I've never used a NAS before but am decently informed when it come to networking and RAID (all the way back to the glorious DPT SCSI cache card days lol) ... and I'm really not sure what to think about the new F2-223 just yet..
My main purposes for the machine are fairly basic, mostly just sheduled imaging of three network workstations (weekly for the most part) and that seems to be functioning okay as a Macrium scheduled imaging routine ran fine last night.
But there are some quirks that have me a bit curious as to whether a DAS type kit might be better or simply using the two 14tb drives I purchased for the F2-223 as a RAID 1 setup within my desktop and just mapping that to our other office computers.
I was also hoping to easily configure a painless integration with m G Drive cloud server and basically just mirror the entire G Drive contents to the NAS volume but that's been less than straightforward to say the least. Half the time, the Gdrive folders show up as selectable, other times it just stays searching when selecting that side of things in the Cloudsync app. I also can't see any obvious way to set up a single "task" in Cloudsync that copies all folders from my G Drive cloud to the NAS and so far, the few successes I've had when it will actually read the G Drive folder structures has been in only defining a task for a single sub folder off the root of the G Drive.
But before I write my third novella of the day...
1. What is up with they two day sync? I thought that was an initial setup thing and once it was done, I wouldn't have to sit through that sync process again until I chose to actually tell the thing to sync. But just today, a day after fully syncing, it's back to syncing again (when viewing "Volume" through the control panel type app). Dude. That's *really* annoying if it's not something one can manage.
2. I took a moment to open the thing up and after the first complete sync operation had completed, to install two spare 512gb NVME's I had laying about and set up the "HyperCache" thing just fine. Now, there's nothing listed under the hypercache config screen and nor is the "create" button accessible. The control panel does indeed show that two NVME's are recognized but my initially set up HyperCache thing has now disappeared and nor can I create a new one.
3. I also installed a spare 8gb SODIMM I had doing nothing and that's recognized and seems to be functioning so that's good I suppose.
But what boggles me is the sudden disappearance of the HyperCache thing and the fact that it's straight up going through that slog of a syncing process again just the day after it finished the first one.
I don't recall ever sitting through any sort of syncing process when running RAID1/5/etc. in other rigs with internal mech drives. Can I tell this thing to stop that syncing business excpet for maybe once a month? Can one still use the NAS while that syncing business is going on?
..
So I'm having a look at Terramaster's DAS options and there too, I have no experience. And already having the really okay (so far) WD HC30 14 TB drives, I can't help but think about how easy it would be to just stick them in my desktop and setup a RAID 1 array via RST.
Considering I have no media streaming needs or interests and am simply looking for another layer of redundancy in my already full Account Mode™ imaging strategy, I'm curious if something other than a NAS might be a more ideal solution.
I mean, maybe I did something along the way to boink things? I have just powered it off manually with the power button a couple times and I'm not sure if that's how you shut the thing down or now and Cloudsync is genuinely hardly functional, recognizing my G Drive folders only 15% of the time. And also regarding Cloudsync, my hope was that I could simply select the G Drive "/" root folder an everything sub to that would just get sucked in.
So any comments towards that "almost" novella would be appreciated, including whether my simple needs might be best by something other than a NAS solution...
Thanks in advance,
~s
