Synology NAS: connect direct to Mac and to switch

[Cmaier]

Reminds me of my youth when I'd take a few playing cards and clothespin them on to my bicycle's fork so they'd snap against the spokes when riding. Sounded great and I could go much faster.

It’s funny because my wife had been complaining about some stuttering while streaming to an Apple TV downstairs. There are two switches (and a macbook pro) between the Apple TV and the NAS. So I had been thinking about replacing the switches with trendnet 2.5gbps switches. But this direct connection between the mac and the NAS seems to have done the trick (At least there were no complaints last night) and it was far cheaper . I think $30 unmanaged 1Gbps switches just don’t do well when there is a lot of traffic. It’s not the stream that‘s the problem, its all the other traffic flowing through all the other ports simultaneously. More expensive switches can handle more simultaneous traffic. So removing one big traffic stream seems to have made the whole network work better.

I may even consider hooking the other local nas directly to the mac, since I still have one USB-C/thunderbolt port free. Though my nas-to-nas backups are scheduled for midnight or 1am, so it’s unlikely to create a noticeable benefit (and I don’t do anything else with the second NAS). It’s more morbid curiosity - how many separate network interfaces can the mac handle before it goes all loopy.

 

[Citysnaps]

Perfect.

Now I’m considering whether I want to replace the PCI cache board in my NAS with a high speed ethernet/SSD board and connect directly to the mac at higher speed. See what you’ve started?

Seriously, though... I've been wondering about that option. Is that to speed up frequently accessed files?

 

[Cmaier]

Seriously, though... I've been wondering about that option. Is that to speed up frequently accessed files?

Yep. I do have a cache board already, with two M.2 crucial 1TB cards plugged into it. Honestly, it’s made little difference so far. My theory was it would make working with directories of photos easier - generating thumbnails, loading them into LR or PS and editing them, etc. My thought was that it would all end up in the cache and would be faster.

The cache statistics in the web interface are telling me that this is happening. But the speed improvement is only slightly noticeable so far. I only installed the board last week, though! So more time is needed before I can draw a firm conclusion.

 

[Citysnaps]

Another question...

Do you also do Time Machine backups directly to your NAS? If so, is there anything odd or different about the process? Or in recovering past file versions?

Do TM files reside on a separate NAS disk(s) devoted to only TM, or in a folder along with other NAS files and folders?

Thanks!

 

[Cmaier]

Another question...

Do you also do Time Machine backups directly to your NAS? If so, is there anything odd or different about the process? Or in recovering past file versions?

Do TM files reside on a separate NAS disk(s) devoted to only TM, or in a folder along with other NAS files and folders?

Thanks!

Yeah, i do Time Machine backups from 4 or 5 macs directly to the NAS. When you set it up it you create a ”share” on the NAS, you can create a ”user” for it and set quotas (otherwise backups will just keep up filling your NAS). The process is pretty seamless - MacOS understands how to do all that, because of the plumbing for the old Time Capsule.

If you were to manually mount the Time Machine share, you’d see directories for each different device that backs up to the mac.

I’ve had no problem with it lately, and have even used Time Machine backups this way to migrate to a new mac or to restore a mac once or twice.

 

[Citysnaps]

Yeah, i do Time Machine backups from 4 or 5 macs directly to the NAS. When you set it up it you create a ”share” on the NAS, you can create a ”user” for it and set quotas (otherwise backups will just keep up filling your NAS). The process is pretty seamless - MacOS understands how to do all that, because of the plumbing for the old Time Capsule.

If you were to manually mount the Time Machine share, you’d see directories for each different device that backs up to the mac.

I’ve had no problem with it lately, and have even used Time Machine backups this way to migrate to a new mac or to restore a mac once or twice.

Could those Time Machine backups on the NAS be cloned to a USB-connected external drive for offsite storage?

And then sometime in the future, be plugged into a Mac via USB for recovering files? Or would the recovery process need to involve the NAS?

 

[Cmaier]

Could those Time Machine backups on the NAS be cloned to a USB-connected external drive for offsite storage?

And then sometime in the future, be plugged into a Mac via USB for recovering files? Or would the recovery process need to involve the NAS?

I don’t see any reason they couldn’t be cloned, but I’ve never tried that. I think it would make more sense just to do periodic CCC backups for that, though. (That’s what I do. I backup to CCC at work, as a second backup on top of my home Time Machine backups. And since my documents directory is also synced to icloud, I feel I’m pretty covered.)