Asus RT-AC87U and NAS

[Allograft]

Hi all, let me start off saying that I am a newb to NAS.

That being said, Hi.

Here's my deal. Family guy, looking at wireless NAS for the first time. Several late model Mac's at home and 1 windows 7 x64.

I have an 87U and want to attach a NAS for only local access. Not looking to connect to NAS remotely. Historically, I have used a WD USB 2.0 Elements Drive, 2 TB in exFAT, which works great for all the OS's. I love it because it is absolutely silent.

So, in looking at where I want to go, I want to get something that we can all access through the router...just the one router, no bridges, no repeaters etc. Pretty simple for what I'm reading that most of y'all do here.

I think that I would like to do RAID backup, so probably looking at 4 GB or 6 GB for redundancy. I like the WD products, so I'm thinking about a My Book Duo USB 3.0. I'm also thinking about a LaCie d2 USB 3.0 Thunderbolt so that if I ever want to directly connect to a Mac, then I can transfer data super fast with the TB2 port.

The factors that I want to balance are:
-plays well as NAS attached to 87U via USB 3.0
-quiet, prefer very very quiet
-maybe a Thunderbolt connection too for periodic direct PC connections
-can do RAID 1
-works well with OSX 10.9 and 10.10 Time Machine backup
-can do exFAT format (or if there another format that plays well with both OSX and Windows

Suggestions, thoughts?

 

[stevech]

First: RAID is NOT a backup. You'll need large USB3 drives to get real backup.

If you're world is apple-centric, you might buy their products.

Or buy a Synology or QNAP. All will work with Apple and Windows and Linux and Android and so on. My Synology even allows my non-Airprint printer to be used by the iPad here. There's an Android and an iPone here too. Several Windows PCs.

So if you have a mix like I do, Go Synology or QNAP, perhaps 2 drives and one or two big USB3 drives. Then we can help establish an automated backup using the tools in either of those NASes. I recommend only those two brands.

I doubt it'd be easy to get an Apple storage product on par with the above, nor one that handles all the non-Apple computers with ease. But I'm not learned on the subject of Apple NAS. A thing like Apple's Time Machine (keeping last x months of file volumes) is in my Synology.

Try the on-line demos of QNAP and Synology.

 

[Allograft]

I would love input and suggestions because I have some ideas but don't really know where I want to go or how to get there. I would like some thoughts on external hardware to purchase, software and how to pull together all the elements that I list below. While we are predominately Apple for now, I am not bound to Apple products and really do want interoperability between Mac and Windows, not just on separate partitions but being able to access the same files and the same partitions.

Here's my situation:

1) I have a mixed environment of Mac's, several Mavericks and soon to be Yosemite. Also, some Windows 7.

2) Router is Asus RT-AC87U, doing nicely, has USB 2.0, USB 3.0, and ethernet ports.

3) I want to get fairly large external drives (or several drives in an enclosure), something like 6 to 8 TB. There seem to be several names like NAS, DAS, SAM. I realize that there will be at least two physical drives.

4) I want the external drives to be set at RAID 1 configuration for mirroring

5) I want the external drives to serve the following functions:
a.Time Machine for Mac's
b. general storage of photos, videos, files, etc.

6) I want the data to be accessible by both Macs and Windows. I currently use exFAT on an external WD Elements 2TB drive that works great for inter-operatibiity though its USB 2.0 and slow as hell. So, it needs to be able to be formatted to work with both OS's.

7) I'm not necessarily opposed to purchasing separate software to make the Windows machines play nicely with a more Mac friendly file system format

8) I have read that there seem to be some enclosures/systems that have SSD's kind of like Mac's Fusion drives that help speed things along. This sounds nice

9) If having a Thunderbolt connection is good for these enclosures for quickly moving files as needed for direct connections, then that could be an added bonus

10) not looking to access files from internet remotely, just looking to mostly work over wifi locally at home

11) I definitely want the external drive enclosure/system to play nicely with the Asus router, whether attached via ethernet or USB 3.0. Not interested in things limited to only USB 2.0 connections.

Thanks for input in advance

 

[mdgm]

Get a NAS that connects to your router via ethernet.

3) For that amount of storage I would consider RAID levels such as RAID-6 or RAID-10. Or multiple RAID-1 volumes. It depends on what you want. Either way you would need a NAS with at least 4 drive bays if not more.

6) Over your network the data would be accessible to them. Your PC or Mac doesn't know what filesystem is on the NAS. It uses the standard file protocols e.g. CIFS/SMB, AFP, NFS, Rsync, HTTP etc. to communicate with the NAS. Most NAS units use filesystems designed for Linux as they run Linux. NAS units are computers.

