Looking for a NAS with awesome Linux Mint support.

[Thomsterdam]

Hi all,
My Qnap NAS gave up the ghost after less than 6 months despite its hefty price. Of course, the shop will get me a replacement, but I was underwhelmed by Qnap's support for Linux: i.e. it was non-existent.
I am now looking for a NAS that has better integration and support for Linux Mint. So I want seamless backup solutions, a great Torrent program, DLNA support, etc. etc.
Which brand and/or type do you recommend? It should connect over the network with my two Linux Mint computers and my Samsung TV (for DLNA). I intend to reuse my two 4 TB hard drives, that I have rescued from my Qnap.
If you can recommend a recent test, that would also help!

Thanx,

Thomsterdam

[bla_bla_is_2bla]

I think it depends on your situation. If you say you are used to work with linux systems I would use the same Linux distro on a "normal" PC. This way you do not have to learn a new environment which might consume a lot of time.

Options:
(quit) take a I3 cpu or something else with a low power rating the I3 you can get as a 35 watt version this is just an example there are other options of course but focus on low power and take a big cooler this way you can keep the system quit.
(dont care about noise) buy what ever you want
(small)look for bare bones these can be quit or noisy

but it depends on what you want, can you please tell what you want? Quit, or noisy and powerful? Large or small? What costs? etc etc?

[MintBean]

You're going to have to define what 'Linux Mint support' means in terms of a NAS. A NAS is usually accessed via a web browser, so it matters not what OS you use. It provides shares, whether CIFS/Samba or not, these can be accessed with any OS.

I used to have a Synology - nice device and does the lot. These days I use a low power xeon server running Ubuntu server. More work to set up, but the sky's the limit.

[Thomsterdam]

Hi there,
Thanx for your input so far. Perhaps I didn't express clearly what I meant.

Most brands of NAS's come with support software to connect to your pc through the network: e.g. in Windows: get access to the shares on the NAS with a drive letter (For those who don't know Windows: it works with drive letters with a letter for every drive, e.g. C: for the main drive, in many cases D: for the DVD, etc.) and this app would add drive letters in Windows for each share.

A number of NAS brands (among which Qnap) have lots of apps like that to integrate in a Windows or Mac environment, but limited support or none for Linux. I would like to integrate my NAS shares with NFS, so I have direct access to the shares from my pc's (not through a browser) by adding lines like this in my /etc/fstab, e.g.:

Code: Select all

192.168.178.31:/Backup /home/thomsterdam/NAS/Backup nfs _netdev,auto 0 0 

This is not so difficult to do. But e.g. setting up automatic weekly back up to the NAS etc is usually done with software provided by the NAS manufacturer. I don't want to go and configure this myself with regular RSync, but with a simple back up app from the NAS maker.

So, which NAS's have good support in this sense for Linux? Lots of Linux apps from the NAS manufacturer which make integration in my network and on my pc's super simple?

Thanx,


Thomsterdam

[catweazel]

So, which NAS's have good support in this sense for Linux?

NAS is just a fancy name for a file level network store, usually running NFS and/or SMB/CIFS. I have two media servers here running Linux Mint with 10.8TB each in hardware RAID 5EE configuration (6 x 3TB HDDs in each server). Apart from the HDDs, all you need in spare a PC is a decent SAS/SATA card. I use Adaptec 6805T cards with ZMM cache backup, which you can get brand new on eBay for under $US60. Doing it that way my servers have full access to the entire Linux toolset, A to Z, which meets your criteria of "Lots of Linux apps ... which make integration in my network and on my pc's super simple".

[Thomsterdam]

@Catweazel: interesting, but not really an aswer to my question, is it?

[catweazel]

@Catweazel: interesting, but not really an aswer to my question, is it?

Take it as you will. But like I said, it meets your criteria of "Lots of Linux apps ... which make integration in my network and on my pc's super simple".

