Hello, and thank you for joining us for today Synology Online Partner Training webinar looking at how Synology integrates into macOS and iOS environments. My name is Travie, and I’m a customer engagement specialist based out of our Seattle, WA office. As an avid user of Apple products, I was very excited when I was asked to present this topic to our SPOT community. Today we are going to touch on three main areas. First, we are going to see the options we have for interacting with our files that live on the NAS, as well as options for backing up our data. Next, we are going to look at the many first-party Synology packages that are available to macOS and iOS users so you can really get the most out of your NAS, whether in a home setting or at the enterprise level. Finally, we are going to look at the reasons why you might want to switch from macOS Server, and just how easy it can be. Along the way, I’ll share the screen of my iPhone and MacBook so you can see what this looks like as we go. In a few minutes, we'll look at how you can sync your Apple device with your private Synology Cloud. But first, I think it's important that we look at the ways we can natively work with files on a Mac, iPhone, or iPad. So let’s go ahead and jump right in by looking at how to access your data on Synology NAS. We offer many ways to interact with your data natively within both macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. For the purposes of this webinar, I'll use iOS and iPadOS interchangeably for simplicity's sake. In macOS, you can always mount a network drive via Finder, and even set it to automatically mount when a user logs in. This method is particularly useful if you don’t want to download all of the files in a particular shared folder, but want applications to be able to reference necessary files and folders and download them from the network as needed. Another great benefit of this is Spotlight can index the files for you, giving you that Mac experience you’re used to when it’s time to search for something. We also have the option of using File Station in any current browser. By logging into DSM, we can see all of the shared folders our profile has access to. From here we can upload or download files and folders. We can compress and extract files. We can even preview and open select file types, without downloading them to our local machine. This option is great if you’re accessing just a file or two, perhaps on a NAS that isn’t your primary, and you want to quickly get in and get out. The last option is for when you want to access your data on your iPhone or iPad. By using the native Files app, you can choose ‘connect to server’, enter your credentials and have TB of data available in the palm of your hand. I find this to be particularly useful when I have a file that I want to edit using markup on my iPad. I will make modifications with my Apple Pencil, say sign a document or something, click done, and the file is automatically uploaded to my NAS and ready to be sent away with my MacBook. To start off, let’s take a look at macOS. in my browser, I’m going to log in to DSM first to get it set up so I can mount the shared folder on my desktop. Keep in mind that DSM is very flexible, the view you're seeing is for someone with admin credentials, But the user's view will be very dependent on the privileges granted by the admin. Click on Control Panel and enable SMB service. You can also enable AFP if you want, but since this protocol is deprecated, you’re probably safe sticking with SMB. Under the SMB section, you'll see the blue box that gives you the address you can use to map to. Let's copy this to the clipboard. Now we can jump back to Finder to mount this drive. Simple click Go and Connect to Server, or command K. Depending on the protocol you’re using, type in either smb or afp and your IP address or server name, We saved this to the clipboard, so I'll just paste it in. We'll click Connect and then authenticate with your DSM username and password. You'll likely want to save your credentials to the Keychain, but for this demo, I'm just going to skip it. Click Connect again, and you'll see a list of all the shared folders on your NAS. Select the one you want to mount and click OK. Now before we look at what's in this mounted drive, let’s assume that I want this folder to mount every time I log in. Let’s jump in to the macOS System Preferences. Click the Users & Groups tile. Click the login items tab and the plus sign. On the left, click on your NAS and select the shared folder you want to mount. Click Add. Now whenever this user logs in, it will automatically authenticate if the credentials were saved to this user's Keychain and mount the shared folder. Now that we have all the file readily accessible in Finder, if I open the folder and view it within File Station in DSM, you'll see that file and folder structure mirrors that of the mounted drive. They still reside on the NAS, and if I try to open a file, it will download its contents so I can work on the file. I'm going to make another quick note on this file that someone is working on. When I click Save, the file will save back to the NAS, not taking up space on my Mac. Now if I go back to File Station in DSM and download that file, you'll see the changes are already there. When I’m done, I can unmount the drive by simply choosing eject or dragging it to the trash can. Now, let’s take a look at my iPad. We can do something very similar in the files app. The steps will generally be the same whether you do this on an iPhone or iPad. Click the three dots in the upper right-hand corner on your iPhone, or the right-hand corner of the sidebar of your iPad, and choose Connect to Server. Enter the server's address as we did in macOS, and enter your credentials as a Registered User, click Next and you’ll see all of your shared folders. From here you can navigate through all of your files and open them with your mobile apps. Whatever changes happen here will automatically save to the NAS and be made immediately available on any other devices. I forgot to sign off on the document, so I'm gonna take care of that real quick. Now with my co-worker go to check that file, it'll be signed and ready to go. When