You need a NAS RIGHT NOW!! (How I run my Hybrid-Cloud YouTube business)

About this video

Chuck makes the case that everyone — home users and businesses alike — needs a NAS (network attached storage), using his own Synology-heavy setup as the proof. His new enterprise unit has 16 drive bays (expandable to 40), an 8-core Xeon, and two 10-gigabit Ethernet ports, but he stresses starting small: the Synology DS220J he gives his video editors costs about 200 bucks and holds two 4 TB drives for 8 TB total. His three reasons: (1) storage exhaustion — he was tired of juggling multiple external USB drives and not knowing which video lived where; (2) fear of data loss, summed up by the IT saying that one copy is effectively no copy, solved by RAID — he recommends RAID 5 for most people, runs RAID 5 with 20.9 TB available on his big unit, and uses Synology Hybrid RAID on his personal one; and (3) access everywhere, especially for collaborators. His answer to ‘why not just use the cloud’ is hybrid cloud: Synology Cloud Sync continuously backs his NAS up to Google Drive — he says he has 17 terabytes synced — and he claims (as his tip at the time) that a Google Workspace business account at 10 bucks a month per user gave unlimited Drive storage. For his editor Austin, he placed a second Synology at Austin’s house using Drive ShareSync, so finished footage lands there automatically over the internet with no VPN to manage, doubling as an off-site backup; a central management system monitors all his units. He also covers QuickConnect remote access without router configuration, direct file sharing that avoids Google Drive’s habit of zipping and reordering multi-file projects, scheduled PC and virtual-machine backups via Active Backup for Business, and bonus uses: Plex, Docker containers, virtual machines, LDAP, DNS, iSCSI storage for VMware, and Synology Drive as a self-hosted Google Drive alternative.

Key takeaways

• A NAS beats external USB drives on capacity, redundancy, and network-wide access; entry Synology units start around the 200-dollar mark he cites.
• RAID (he recommends RAID 5 for most setups) means a single drive failure does not lose your data — replace the drive and it rebuilds.
• Hybrid cloud is his model: local NAS for speed and control, with automatic sync to a cloud service as the second copy.
• Syncing a second NAS to a collaborator’s location delivers files automatically and doubles as off-site backup, no VPN required.
• A NAS is also a small server: it can run Plex, Docker, VMs, DNS/LDAP, and back up PCs and hypervisors on a schedule.

Episode details: published June 25, 2021 · 22:43 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

← Previous: you need to learn Load Balancing RIGHT NOW!! (and put one in your home network!) · Next: how to get remote access to your hacking targets // reverse shells with netcat (Windows and Linux!!) →

All NetworkChuck videos · NetworkChuck profile · NetworkChuck on YouTube