position to ask the right questions of this forum.

I am thinking I want a mac based network for central file storage, wireless access including printing, a backup solution and future capability of acting as a media server for services like Apple TV/Roku.

With my limited understanding of NAS options in a Mac based network vs a Mac Mini Server I am uncertain what my network conversion/upgrade path should look like recognizing that I will have legacy windows based requirements (including guests) for sometime into the future.

It would seem the final setup would be along the lines of:
1) Mac Mini Server console with a small SSD for speed and decent sized client HDD or maybe just one fusion drive...
2) A Time Capsule for backup
3) An Apple Airport Extreme Router for wireless connectivity to the mini and internet thru my cable provider

A variant of this would be substitute a NAS like Synology 312air or 212 for the Mac Mini Server

I have now exhausted my understanding of my options, at least in simple terms.

Am I on the right track? Searches I tried didn't return threads that were dealing with my scenario of a holistic requirement but I did learn a bunch about discrete network component options. If this has been previously dealt with would someone please point me to the thread(s) so I don't waste people's time rewriting what has already been so.

Thank you for your time
Mark

 

[stevech]

The Synology and others have a time backup... so you have versions back x number of weeks. I use it on the DS212.

Cost aside (meaning, you don't mind paying a lot more), if you go Apple, I think you have to go 100% Apple. That's the way they designed there fairly non-interoperable products.

 

[MVCronk]

The Synology and others have a time backup... so you have versions back x number of weeks. I use it on the DS212.

Cost aside (meaning, you don't mind paying a lot more), if you go Apple, I think you have to go 100% Apple. That's the way they designed there fairly non-interoperable products.

Sigh,
I was hoping the Apple ecosystem had become more tolerant of other vender equipment.
Thank you for your input.
Mark

 

[convergent]

You absolutely don't need to do everything Apple to do what you want to do. I have done basically the same thing and now have almost all my computers in the house as Macs... in fact I have the following:

Macbook Air with Thunderbolt Display
Mac Mini
iPad
iPad Mini
iPhone 4
3 x iPhone 4s
iPhone 5
2 x AppleTV

For networking, I have an Airport Extreme, but have used Netgear and Linksys routers with equal success. I settled on the Airport because of ease of configuration from the Macs... the utility is very nice. The Airport does have less configuration options than other brands. But, I have two Airport Express remote routers to extend my wireless network throughout my 3 floor house. I used 3 Moca adapters to get the wired connection to the Airport Express routers and then just configured them with the utility to be one network. Very easy to do and works great.

For a server, I opted for a QNAP TS-659, and also have a ReadyNAS running in RAID0 to back that NAS up. The QNAP is configured as a Time Machine backup. I also have my iTunes library on there. And I have my media library on it that feeds movies and home videos to the AppleTVs. The AppleTVs are jailbroken and running Firecore ATV Flash Black, which lets them serve up media from the NAS. I use RipIt on my Mac to rip DVDs to watch, and I use Elgato Video Capture to convert home movies... just feed them both directly to the NAS, and the AppleTVs automatically grab the art work and catalog them if they are named according to IMDB naming.

This whole system works very well with little maintenance. The backup utility on the ReadyNAS does a share to share backup for each share on the QNAP alternating on nights.

For backup on my Macs, I use Time Machine to the QNAP. I also have a bootable clone with a USB attached drive on each that I use SuperDuper to backup.

So I have redundant backup on my Macs, and redundant backup on my shares. I don't backup the Time Machine portion of the QNAP to the ReadyNAS because its already redundant.

I did have an Apple Time Capsule for a while, which is just an Airport Extreme with internal hard drive. You can accomplish the same thing by attaching a drive to an Airport Extreme. I wanted a more robust NAS solution with RAID, so sold the Time Capsule and just use the Extreme.

 

[kerriskandiesinc]

Me too...
MacMini...as a HTPC device, using a Powerbay server/NAS, Asus Wireless router, Two Seagate ext USB Drives.......just changed from NetGear to Asus wireless, so having teething problems viz a viz HD formatting ( for Asus recognition......NOTE if I hook them upto the PowerBay server they are recognised instantly).........all this hooked upto a Mitsubishi DLP TV.......with MacBook,Iphone,Android devices,Brother networked laser printer, various Windoze clients all successfully using the NetWork.......Apple is no more 'locked down/proprietary' than you want it to be.......previously used an ATV on the Network too.....
PS never use T machine as a backup solution....just don't trust it for Mission critical backups..........so primarily use Carbon Copy Cloner wirelessly ( when I get the Asus router to play nicely!!!).........
PPS: if I wanted to, my unorthodox PowerBay server does include scheduled TimeMachine backups......or I could use the built in Rsync etc .................

 

[MVCronk]

Hi Mike,
I got off track for awhile - thanks for the input.
I wandered off and chased stereo stuff for awhile...
Back onto the home network planning issue and thru a question up in the general forum - nas vs raid box... I still don't really understand the difference - I want central storage for fixed and mobile platforms and function with the mini as an iTunes server - may explore plex or something different later.
Comments welcome
Cheers
Mark

 

[PrivateJoker]

A NAS can be a single drive in some sort of a network shared box, or it can be multiple drives setup in a RAID array (in case of a drive failure) or even multiple drives setup in JBOD, "just a big disk" mode. I run two drives in my NAS in essentially a RAID 1 configuration.

In my personal experience, the best iTunes server is any computer on your network running iTunes and shared to your "iTunes home sharing" group (or however they title it). I've tried NAS based iTunes sharing in the past and the more iTunes moved forward with the home sharing and harddrive-less ATVs, it just works much better when served from a running instance of iTunes on a PC or Mac.

Just my $.02!

 

[MVCronk]

Can I pound you with a few follow up questions?
1) I think you just recommended mini with raid vs mini with nas for iTunes server
2) if I got 1 right then for central access for wired and wireless clients does the raid unit get connected to the mini and shared or to the extreme and shared?
Cheers
Mark

 

[MVCronk]

For clarity,
I am presently working on a concept where the Mac mini is the central server for everything as well as a work station. However the mini only has a 256Gb SSD so large external storage is a must. Everything else will be wireless devices. There is an appletv which does conventional movie/tv stuff but also handles alac to my external DAC to feed the stereo.