Hi all, wondering if anyone setup a Ubiquiti UNAS Pro and used it with a mac running CDVR Server. I'm currently running server on a Mac Mini with an external thunderbolt hard drive. I'm considering moving to a UNAS for network storage and figure it shouldn't be too different from others with NAS systems, but don't have any experience. I'm assuming I'd have to mount the network drive on the mac, and point channels to that as the main directory, but would like to hear how reliable that tends to be for folks (Unifi NAS or other NAS devices).
The only thing I'd worry about is that macOS has always been really funny about keeping shares mounted. Additionally, it's SMB sharing can be awful and slow sometimes.
I'm not sure what the share protocol options are on UNAS. And maybe someone has more modern experience with keeping shares mounted on macOS, with some tips.
As Jon stated, SMB/COFS on Macs can be quite spotty. However, NFS is still a viable option. (iSCSI support is not available, and if you use UI, you know they always overpromise and underdeliver.)
Hopefully they are fervently working on Drive 2.0 to address the myriad shortcomings in their current software. (Apparently their Time Machine support/implementation is quite lacking, too.)
I've found AutoMounter to be a great tool to help deal with making sure a file share is always active on macOS.
Mounting a volume over SMB to my Synology over gigabit has not had a problem for a couple years.
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You do not need to mount the SMB share as a drive. You can specify it as the storage location. I'm using a different NAS yet that will not matter. My storage location is:
"\nas.\dvr\DVR"
Note that the smb share may be case sensitive though it's not supposed to be. Also, the account that Channels DVR runs under on your Mac will need to be set up on your NAS and have the same password on both. The account will need to have read and write privilege on your NAS. Avoid the use of a privileged account such as root for security reasons.
I believe this depends upon the underlaying OS. IIRC, UNC paths were only possible if the server was running on Windows. (Of course I may be incorrect on this point.)
Regardless, the UI forums are filled with reports that the UNAS's SMB implementation may be having issues with transfers of large files; users there are reporting that NFS mounts are more stable and performant than SMB.
(To the OP, I recommend regularly checking the UI releases forum for update to Drive—the name of their NAS software—as well as staying away from EA builds. Also, you may want to disable automatic updates so you have control over your hardware.)
All good feedback, thanks everyone. I'm familiar with Unifi over-promising and under delivering on features people want. I think this one is too immature to pull the trigger on yet. I'll wait a couple months and see if the feature set and stability improve.
I've had my server on multiple platforms. If I recall correctly, when I was running as a TrueNAS Core plugin, I used UNC notation without issue.
You are wise to wait. You don't need to feel early adaptor pain. A major brand USB drive should be reliable. If you want to go the NAS route for easier storage management, get a used tower computer that supports at least 2 drives and load TrueNAS scale and just use it for storage or purchase any low end NAS. A 2 drive system would be enough to provide redundancy and you can upgrade both drives by swapping to a larger drive one at a time while the system is live.
The UNAS may be great once stable and the prices is very attractive yet don't go there yet.