it comes to backups, Apple has created a nice tool in Time Machine. This comes preinstalled on all macOS devices, and it’s pretty much a set it and forget it type of situation. Time Machine immediately begins making periodic backups without any user involvement, and restore points are hourly for 24 hours, daily for one month, and weekly for all previous months. This retention policy is not customizable and has the potential to eat through your storage, but thankfully we can limit the amount of storage consumed within DSM. Other benefits of having a time machine backup include being able to restore individual files directly within Finder through the Time Machine UI, or even the entire system using Migration Assistant. And when it’s time to upgrade your Synology NAS, you don’t have to worry about starting over. Data can be migrated using one of many migration methods from one Synology to another, including a simple hard drive migration. If you have another storage device currently, you can stop the Time Machine services on the mac, copy over the .sparsebundle to your new Synology NAS and restart the backups. This will preserve your data, saving you from having to start all over from scratch. Let’s jump back into my Mac. Let’s start off by logging back into DSM to make sure it’s ready for Time Machine. Back in Control Panel, we need to make a Shared Folder for these Time Machine backups. Go to Shared Folder and click Create. I’m going to call this folder Time Machine Backups and disable the recycle bin. I’m going to enable data checksum for advanced data integrity as a best practice, enable file compression, and I’m going to enable a folder quota. Time Machine backups will continue to consume space until it runs out. Only then will it start to delete older backups. In this case, I’m only comfortable with it using 100GB before it needs to start deleting older backups. Click Apply, give specific users and groups access to the shared folder, and you're good to go. Next, click on the File Services tab on the left, let’s choose the Advanced tab. Under Bonjour, we’re going to turn on either Enable Bonjour Time Machine Broadcast via SMB and/or AFP. Click Set Time Machine Folder to pick which shared folder should be recognized by macOS for backups. I'll click Apply twice, and yes to the last message, and my work in DSM is done. Back in macOS, I’m going to head over to System Preferences again and this time I’ll choose the Time Machine tile. I’ll click Select Backup Disk, and now the shared folder I just created is visible as a Time Machine destination. I’ll select this disk and authenticate with my credentials. Now you can see that Back Up Automatically is pre-checked for us, and it’s counting down the time before its first backup begins. Now let’s assume I already have a backup in another destination, but want to start using my new Synology NAS moving forward. Well, it’s as easy as dragging and dropping the .sparsebundle from one drive to the next. Start off by removing any current Time Machine disks in System Preferences by choosing Select Disk again, click Remove Disk, and Stop Using This Disk. Next, plugin or mount both locations. I'm going to log back into my new NAS here, the webinardemo, and mount the Time Machine Backup volume here. Then I'll log into my old NAS in the same manner, mounting the Time Machine volume in that NAS as well. Find the .sparsebundle of your current backup and drag and drop it to the new location. This may take some time depending on the size of your backup, and mine is very large. Once that's been copied, go back and follow the initial steps of starting a new Time Machine backup task. It will add future backups to the existing .sparsebundle without any extra work from you. So now let’s take a look at a few of the first-party applications created by Synology for macOS and iOS devices. I bet when looking at this slide, you’ll see some unfamiliar icons that you never knew about. While DSM is an award-winning web-based OS getting a lot done, Synology continues to put effort into providing familiar and intuitive ways to accomplish tasks whether on desktop or mobile. Let’s check out a couple of them together. First up is Synology Drive. This package on your NAS gives you access to powerful cloud storage features similar to public clouds like Microsoft’s OneDrive, Google Workspace, or Dropbox. Unlike those, however, Synology Drive gives you complete control over your data. No more paying monthly subscription fees or worrying that you’ll run out of storage capacity. This free package puts you in control, allowing you to secure your data and always know who has access to what. Drive on macOS allows for file-level syncing and folder-based backup. This means that your users can work on files directly from within Finder and all changes will be synced back to the NAS. If you or someone else makes a change to a file that was unintentional, intelligent file versioning will allow you to roll back to a previous version, creating a copy, restoring in place, or just grab something out of it and leave the current version as is. And because Drive is backed by the power of your NAS, you have convenient sharing and collaboration features readily available. From within Finder, you can create secure sharing links for files and folders. You can also open documents, spreadsheets, and presentations from within Finder, launching Synology Office in your browser allowing you to create and edit with others in your organization in real-time. Now let's check out Synology Drive, jumping back into macOS, I'm going to head to Synology.com to get the Drive client. Click Support on the top of the screen, and click Download Center. Choose NAS from the first dropdown, and search for the specific model NAS you're working with. Under Desktop Utilities, choose Synology Drive Client, and click Download, and download the .dmg file for Mac. I've already installed this, so let's go ahead and set up the client. Launch the application, click Start Now, and Sync Task. I'm going to log in with my IP address, user name, and password for DSM. The system will prompt me to switch to QuickConnect so that my device can stay in sync, even when I'm not in the local network. Identify