NAS over WAN? Spec me!

mothermachine

mothermachine

mothermachine

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8 Oct 2004
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Hi folks,

In the market for a NAS, probably a 2 bay job so 2 x 2tb drives in total. No need for RAID. But I want to run it from my parents' house several miles away and be able to upload files to it as-and-when (ideally every night) using SyncBack. (my current backup tool of choice for local and external in-house backups).

Is the above possible and feasible? Upload speed isn't an issue as the uploads will not top more than 1gb per night and I think I could get around the problem of dynamic IP on the other end using an IP broadcaster of some kind (recommendations most welcome!).

Any recommendations for the above? Spec me a nice suitable NAS and software solution :)

Cheers,
 
Forgot to mention but dropdox etc won't cut it, because I will be basically updating a full 2tb worth of data project folders each night (around 1gb worth of actual uploads per night).
 
I guess the biggest question will be security, as a lot of NAS offer FTP options however I wouldn't be too keen on broadcasting my documents only secured by plain text...
 
That's a good point. is it not possible to use some kind of secure connection for this? FTP could work, but I'd much rather use SyncBack. Is it not possible to install custom software packages on a NAS? (never used a NAS before).

Cheers,
 
Take a look at the Synology DS211j that does SSL(get a Certificate from startssl) and VPN will be added in the next update
 
Look for a Nas (or build a super low power system yourself) which runs linux. Install ssh and rsync - that combination stomps all over syncback :D
 
Whilst it might be possible to run rsync on a NAS you can find that the transfer speed is slowed down due to a CPU bottleneck on the NAS.

I'm moving around some data at the moment and rsyncing from a QNAP 209 II to a Cisco NSS 322 runs at a third of the speed of a full Linux server to the Cisco with the CPU on the QNAP being max'ed out (all three devices are on the same gigabit switch).

If you want a two disk NAS though then the above Cisco maybe worth considering, it's basically a rebadged QNAP 259 variant and is available at the moment from a competitor with two free 2TB drives amazingly cheaply ...
 
Last edited:
memyselfandi said:
Whilst it might be possible to run rsync on a NAS you can find that the transfer speed is slowed down due to a CPU bottleneck on the NAS.

I'm moving around some data at the moment and rsyncing from a QNAP 209 II to a Cisco NSS 322 runs at a third of the speed of a full Linux server to the Cisco with the CPU on the QNAP being max'ed out (all three devices are on the same gigabit switch).

If you want a two disk NAS though then the above Cisco maybe worth considering, it's basically a rebadged QNAP 259 variant and is available at the moment from a competitor with two free 2TB drives amazingly cheaply ...
Click to expand...

True - the reason I suggest it is that over LAN connections the CPU is indeed the bottleneck, but with it being over residential WAN connections I'm guessing the absolute best-case scenario is a 10mbit upload (but more likely 1mbit).
At which point the CPU, however sluggish, won't be the bottleneck. There will be, however, performance gains to be realised from things like using the -z option for compression & the differential transfer options in rsync (so the changes of files are transmitted rather than the entire file being retransmitted for but a few bytes)
 
Hi guys so the Cisco NSS 322 looks great to me.

Just to be clear, how easy is it to backup remotely to it over wan? Upload speed from my ISP is around 1mbit. Can it be done securely and with FTP or some other software/web interface? I only want to upload changed files and delete missing files, not the full set each time, so the other end is identical to the source. Is this possible?

Also is this unit quiet when in operation or idle?

Cheers,
 
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