After getting burnt on the unRAID license change and the restriction on security updates, I figured there had to be a simple os that I can essentially set, forget, and easily update when I need, which also uses SnapRAID. I might just try this out.

HAHA I wonder how many people do this. Does sound kind of useful.

I haven’t looked very hard so there could be backup services I’m missing. So far I’ve found restic/autorestic and duplicati, but I’m not sure what their differences in purposes are or pros/cons between them.

Also I’ve heard Unraid has a flexible storage solution which would be nice as I would like to just upgrade as I go instead of planning substantial disk upgrades, but are there also solutions for that on custom built systems instead of SHR?

My parents won’t necessarily be using the NAS, I’d just be using some kind of system (maybe even just a raspi) as a remote backup solution with a wireguard tunnel to my local NAS, but if a drive fails, I’d be about 700 miles away to manage it.

If it was a perfect world, I’d like to just ship a new drive to my parents and tell them to unplug the failing one and plug in the new one, then manage the rest automatically/myself remotely, but I assume that’s a pipe dream.

The thing that attracted me most to Synology is that they have pretty braindead simple software, I assume their systems have decent power management given the low hardware specs, and Hybrid Backup, Snapshot Replication, and Active Backup for Business seem to be a solid set of remote backup options which I couldn’t find simple, non-proprietary alternatives for. Plus, it would be nice to have a NUC or Optiplex separate since I don’t know if running a NAS off them would be the best idea but they’re also cheap and have great power management (I think I saw a 200W 80+ platinum PSU in an optiplex with a i5-7500, which seems like a great value alone). Ultimately I’m just not sure if there’s a way to combine the pros of each of those solutions together to avoid the annoyances of maintaining two systems and trusting Synology’s hardware and software to keep my system running smooth long-term.

Also honestly I just picked RAID 6 cause I heard most people prefer to rely on RAID levels that tolerate more than one disk failure. Is SHR any good even though it’s proprietary?

Damn that R720 sounds like a great all-in-one solution. Is the power draw manageable?

Also woah! Helium filled drives? What’s the lifespan/risk on those if they’ve already gotten their lifespan cut short?

What do you even fly if you’re in Canada, then? I’ve heard WestJet took a turn downward a few years back.