All devices in synch reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- of-lovelace · 2023-10-10 19:29 Hey guys, I hope this is the right place to ask. I have a bit of a problem with all my data being scattered all over the place. To outline my situation a bit: I own: \- 2 MacBooks: 1 older MBP 2015 for work (not provided by my employer), 1 newer MBP for personal stuff and uni \- iPhone \- iPad So yea the solution has to work for the Apple Ecosystem. I only use the iCloud for my contacts and NetNewsWire. Don't wanna put anything else there (ideally not even these 2 things tbh) I mostly use Obsidian as my PKMS but Goodnotes on my iPad for handwritten notes. I have to use PowerPoint all the time for work. I use Acrobat Reader to read and highlight papers for uni and Zotero as a reference management system. The other things are mostly work files (powerpoint/pdfs/pics) and browser bookmarks. I have to travel a lot for work and family obligations and don't always wanna take both MBs with me, especially since I started to develop back problems because my backpack is constantly too heavy. I also have to give workshops in always changing environments. Sometimes I can use my own laptop, sometimes I can only plug in a flash drive and sometimes I have to download the presentations from my Google Drive (which I can to use for work but don't wanna use for my personal data) I have a webserver with a Nextcloud instance with only 250GB which turns out is not enough since my work requires me to take, create, edit a lot of pictures and videos; let alone my personal stuff. I'm using a projector which is connected to an old Apple TV to watch movies at home. Would be cool if I could store my movies / shows and access it with my Apple TV, that's not too important though. Right now I backup my data every other month on a portable HDD using SuperDuper. Do you have any ideas on how to get all my devices in synch without me buying even more webspace? Would Synology be a good solution for me? I watched some videos on remote access to synology and wonder if that's a good idea? Not sure if all this info is relevant or if I left out info that is but I'd appreciate any ideas from you! I'm a bit desperate. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thekrautboy · 2023-10-10 20:06 SyncThing? > Would Synology be a good solution for me? Synology is a company. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- of-lovelace · 2023-10-10 20:23 Thanks, I’m aware that Synology is a company but it seems like a convenient solution for somebody who’s just starting in this field. I’m going to check out SyncThing ---------------------------------------------------------------------- thekrautboy · 2023-10-10 20:24 > Thanks, I’m aware that Synology is a company but it seems like a convenient solution for somebody who’s just starting in this field. The company is a solution? You probably mean one of their NAS hardware devices. This sub is about selfhosting software services. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-10-11 01:02 I have a similar problem and so far haven't found a solution I like and just pay Apple for 2TB of cloud storage. - For AppleTV the Infuse ($$) client is amazing and can connect to many backend data sources. I run Jellyfin on a NUC and Infuse works great with that. - MountainDuck ($$) is a pretty cool Mac project which lets you mount any data source as a volume in Finder. It is fairly flexible with how it caches files and can support offline mode. - You can connect NextCloud to an S3 backend to get additional storage (US$6 / month / TB from Backblaze). The NextCloud clients aren't amazing, but are the best open source sync solution I've found for Mac/iOS. - NetNewsWire supports FreshRSS as a backend if you want to move away from iCloud. - I had Obsidian setup with Git (and Working Copy on iOS). It worked but was a bit annoying and changed over to iCloud. Maybe it's got better(?), I bailed on Obsidian over a year ago. - Zotero can connect to any WebDAV backend (eg. NextCloud or Synology NAS). - Synology NAS are great, I just bought one but haven't quite figured out how I'm going to use it yet. [Synology Drive](https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/feature/drive) provides a "Dropbox like" Mac/iOS client for syncing. They also have a [Hybrid Share](https://www.synology.com/en-nz/dsm/feature/hybrid-share) service which supplements your local storage with cloud storage, it looks pretty nice but I haven't used it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- of-lovelace · 2023-10-11 04:55 Well yes, obviously that's what I meant. And as far as I know I can install self hosted services on a Synology NAS hardware device (better?). That's whay I'm here, because instead of buying more iCloud storage or Google Drive space or whatever I want to selfhost my data for me to access it from anywhere, I thought that my goal was clear from my post but apprently not. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PaulEngineer-89 · 2023-10-11 12:48 It sounds like two issues. The first is “sync”. As mentioned Syncthing does that and it’s serverless. If you do have a server for backups it just becomes another sync location:l. Second issue is the very high cost of cloud storage. That’s where a file server is the traditional approach. If you scale it down it’s just a small Micro ITX Linux server. You cab build one yourself but given the prices and ease of use hard to ignore Synology DSM or QNap. If you go DSM part numbers are DEMxxyyz. Yt is the year it came out so 23 means it’s the 2023 model. Z is a variant. Do not but J series!!! Stick with plus. Many recommend the DS4xx+ but not me. Get DS7xx+. Reason? Power and cost wise these days minimize number of hard drives as you are basically paying per TB. So if you want 10 TB buy 10 TB not 4 2.5 TB. So the 7xx has just 2 bays like a 2xc BUT has two M.2 slots that you can use as cache. One thing is for sure huge hard drives are slow. A SSD cache eliminates that bottleneck. I’d you later decide you need/want more drives they sell an expansion module for that. If you go this route the 7xx+ can also house your Nextcloud. Also consider a second smaller say DS2xxj. Or even 180j. I know I said not J but this one is ONLY backups. It only connects to the 7xx+. It is only a slow file server, perfect for backups only. With this setup you can cancel a bunch of subscriptions which pays for it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- MrSliff84 · 2023-10-11 14:12 Syncthing would be a good solution, but for all devices to be at sync, at least two devices should be running at a time. A solution for this would be a Nas running syncthing as a distribution instance. Can be as small as a raspberry pi with enough disk space attached. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- of-lovelace · 2023-10-12 06:33 Thank you so much for taking the time to provide a solution for every thing I mentioned. I knew of some of the things but not of everything. I've been reading a lot the last few days and this really helped me out. I've been doing research on Jellyfin for about a year now, I just don't wanna go through all the hassle to install it and then change systems. Right now I use Nextcloud as my Zotero storage and it works like a charm. :) The Backblaze S3 would be a good option, thanks for pointing that out! Did you switch to Logseq or just stopped the whole thing? Wasn't aware that Synology had so many solutions already. I've been looking into installing Nextcloud on the Synology NAS. Please update once you've got it all up and running! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- of-lovelace · 2023-10-12 06:53 Hey Paul, thanks for the in-depth description! I wasn't aware of the naming scheme, that's really interesting! I think the + is a must if I want to use docker. I've also been looking at the DS9xx+ since it has 4 slots but using a second one for backup is an amazing idea! I'll probably go with the DS7xx+ then. Unfortunately Syncthing doesn't have iOS clients! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- of-lovelace · 2023-10-12 07:49 Yes, I think you're right. Setting up an NAS is the way to go. When I reflect my request that all my devices should be in sync I understand that that's just not really possible and also not desired. I just want permanent access to my files from everywhere; my wording was wrong. What's the reason for the need of a VPN to access my NAS remotely? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- adamshand · 2023-10-12 08:03 I changed from Obsidian to UpNote. It's much simpler, but the pricing is very reasonable and it's got a good feature set for me. I tried LogSeq before Obsidian and in the end didn't love the way everything is a list. Jellyfin is pretty simple. I just discovered that Synology has a built-in solution called Video Station which also has an AppleTV app, so I might try that and see what I think. I don't run NextCloud any more, it's too slow on my little servers. :-)