HyperBackup and Synology C2

Recently I reinstalled my DS918+ and I thought of giving Synology C2 a serious test for backing up my stuff. And I think it works pretty good. There's a "HyperBackupExplorer" Windows-tool that allows you to browse/restore files from your C2 backup (in case your NAS goes up in flames or something). Files can also be browsed from the C2 website itself. Notice that the C2 filebrowser cannot download entire folders but the client-software can. I've also experienced encrypted backups in the client has issues with file-sorting. Perhaps a minor issue. Anyway, C2 backup/restore speed is good and maximizes my 100/100 connection. The only downside I discovered is when relinking existing backupjobs (after I reinstalled my NAS). I think Synology could improve things here to make things easier to understand. Anyway, relinking is very slow when you've got lots of files and I'm not sure what's going on really. However it's a onetime-thing so I guess I can live with it. But still, I'm pretty happy with my C2-subscription! And it feels pretty comfortable that I can access my backuped files even if my NAS gets stolen or something and I don't need a new NAS to access the backups.

Plex on Synology 2019

Plex has been through some major internal changes obviously. I can happily announce that it works almost flawlessly on my DS918+ now. Probably the best part is that videos with bitmapped subtitles doesn't need transcoding anymore (as before) which is very nice! Highly recommended!

Plex, Videostation and Infuse

I'm still hunting for the ultimate videosolution on my NAS. I'm using Plex mostly today but there's still things here and there that annoys the hell out of me:
* Subtitles are not reliable, sometimes they work, sometimes now.
* The AppleTV4K Plex-app at the time I write this is very unreliable. Plays files when it feels like.
* The iPhone app works pretty good (after many months now of frustrations), but subtitles randomly disappears (fix: rewind the movie 10 secs and they're usually there again).
Sometimes I go back to Videostation, the Synology-app but it annoys me as well:
* It produces .vsmeta-files for many videofiles and totally clutters your filesystem.
* Not enough settings in the iOS-app, you have no idea how much data it's using when you're on the bus watching a movie or something. Plex atleast has bitrate settings.
I got my attention for "Infuse". It doesn't actually need a server, just a fileshare (webdav pointing at your NAS works fine). It doesn't transcode, but plays the files as-is on your device! I guess this works best when you're on wifi-networks.
But still, the thing that annoys me here. You need to active both iCloud-sync and some Trakt-account to make it remember where you stopped playing a movie assuming you want to resume on another device. Infuse also has some issues, when I tried it, sorting covers of tv-shows. Sometimes they're in folders and sometimes now.

Still waiting for the perfect solution. Plex is the winner at the moment, but it's far from perfect sadly.

DS718+ impression

I've now replaced my old DS415+ with a brand new DS718+ and I thought I should share some first impressions:
1) It's fast! I was a bit worried at first because of the lower CPU frequency but it's faster, that's for sure. Filetransfers on my DS415+ was usually around >90megabytes/second (copying a file from Windows) and now I'm >100megabytes/s. I was fine with 90megabyte/s but still it's nice. :)
2) Three USB3-ports is very nice, big brother DS918+ only has two for some reason.
3) Hardware transcoding with Plex (running on DSM6.2beta) and h.264 material works very good in my tests (1080p-24fps). NAS CPU-usage is only about 20% when playing movies instead of 100%. x265 encoded material works bad with the hardware transcoder but will hopefully improve in the future.
4) Hardware transcoding with Videostation must be broken. Output quality is really bad. Looks like a very low bitrate video.
5) "Virtual Machine Manager" the upgraded DSM app now allows other OS'es than DSM, for example "Windows". I have created a virtual environment based on Windows10x64 and it works ok. Haven't tried it that much but still feels a little bit faster than on my old DS415+. VMM requires 4GB of RAM so if you have got a stock DS718+ you must upgrade RAM. I wise move with VMM is probably installing the virtual machines on an SSD on your NAS to speed things up.
6) Synology says this unit can only have 6GB of RAM (2+4GB). But many people have reported it works fine with 16GB(!). The stock memory module it comes with can be replaced (I haven't tried it, it looks a little tricky but people say it can be done without tools). I have however purchased an 8GB module and put in the empty socket which is far easier to reach and it works fine!

So overall, I'm very happy with it. I could have used a few more trays but only two USB-ports on the DS918+ annoyed me.

How to get Plex running on DSM 6.1b

Plex won't start properly on DSM 6.1b. As usual, there are Plex-related issues when DSM is updated. Anyway, here's a workaround: 1. Enable SSH and login using putty, use your admin-account.
2. Type sudo -su root and enter your admin password again
3. Type cd "/var/packages/Plex Media Server/scripts"
4. Type ./start-stop-status start
You need to do this everytime you reboot your NAS aswell. It really sucks but it works..

ResilioSync (ex BtSync) and BTRFS snapshots

Just a word of caution if you're using ResilioSync (former BTSync) and the "SnapshotReplicator" (BTRFS) and have "make snapshots visible"-option enabled. ResilioSync will sync the "#snapshots" directory aswell and you most likely wouldn't want that (your sync-destinations will run out of diskspace!) I've discussed this "feature" with Resilio but they have no intentions of fixing it so you have to manually configure the "#snapshot" folder to be skipped. To do this, go to your Synced-folder and check out the ".sync"-folder. Here you have a file called "IgnoreList". Open this with your favourite texteditor and add a line like this: "?snapshot" (without the " of course). This will make ResilioSync to skip the snapshot-folder.

Delete all your local backupjobs!

Almost since the first day I got my NAS I faced a new problem.. How should I backup all my precious data on my NAS? I currently have (had) a few local backupjobs to backup important folders (for versioning) and to a remote server in case of theft/house burns down/whatever. Anyway, I just discovered that using snapshots (on BTRFS-volumes) is pretty convenient to use instead of HyperBackup. You can configure it to make a snapshot at certain intervals so it works almost like HyperBackup but works alot faster. The drawback is of course that the UI of the "Snapshot Replicator"-tool is not that attractive but it simply lists all your snapshots so you can go back in time to see how your folder looked at a specific time.