My parents are looking into getting their own NAS to replace iCloud. I don’t really have much experience with that, and zero experience with apple stuff. They are also not very techy, but at least enthusiastic.

Can sombody recommend easy NAS products where you basically just buy a device, do some basic setup, and then it functions as your at-home cloud? I don’t want to get roped into doing too much admin for them, but they do already have DDNS for some other smart home crap. Bonus if it’s non-US tech.

Personally I run a nextcloud server on a VPS that I could expand, that’s not quite selfhosted, I don’t know if that integrates well with apple though, are they better off if I just onboard them onto that?

Cheers in advance

  • rsolva@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    I use TrueNAS, which supports TimeMachine out of the box and I have set up Samba-shares to make it simple for family members to drop files in a shared folder. Some of them also have a personal folder. This works on Linux, Windows and MacOS. I also use Wireguard to make sure they always have access to the share.

    TrueNAS has a learning curve, but it is reasonably well documented and if you spend some time up front, it pays of.

    I use an HP EliteDesk 800 Mini with two boot disks for redundancy and several disks connected trough USB3. Using USB disks are discouraged by TrueNAS but it has worked fine for several years for my low budget setup.

  • rouxdoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    12·
    3 days ago

    This will be an unpopular suggestion here but why not just go all in on iCloud? It’s reasonably inexpensive for not data-hoarding amounts of data, reasonably secure and E2E encrypted. Given the low cost, zero setup if they’re already Apple people and lack of admin I think it is ideal for them.

    I pay for iCloud storage because I want HomeKit Secure Video cloud storage (I also have a local copy on disk).

    • 123@programming.devEnglish
      7·
      3 days ago

      One reason I would give is that apple and google makes it incredibly hard to leave. I had to use some third party script (and give it my credentials or token…) Just to export pictures with the exif metadata from iOS. Even Google’s obnoxious “select a few thousand pics at a time” was easier (Google takeout puts the metadata separately, so it was also not an option).

      Another reason is that big tech companies are complacent with kidnappings and oppressors and don’t want to give them money.

      I could see apple breaking the tool or throwing their legal team around in the future if it keeps some people on their platform, why not leave while you can more easily.

      • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        I was 110% a Google fan until about 9 years ago, when Project Fi was headed towards public release, and devices purchased from them (effectively through the Google Store with a different sticker on the box) kept mysteriously going missing in transit, and the customer got an empty box/a brick/whatever. This is annoying on its own, but G/Fi cs response to these instances were awful. As I was a Fi user (woo closed beta gang), and I bought my devices thru Fi, I became concerned that this might happen to me. That thought quickly snowballed, and I started migrating out of the G ecosystem because the realization that their cs is useless and if I ever have a dispute or situation, they can just delete my account without giving a single fuck.

        To pay a company money and not receive some assurances that my data won’t be wiped out of the blue while I am asleep, is - in my opinion - fucking stupid as hell. I don’t know how the apple situation is, but until proven otherwise, fuck both of them for anything you care about.

        • 123@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          Forgot about that yes, heard of horror stories of people being locked out of gmail, google support being useless and losing so much time and money migrating accounts manually by having to visit banks and the like.

      • rouxdoo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 days ago

        Fair enough, I knew my take wouldn’t be a popular one here. In all fairness if you are using Apple products the iCloud sync brings all of the metadata with the data on every device that accesses it.

        While I don’t have any illusions that Apple has my back they do have a lot invested in keeping people’s trust in their ecosystem. The automated on-device CSAM scanning kerfuffle that they backed away from shows that they are sensitive to the threat of people leaving their walled garden.

        Another fairly easy to implement local solution that wouldn’t be an admin headache is to put a Mac mini with a bunch of attached storage on the network and use it as a file server. I do that for my PleX.

        • 123@programming.devEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          I only had an older iPhone (which I liked for the most part), but it was announced to not be getting security and related updates soon (what apple calls vintage at this point) so there wasn’t much of an ecosystem once I got a different phone and exporting my pictures to my NAS, new phone, desktop and laptop made more sense.

          I supposed I could lose everything if all of those burn in a house fire, but since I always have my phone on me, I’d imagine there would be more pressing matters like not burning to death myself.

          Edit: I also have some stuff at my relatives, but their internet sucks, so I only sync family and more important pics there.

    • kingofras@lemmy.worldEnglish
      53·
      3 days ago

      Do a deep trace and you’ll see that all of Apples off shore data centres are Alphabet owned. There’s encryption but Apple is just renting from the least privacy focused company. Also Apples privacy is really not much more than marketing. All you need is a CEO change or hey how about the current one embracing nazism casually from his own wallet?

      Low cost is the only argument here, but once you go NAS + VPN you never go back.

  • Bassman1805@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    Synology, with QNAP as a close #2. There are other decent options, but they aren’t quite as polished so they may require more “actual computer knowledge” to troubleshoot from time to time.

    • 123@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      Whichever one you go with, don’t expose it to the internet directly or use their offerings. They are a big target and just don’t get enough security.

  • Xaphanos@lemmy.worldEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    I have an old surplus QNAP. I love it. Very capable, easy to setup, easy to use it and forget about it. Mine is set up for RAID5.

    Be certain to get a reliable UPS for it. And have a spare drive on hand.

    • funkajunk@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      This. Everyone starts off thinking they’ll buy a NAS and it will just exist for years to come. There is some maintenance and monitoring involved, and if you “set it and forget it”, you can say goodbye to all that data.

    • RunningInRVA@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      Please consider RAID6 or ensure your data is fully backed up. RAID5 falls flat if a drive fails during resilvering the array.

  • piyuv@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    3 days ago

    I haven’t used them but umbrel looks promising: https://umbrel.com/

    I’m using a synology and as others have said, it’s pretty friendly to non-techies, with lots of point and click configurations