which folder you want to sync on the NAS, and what folder on the Mac you want to sync. Note that by default, the checkbox for Create an empty "SynologyDrive" folder is checked. You can check the Advanced settings if you want, to exclude certain folders and file types. You can also decide to sync bi-directional or only goes one-way. I don't want to save those settings this time, so I'll click Cancel, and Next on the main wizard. Finally, it'll ask if I want to sync any files that are shared with me into that location. I'll say Maybe later, click Done, and the sync will begin. In the mini bar, you'll now see the Drive icon, and it will be syncing. If you click on the mini bar, you can easily see what's uploading and downloading. You can also easily share files or jump right to the location in Finder. Now let's check out how it works. Let's open Drive in the browser, so we can watch how it happens as we make changes in Finder. Here you can see the files and folders in Finder. I'm going to go ahead and add a new file from my Downloads folder, and drag and drop it to my Documents folder. You'll see in the menu bar, it immediately syncs back to my NAS. And if I refresh Drive in my browser, the file is now available. If I control-click on another file I've been working on, you'll see a couple of contextual menu options that's been added. I'll click Get Link, and from this panel, I can adjust the privacy settings of this particular file, granularly controlling specific users or groups that can view or edit this file. I can also create a public link to be able to share this with someone outside my organization. I can make it view-only, or allow the download to the file, or I can open it up to editing within Synology Drive itself. I can even password protect this link, or set a link expiration date. Click the copy button, and Apply, and you're ready to share it with the outside world. The other option we have is to Browse previous versions. We have the option to download the version from a particular date and time and restore it to whatever local location we want. In this case, I'll save it to my desktop, and you'll notice when I quick look at it, my recent edits are not present. Now, I know many of you are out there wondering, “what about Drive’s On-Demand Sync for macOS? Windows 10 gets it, and Synology promised it. Why hasn’t it been released yet?” Well if you want to read our official Synology Community Post about it, I’ve put a link to it on your screen with the QR code on the left. Long story short, Apple announced the FileProvider API would be made available to third-party developers at WWDC 2019. We got our hands on the API in the macOS 10.15 beta and it seemed like on-demand sync was finally going to be doable. In September 2019, we announced that an upcoming version of Synology Drive would offer this feature. Unfortunately, when macOS 10.15 was released to the public, the FileProvider API was not included. As recently as macOS 11 Big Sur, it’s still missing. It’s true that some other companies are able to offer on-demand features similar to what we had planned, but until Apple opens their developer tools there is no guarantee any 3rd party integration will continue functioning without constant updates, support, or need to be completely re-written due to sudden changes in Apple’s code. Synology simply isn’t willing to put your business functionality at risk until Apple commits to open standards. We do hope that someday soon we can safely release this feature! That brings me to the second QR code on the screen. You can send Apple a feature request using their feedback form to let them know that you’d like them to include the FileProvider API in future releases. For more details on this topic check out the Synology Community post. The next Synology-created application I want to highlight is Synology Chat. If you’re looking to keep your private messages private and off of public servers, Synology Chat might be the right option for you We offer a WebUI as well as native applications for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, and Android. Within Chat, you can have one on one conversations as well as open channel and private group chats. Share attachments, create polls, schedule messages for later, and use a robust search engine. Administrators can enable an end-to-end encryption feature allowing users to set a passphrase to protect private conversations and channels. With this, messages cannot be viewed without the passphrase, even by the administrators. Integrating with your existing AD/LDAP so users can sign in with existing credentials, lowering the barrier to entry for organizations looking to implement an on-premise communications solution. There are a couple of other notable applications for macOS that I wanted to highlight. Surveillance Station has grown in popularity over the years, allowing users to easily implement a security system that covers hundreds of cameras, or low-cost home surveillance set up with no subscription costs. Each NAS comes with 2 free camera licenses so you can connect an IP camera and check it out today. Next, Hyper Backup Explorer makes it easier than ever to find and retrieve files directly from your Mac. Simply open the application, and either browse a .hbk file locally or log into your C2 account. From here you can view your backup tasks, and restore files or entire directories as needed. Finally, an underappreciated app is Note Station. A quick install gives you access to a robust notes app, either in a browser, on your macOS desktop, or mobile device. Install the Chrome plug-in for easy web clipping directly into notes. Share to-do lists with others, or create a presentation in moments with the click of a button. If you haven’t checked this one out, I definitely suggest you download it from the package center and give it a spin today. Alright, now that we’ve covered a handful of the first-party apps that Synology has to offer, you might well be thinking, does Synology really offer what I need to stop paying Apple for my monthly subscription? Let’s first tackle a quick iCloud vs Synology Drive comparison. Currently, iCloud maxes out at 2TB of storage shared amongst for either yourself or with Family