In Need of a NAS Server Solution for Remote Access on mac

[Senad]

Hello,

Long time reader first time poster here and I need some advice.

I travel a lot worldwide and just purchased a Cisco ASA 5505 firewall to setup at my house so I can VPN in to retrieve data. I'm looking for some sort of NAS solution in which I can VPN in and access the drive and do my time machine backups on. I want to ensure that I have RAID 1 as a solution or if it's one drive at least be able to backup the other via an external USB/Firewire method.

Quick ASCII Diagram:
Multiple Remote User --> VPN back into home --> NAS/Server for file storage and time machine backups (preferable to also have the option of having folders with access to own personal folders on the NAS device). Must be accessible via ethernet.

I was looking at the Guardian Maximus but I'm not sure if that will get the job done.

I was also wondering if I can add an external Hard Drive via USB and clone/copy the contents of time capsule itself on there?

Thanks for your time and help.

 

[chinarider]

I have the Lacie 2big network 1T- It works pretty well, but i'm still tweaking it. I don't use VPN, but have multiple users with mutiple levels of security through FTP and HTTP. It has hot-swappable RAID drives and extra storage via USB.

The one problem you will run into is your TM backups - I have tried many solutions myself. You will have to backup time machine manually, directly connected to the drive. When you are away you can have access to the backups (although I haven't tried actually accessing the backups through time machine through the internet.)

I finally gave up on the remote Time Machine capabilities. Even for those that have gotten them to work (and personally I am not using AEBS) properly, Apple doesnt support that feature and may lock it down in a future update.

My advice would be to search these forums more - There is alot of info on these topics, mostly about a month ago if I remember.

And if anyone has any solutions, I'd love to hear them!

 

[Senad]

So Looking more at Time Capsule.

Are you able to share files as a NAS on it or is it just built for time capsule? Can you afp into it or does the mac automatically detect time capsule itself?

Does anybody else have any solutions? It seems like either buying a mac mini and installing OSX server on there may be a good option to go with or buying time capsule and a NAS device might be another way to go at the moment...

 

[Senad]

Just to give everybody an update. I purchased a MBP 2.2 C2D,2GB Ram, 120GB HD,still 10 months warranty on it on closeout at bestbuy for $1k (a bargain!!!) will be giving my parents my mbp so we can video ichat while I'm away and will be using my Mac Mini as a file sharing server (I will not be buying OSX Server for it as there is really no point.).

This will allow for me to have a media/storage server along with the functionality of TM and data storage.

I will be getting a LaCie 1 TB 2big Triple 2-Disk RAID Hard Drive connecting via FireWire. From there I can run whatever I need with the flexibility I need . I've already gotten my ASA setup just transferring files over. Will let you know how this works.

Thanks a lot for your help chinarider. I hope this helps others.

 

[Sesshi]

Rather than TM, Chronosync plus a limited selection of data with anything that's lacking being accessed directly via VPN may be better. You can always Superduper before you go for an easily restoreable 'master' image.

Or, if you can be reasonably sure if you have Internet access all the time, maybe a full-time Back To My Mac (or Logmein, etc) solution to a dedicated machine may be better if you want access to your full dataset all the time.

I use Citrix Xenapp servers to access my usual stuff and don't keep documents on the machine I happen to be working on. I do keep an Entourage or Outlook local sync file though.