Need a Backup device

wildest_jjk

wildest_jjk

wildest_jjk

Soldato
Joined
6 Jun 2011
Posts
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Hi guys,

So for a while now I have been unhappy with the manual backups I perform of my PC. These are done on rare occasions on a single bay external hard drive.

Over the last few months I have looked into various options, cloud based solutions, servers with multiple harddrives in RAID (custom built or OEM e.g. Proliant microserver), NAS devices (2 bay running in RAID) and even just installing a piece of software to synchronize my files with my external hard drive.

My ideal requirements:
  • Media streaming
  • Bittorrent
  • Automatic/realtime backups
  • Remote access
So as you can these are pretty basic requirements. As far as I can see the best solution will most likely be a NAS (but I am open to suggestions). The option to maybe use VM's further down the line would also be nice, but I am not sure this is worth worrying about for now.

Anyway if I am to go down the NAS route, these are the ones that I have found to be reasonable:

  • Synology DS212J 2 Bay NAS Enclosure
  • Synology DS213 DiskStation 2 Bay Desktop NAS Server
  • QNAP TS-219P II Turbo 512MB Network Attached Storage

What do you guys think to these options or do you know of any more suitable ones? I realise there is about a £100 difference in the lowest priced and highest priced.

Again if you think it might be better to go with something else, I am open to suggestions :)

Thanks for your time :D
 
Thanks for your response.

That's quite interesting actually as I was just intending on using the NAS's own backup software.

I will have a look at Acronis.

Is your server custom built?
 
shaf said:
Yes my server is custom build and running Esxi and various VMs. It does not have server grade components as I did not need that.

I've also recently installed urbackup which is free and seems to work - well worth looking into.
Click to expand...

Just had a look at urbackup, it actually does sound pretty good. Well I think the server route is still an option for me, the fact that you can get so many extra features is appealing.

Thanks again! :)
 
Well firstly thanks for everybody's responses.

As far as I understand its either the proliant microserver running esxi natively and vms with different OS's installed (such as WHS for backups) or a synology nas?

Thanks again!
 
I am even considering building something similar to the proliant.

Hopefully a similar price but better specs. Not sure if this would be possible or not though?

Thanks. :)
 
That's interesting, but that still doesn't change anything right?

The DS212j is still excellent as far as I understand?

I just need to decide on proliant, custom server or the synology!

Thanks :)
 
Thanks guys,

I'm leaning towards the DS213. Like you guys have said the proliant is such a good deal though!! I do like customising things but I think it will be nice having the NAS do everything I need with minimal effort. I could always get the proliant I guess further down the line and use the NAS as a VM datastore.

Does anyone know what the NAS would be like as a web server? Would be good to test some pages out on.

Thanks!
 
Ok so I think I am going with the DS213. What would you guys suggest in terms of hard drives?

I am thinking possibly 2TB x 2 for RAID.

At a quick glance I have found this: 2TB WD WD20EARX

Thanks for all the help :)
 
Another quick question.

Thinking about this, if I was to use the Proliant microserver. Surely I wouldn't want to have the VM's installed on the same hard drives that will be used for backups?

Thanks :)
 
Thanks for the responses. My plan for a proliant if I get one would be to install ESXI on it. But the problem is I would want one of the VMs to run a backup system such as WHS11.

Surely I would need to have the backup drivers different to the VM drives?
 
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