The BEST ways to use a Synology NAS (17+ Projects)

buying a sonology Nas device starts with a desire to store data on it but after getting and configuring it following best practices you're left with a device that can do way more than you initially thought but have absolutely no idea where to start so the question is what are some things you can use this syy Nas for that you might be unaware of now these will be examples but I have a lot of tutorials for these that I'll leave in the description backing up your devices active backup for business can be configured to backup practically all of your devices it works with window Windows Mac OS and Linux and allows you to configure those devices to back up on a specified interval this ensures that all the data on those devices is backed up to your sonology Nas though speaking honestly there are some weird Linux kernel requirements that sonology can improve on so it's not the best on Linux creating a private Cloud sonology Drive is a tool that you can configure on your nest that will function like Google Drive one drive or Dropbox it can be used from a web browser and a mobile application and can even be configured with the client application to sync data to and from your Nas this ensures that no matter where you are your data is accessible on each device this is a tool that I personally can't live without and is something I use every single day configure a DNS ad blocker almost all websites these days display ads but what if you could configure a DNS syn hole that will automatically block all of those ads on all devices on your network and run it on your Nas that's where py hole comes in configure py hole and container manager Point your DNS server to it and you'll have full Network ad blocking capability abilities just make sure you configure a second device so you have DNS redundancy in case your nest ever reboots act as a Cloud sync server if you're someone who actually likes to use Google Drive one drive Dropbox or more you might want to keep data in sync between those cloud services and a folder on your sonology Nas that's where Cloud sync comes in you can configure Cloud sync to move data to and from a Cloud Server which will ensure that the data is identical in both locations there are also Advanced features that allow you to choose the sync Direction and even set when the sync takes place sharing files with external users when you have to share files you're often left wondering the best way to do it while many will choose to use a cloud file server you can do it on your Nas as well using file station or sonology drive you can even protect the links with a password and set expiration dates so the link expires after a certain period of time just keep in mind that you'll need a way to remotely access your Nas with the easiest option for most being syy Quick Connect configuring a nut server when you buy a Nas one of the first first devices you should purchase is a UPS to protect your data from Sudden power outages you can then configure the nas to go into standby mode when power is lost but what you can also do is allow other devices to monitor the UPS through your nest this ensures that they can be configured to safely shut down as well by knowing when the UPS is on battery power just keep in mind that your network has to stay up as well to ensure the device can communicate with the Nas and find out when it's on battery power run a VPN server there are various self hosted vpns and if you're interested in remotely accessing your local network a VPN is the most widely suggested option I'll be honest that using a sonology Nas isn't my favorite place to run a VPN server but it's a great option for a lot of people configure openvpn l2tp over IP SEC or for an even easier overall configuration with no port forwarding required look at the third party tool tail scale in the package Center this will ensure that you can not only access your sonology n remotely but also access any devices on your local network running a media server this is probably the most known option but you can easily configure Plex jelly fin or MB on a sonology Nas using the package Center or container manager this will allow you to stream media to TVs mobile phones or web browsers and host all of the media on your Nas there are even people who love sonology video station package but running a media server is one of the best and most popular options for all Nas devices if you have an older Nas or even a newer Nas like a DS 423 Plus you might even be able to take it one step further and configure Hardware acceleration for better media transcoding host the website whether you're looking to host a basic HTML website or even a Content management system like WordPress your sonology Nas can be configured as web server this allows you to host the website directly on your sonology Nas and make it accessible to the world like the VPN option before this wouldn't be my first place to run a web server but it is an option nonetheless configuring virtual machines sonology Hardware isn't known as being the best but the virtual machine manager package can be used for some pretty cool things depending on the resources required for the virtual machine you'd like to run you can configure Windows Linux or even a virtual DSM instance ultimately virtual machine manager allows you to configure and maintain VMS with a lot of the features you're used to from traditional hypervisors like snapshots clusters and more just keep in mind that generally the nas Hardware will be a limitation for most configuring your smart home there are various smart home tools that are used today and any of them that can be configured in Docker can run inside a container manager this allows you to create a fully functional smart home and have it all run off of your nest you can even take it one step further and install my personal favorite option the home assistant operating system inside a virtual machine manager to ensure you have the supervised version of Home assistant running directly on your sonology nest backup destination for your hypervisor if you're running a hypervisor like proxmox you can configure it to automatically back up the VMS to your sonology nest the process will be different depending on exactly what hypervisor you're using but you should be able to back up the VMS directly to your Nas for short or long-term storage this ensures that on a set interval you'll have backups that you can restore from and helps with the overall virtual machine management configure a digital photo collection whether you're currently storing older photos or just want to back up the photos you take on your mobile phone you can manage all of it inside of sonology photos it's a great way to create and share albums it has people and subject recognition and even allows you to share photos and videos with sharing links the people in subject recognition isn't the best in my opinion but the overall application works well for users interested in privately storing their photos and videos even better each user on your Nas will have their own profile private to them ensuring only photos and videos that are shared are accessible by others just keep in mind that as always administrators in DSM can see everything in file station time machine backup destination if you own all Mac devices and don't want to use a tool like active backup for business to backup your devices you can configure your sonology Nas to function as a time machine backup destination this will allow you to back up your Mac OS devices directly to your sonology Nas and restore from them if needed manage your network with the UniFi controller if you're a UniFi user you might be interested in self-hosting the UniFi controller since it runs in Docker you can configure the application inside a container manager and manage your entire network through the UniFi controller web interface reverse proxy server or reverse proxy allows you to expose one device to the external internet and proxy requests through it to other internal servers it's an easy way to ensure one set of ports stay open and requests are sent to the correct service based on the subdomain or domain enter you can configure multiple web services get let en Crypt certificates for each and even control access by using access lists again not my favorite place to run a reverse proxy server but it is an option container manager there have been a few examples in this video on Services you can run inside of container manager but I think it's important to highlight how flexible Docker is there are a ton of different Docker containers all that provide unique services and since container manager now supports Docker compos creating new Docker containers has become a lot easier if you're looking to do something that wasn't in this list there's a pretty good chance there's some sort of Docker container for it overall these are just a few of the things that you can use tenology Nas devices for they excel at network attached storage but they are capable of so much more and as you dive deeper into the things you can do there's a pretty good chance you'll find other areas you can use a device for as well hopefully this video helped provide a few of those examples thanks for watching I'll see you guys next time

Channel: WunderTech

Views: 18,641

Keywords: Synology NAS, Synology

Id: GR5oT-i5FR0

Length: 8min 12sec (492 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 07 2024