8) SSDs for e.g. read/write cache could speed things a long a bit if you were using Thunderbolt DAS or a NAS with 10-gigabit (you would need a 10-gigabit switch and a Thunderbolt to 10-gigabit adapter to make full use of a NAS with 10-gigabit). You would need to check to make sure the device you get supports using a SSD for read/write cache. You also need to consider the impact of using a slot for SSD read/write cache in regards to the number of disks you can install.

9) You really need to choose what you want DAS or NAS. Direct Attached Storage is designed to show up as an external disk when connected to your computer. Whereas a NAS is a computer running its own OS and is not a USB/Thunderbolt peripheral. If you go the DAS route of connecting a Thunderbolt device to a Mac you could share it from there across your network with your Windows machines, but your Mac would need to be on, effectively using your Mac as a NAS.

If you go the NAS route and need to store data on the NAS for applications which require a local disk then iSCSI may work well, but when using iSCSI you want to connect your client machine (e.g. your Mac) to the router via ethernet.

 

[Allograft]

would something like the Synology DS213air be in the ballpark? At this point, all the data that I have is ~ 1.25 Terrabytes, so RAID 1 with two 4 TB drives would be more than enough for years, allowing for redundancy in case one volume fails

 

[Allograft]

It also looks like the QNAP HS 251 might be alright, huh?

 

[htismaqe]

Don't rely on RAID1 for data backup.

It will protect you against an individual drive failure and will dramatically reduce downtime if an individual drive fails.

However, it will not protect you against a total device failure, RAID failure, data corruption issue, and several other things.

External backup via eSATA or USB is an absolute must, IMO.

 

[Shrmn]

RAID 1 is incredibly risky when you have such large files.

Some key things to note in relation to your concerns in purchasing an NAS:

1) NAS = Network Attached Storage. Connect the NAS to your router via Ethernet (or several Ethernet ports) and not USB.

2) DAS is not what you're looking for. DAS = Direct Attached Storage, meant to be directly attached to a device. If you directly attach it to your router (via USB3), you will get bottlenecked by the processor of the router with regards to transfer speeds.

3) RAID is not backup. RAID is redundancy. RAID 1 (and variants) is probably the closest redundancy there is to a backup. If you're getting 2 hard drives from the same manufacturer produced in the same batch purchased at the same time and running on the same system for the same amount of time processing the same read/write cycles (as RAID 1 would have them do), it isn't unlikely that both drives would fail around the same time.

4) Transferring files to/from an N(etwork)AS uses Network protocols such as the Apple File Protocol (AFP). Filesystem thus only matters to the NAS and is transparent to the client computer. You should read up on the different filesystems available on typical NASes and include it as a factor in selecting an NAS to purchase.

5) NAS has different grades. Judging from your usage you will probably be getting a consumer-grade NAS or a small office/home office NAS. Some NASes are BYOD (bring your own drive) while some have drives included in them. Drives are also a factor in how long you want your data to last. All hard drives have a rated MTBF (mean time before failure) and you should calculate this to know how often you should be swapping out drives. Yes, swap out drives - unless you can afford to wait until a drive really fails and then rush to buy a replacement and get it in and let the NAS use the redundant data to rebuild the new drive while in the meantime be praying that the other drives don't fail as well. Hard drive Manufacturers these days have specific drive classes meant for NAS use. Western Digital has the Red and Red Pro line for example (or Purple for 24/7 surveillance systems). Such drives usually have a higher rated MTBF along with some stuff to make it run more efficiently in always-on systems like an NAS. Factor these into your cost. You might also want to consider a total upgrade of your NAS when its close to the MTBF of your drives. My old D-Link DNS-323 was completely obsolete and overtaken by all sorts of competitors by the third year I had it (it was slower than a snail by today's standards) even though I had another 2 or more years I knew the drives could handle. I bit the bullet then to purchase a new generation NAS and transfer speeds were 5X better than the DNS-323, but at a big cost to me.

6) I don't know of any consumer NAS that allows you to connect to an individual device directly (i.e. an NAS with DAS capabilities) excepting the iSCSI option which works over the network. This is (speculatively) possibly because of the issues with filesystem compatibility and that consumer grade NASes usually use software RAID solutions as opposed to hardware RAID controllers (expensive). So you can probably rule that out.

7) Time Machine is supported on my 2009 mid-range consumer Thecus NAS (N0503) so I'd imagine modern ones would as well.

You might be more familiar with big-brand names like WD and you'd think that therefore their NAS are of better quality but in the NAS world, there are several more big names like Thecus, QNAP, Synology, HP and they are all of equal if not higher in standard than WD's offerings.