[Pierre]

So, which NAS's have good support in this sense for Linux? Lots of Linux apps from the NAS manufacturer which make integration in my network and on my pc's super simple?

there most likely won't be that many Manufacturers that support Network Attached Storage ..
so - what catweazel has said - - is most likely to be one of the Better Options Available.

[AndyMH]

Ok, some of this is old, nearly 20 years ago I had a server (spare PC) running Xandros as a file server for about a dozen win98 machines. As has been mentioned, can be configured to do whatever you want. The downside - power consumption. Can't remember what the PSU was, but big enough that consumption was sufficient to notice in the electricity bill given it was on 24/7.

Now (not running a business anymore), have a synology NAS, think power consumption is about 15W - low enough to not care. Synology do have a backup utility that I installed on my mint laptop, tried it, didn't like it, uninstalled it. So I went down the route of setting it up with rsync for remote backup. Routine access from the laptop easy via SMB, launcher on the desktop (smb://diskstation.local/) and also in fstab.

Don't think you will find a 'super simple' answer - the mass market is win/mac.

[bla_bla_is_2bla]

Hi there,
Thanx for your input so far. Perhaps I didn't express clearly what I meant.

Most brands of NAS's come with support software to connect to your pc through the network: e.g. in Windows: get access to the shares on the NAS with a drive letter (For those who don't know Windows: it works with drive letters with a letter for every drive, e.g. C: for the main drive, in many cases D: for the DVD, etc.) and this app would add drive letters in Windows for each share.

A number of NAS brands (among which Qnap) have lots of apps like that to integrate in a Windows or Mac environment, but limited support or none for Linux. I would like to integrate my NAS shares with NFS, so I have direct access to the shares from my pc's (not through a browser) by adding lines like this in my /etc/fstab, e.g.:

Code: Select all

192.168.178.31:/Backup /home/thomsterdam/NAS/Backup nfs _netdev,auto 0 0 

This is not so difficult to do. But e.g. setting up automatic weekly back up to the NAS etc is usually done with software provided by the NAS manufacturer. I don't want to go and configure this myself with regular RSync, but with a simple back up app from the NAS maker.

So, which NAS's have good support in this sense for Linux? Lots of Linux apps from the NAS manufacturer which make integration in my network and on my pc's super simple?

Thanx,


Thomsterdam

Hello Thomsterdam,
A NAS normally uses SAMBA to support access from Windows machines. It is understandable there are not much NAS manufactures adding backup programs for Linux as there are already a lot of free backup programs in Linux.
Please take a look at lucky backup it is easy and a real light backup program. I think It can also do a dry run where it does not do a real backup but that way you can understand how the program works
Try to make a samba mount on 2 PC's and transfer some files between the machines.
make luckybackup connect to another PC with samba.

If you can do the above, I am sure you can access the NAS server like a PC type or the Synology types.

[Thatlhurt]

Thought I would chime in given that I recently switched to a Synology NAS after running a standard pc with Ubuntu server. This was not a necessary move on my part, I just find the Synology easier to maintain than my previous setup. Synology does have .deb files available for most of their desktop applications. I currently use their Cloudstation Drive application on Mint Cinnamon 18.3 for file synchronization with no issues at all. It even allows you to roll back to previous versions of files if needed. I know there are DLNA and torrent capabilities, but as I do not use these I can not speak to their effectiveness. My reasons for switching were simply easier maintenance, compact size of the unit vs. a pc, and easy access to hot-swappable drive bays.

[MontyMan]

Does anyone have a recommendation for a NAS that works on local LAN only? When I looked up the Synology (even one a few years old) the documentation says plug it into the local network, make sure it has an Internet connection, then go to a public web site and the manufacturer will "find" my local machine. If I wanted to make my file storage device contactable from the open Internet, I would just use cloud storage. I know I can build my own; interested in whether anything commercial can allow network backups while keeping everything in the 4 walls. (Read: I can make it work with no path to the Internet).

Thanks!
..Monty.

[AndyMH]

My synology is not visible to the outside world