Sharing. That currently costs about $120 per year for just 2 TB of storage across your iPhone, iPad, and Macs, and doesn’t allow for full backups of your Macs, nor does it give you file versioning. Synology Drive, on the other hand, is free to install and use on the hardware you’re likely already using. Compared to $120/year for 2TB, you could get a 2TB drive for under $100 and that’s a one-time purchase. Plus, if you needed hundreds of TB's worth of capacity, Synology Drive is scalable to meet your needs. Right now Apple only offers limited support for non-Apple devices, but as you’ve seen, Synology offers full-featured applications for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, Windows, and Android. No matter what your family or business uses, Synology Drive is going to work on everyone’s preferred platform. And while Apple certainly cares about user privacy, nothing can beat having 100% control over your own data. You know where your data resides and who has access to it. You can encrypt it, share it, destroy it. Do whatever you want with your data, because it’s yours. And because your NAS is locally on your own network, you won't be at the mercy of your ISP and the speeds that they can offer you. Depending on your unit and local networking, you can see multi-gigabit speeds far outperforming traditional cloud services. When it comes to having your data readily available in a cloud, there is very little reason to not switch to the free Synology ecosystem. But what about businesses that currently have macOS servers deployed. Does it make sense to move over to DSM? Well, some users rely on Apple Device Manager which provides some additional integrations with Apple devices. But beyond that, DSM really is the best choice for many organizations. macOS server has been more or less abandoned by Apple in recent years. All releases have been point releases, and after macOS High Sierra was released in 2017 Apple quietly noted on their website that they would be refocusing on “the management of computers, devices, and storage on your network“. DSM, on the other hand, is the core of what Synology is built around. We are always looking to add new features to make managing the data within your organization easier and more efficient. We support macOS, Windows, and Linux so Synology can easily fill the void left by aging macOS Server hardware. Because we develop our own software and manufacture our own hardware, we are able to provide full technical support for our products, something Apple customers are accustomed to. DSM supports most common protocols, so whether you’re looking for SMB, AFP, NFS or iSCSI, our products can do it all. And even if you’ve purchased our products for their file serving capabilities, as I’ve highlighted, we have countless, well-designed packages that you can install for free to really get the most bang out of your buck for hardware you already own. And because we have out of the box support for Time Machine and directory services, Synology makes an ideal candidate for your next server, regardless of the size of your project. So let’s assume you are ready to switch from macOS Server to Synology. How would you go about doing that? Well, there are a couple of options. The way you might think of first is to connect via a protocol like SMB and drag and drop files via Finder. This is an alright option because there isn’t anything special you have to do to set this up. Simply mount the shared folder to your computer and you’re ready to go. You can get up to 10GbE speeds just using built-in ports on select models. And for large deployments, our servers support expansion up to 80GbE! The downside to this is your actual transfer speeds are going to be dependent on your network conditions, so while our high-end units may be able to ingest 15 terabytes per hour, that type of throughput would require your Apple server and network infrastructure to be able to deliver data at that speed. And if using SMB - should you be in the middle of a data transfer and something goes wrong, you’re going to have to manually start that transfer again, which can be a total pain. A better option would be to use Synology Drive. The only real downside to this option is that it does take a few moments to set up, but once you have it ready, it will handle syncing the data between devices automatically. That means that interruptions or file conflicts will be handled by Drive so you can walk away from the project. All you need to do to get this set up is install Synology Drive Server on your NAS, install the Synology Drive client on your existing hardware, sign in, select which directories will be synced to where and you’re good to go! The other area where macOS is still proving useful for many is related to directory services. Because Apple does offer some great MDM features still that Synology doesn’t, some might choose to keep their aging macOS server hardware around for this purpose, but shift file serving and other services to Synology. To join an existing open directory, simply open Control Panel, click Domain/LDAP, and choose the Open Directory profile on the LDAP tab. Alright, well we covered a lot, so let’s recap quickly. I showed you all of the different ways you can natively interact with your files across devices and platforms. Whether in Finder, Files, or a web browser, you can access your data in the way that is most familiar to you. Next, we looked at just a handful of our first-party apps designed for macOS, iOS, and iPadOS. I got to show you Synology Drive running in Big Sur, and briefly covered Synology Chat, Surveillance Station, Hyper Backup Explorer, and Note Station. There are many apps available for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, and even WatchOS, so I encourage you to check out everything we have to offer both via our Download page on Synology.com and in the App Store. Finally, we looked at reasons why it makes sense to switch from iCloud to Synology Drive and to replace macOS Server with DSM, a more robust, feature-rich platform that hasn’t been forgotten about by its developers. From all of us here at Synology, thank you so much for watching! We hope to see you at our next Synology Partner Online Training soon!
