give me your NAS tricks
 

I've got a Synology NAS on order. I'm looking for tips on how to set it up, how to organize things.

I've got some legal torrents that I want to run from it, and I want to be able to access files from the road without using dropbox. I'm also thinking about backing up my entire drop box onto the NAS.

And I may want to watch some movies on my Roku, that are served out of the NAS.

I'm looking for some real-life stories of how you have set yours up. Thanks in advance!

Install Synology Cloudsync, it'll backup Dropbox directly to the unit

Install Plex server on the NAS, and the Plex channel on your Roku to stream locally

Install the Synology DS File app with a remote login so you can always access your unit. Consider upgrading to DS6 beta so you can also get 2 factor authentication.

Buy some IP cameras and purchase the license for additional cameras.

How does Plex compare to DS Video? I have DS Video on my Synology, Roku, and iPad. The Roku handles local streaming and DS Video on the iPad supports downloading videos offline so I can watch them while traveling. Does Plex add any features that I can't get through DS Video?

thanks ScottC, super helpful!

I'm wondering the same thing JClishe...and the same question about DS Sync versus BT Sync...?

DT video is not as easy to stream off than Plex - Plex has more features, more channels and better format support.

That said, if you purchased a play edition Synology box, DTVideo is the only one that'll do hardware encoding, which makes for better support of high bitrate streaming.

A folder for music, apps, movies, backups, pictures, etc. Nothing too crazy. For pictures, subfolders by year helps.

You can sync movies, music, TV shows etc to your mobile device via Plex. it's a much more flexible media server as it has everything in 1 app. On Mobile, the DS apps are all separate. Plex is a singular interface that you can use on many different platforms.

I find that logging in remotely to PlexWeb is much simpler swell. The UI is hands down better as is the support. If you are having issues, the Plex community is quite helpful. The Synology forums are less so.

But the best part about Plex, if you have other friends with Plex, is sharing your library and being able to watch what's on your friend's library as well.

That's cool, thanks for the background. Can you download content, specifically movies, to watch offline (ie., on a plane)? Are there any in-app purchases with Plex? The Synology apps are all free but it looked like the Plex iOS app might be paid for certain features.

My NAS (good ole' ix2) is behind an OpenWRT router which serves as the bastion host and I can reach the unit via ssh/rsync. The file structure is the same as the laptop. Very secure, very simple. Relevant ssh config entry:

Host ix2-5
Port 22
Hostname 192.168.1.244
ProxyCommand ssh -p 443 -W %h:%p ssh@home

Where home is the home router address. After that, the whole laptop can be synced with sudo -E rsync --exclude /run --exclude /sys --exclude /tmp --exclude /dev --exclude /proc -aqz / root@ix2-5:/nfs/Backups/veyron2/

Sounds like you need two things:

• Home VPN setup (I recommend OpenVPN)
• Plex (for media streaming)

I know folks will recommend opening ports and things like that, but I'd highly discourage that.

I'm not so familiar with Synology (I prefer QNAP), but I'd imagine they probably can run both Plex and OpenVPN on the NAS itself. I prefer to run OpenVPN on my router (pfSense) to keep the load off of my NAS.

Hopefully your unit has a powerful enough CPU for transcoding. :) If not, streaming video will get complicated.

Not sure about transcoding power. I got the non-play version.

I have mp4 files that I want to be able to view. Why do those have to be transcoded?

I'd suggest that it's a bad idea to expose your NAS to the internet (e.g., as a VPN server).

I run OpenVPN on my router.

Honestly, I'm not an expert on transcoding, but I believe it's necessary when the device can't play the media format directly, due to either it's type (.mp4, .mkv, .avi, etc.) or the available bandwidth or the available caching space on the device. I do know that transcoding puts a major load on the CPU. My NAS is 5 years old, so I have a debian (linux) server running Plex, connected to NAS via samba that does it for me.

Much of the Plex content within my house is direct played, but when I stream over the internet, or store data locally on my ipad, it usually has to be transcoded.

You wouldn't have to expose the whole NAS, only the OpenVPN port, similar to how it's configured on a firewall (router).

Yeah, I know, but to me it's more or less the same thing. Call me paranoid.