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Best practice for configuring my NAS
Hi Experts, Hope you can assist me, or tell me I am on the right/wrong track. I guess I am after how other people user their NAS devices for reference. Sorry in advance for the long post. Summar...
One thing you haven't mentioned is NAS backup - which is a critical piece. RAID is handy, but RAID arrays and devices fail. So you should have a NAS backup strategy in place.
You certainly can use the admin account and map \\nas\data to a single drive letter (n in your case). I do that on one PC (which also runs its own Plex).
You can also create shortcuts on the desktop, or add network locations to "computer". Some applications support network locations directly (\\nas\foldername format), so you might not really need to map a drive letter.
I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish in step 4. Sometimes it sounds like you don't want to directly store documents on the PC, sometimes it sounds like you do. I also don't understand why you settled on iSCSI, and what benefit you see in copying data in the iSCSI LUN to a NAS share. It sounds too complicated unless I am missing something.
What I do is use a PC backup tool (Acronis TrueImage in my case) to back up the C drive of each my PCs to a NAS share. Periodically I look through the documents, and re-organize them into folders on the NAS. Though I have multiple PCs (it sounds like you do not).
Right now I don't use iSCSI at all (for anything). I'm not particularly adverse to it, I just haven't found any need to use it. iSCSI isn't set up for multiuser, and as far as the NAS is concerned the iSCSI LUN is opaque (it has no idea what's stored in the LUN). (There is also a Microsoft equivalent called a VHD, which is also opaque, can be encrypted, and can be hosted on the NAS. Though the NAS has no direct tools to create this, it is just a big file as far as it is concerned).
If you have an application where that opaqueness is an advantage, then by all means use iSCSI. But I don't have a need for it myself, and would just as soon be able to access the files directly from the NAS from any device. NAS backup is also more efficient (and easier) if you don't use iSCSI. And AntiVirus can be used, etc.
You certainly can use the admin account and map \\nas\data to a single drive letter (n in your case). I do that on one PC (which also runs its own Plex).
You can also create shortcuts on the desktop, or add network locations to "computer". Some applications support network locations directly (\\nas\foldername format), so you might not really need to map a drive letter.
I am not sure what you are trying to accomplish in step 4. Sometimes it sounds like you don't want to directly store documents on the PC, sometimes it sounds like you do. I also don't understand why you settled on iSCSI, and what benefit you see in copying data in the iSCSI LUN to a NAS share. It sounds too complicated unless I am missing something.
What I do is use a PC backup tool (Acronis TrueImage in my case) to back up the C drive of each my PCs to a NAS share. Periodically I look through the documents, and re-organize them into folders on the NAS. Though I have multiple PCs (it sounds like you do not).
Right now I don't use iSCSI at all (for anything). I'm not particularly adverse to it, I just haven't found any need to use it. iSCSI isn't set up for multiuser, and as far as the NAS is concerned the iSCSI LUN is opaque (it has no idea what's stored in the LUN). (There is also a Microsoft equivalent called a VHD, which is also opaque, can be encrypted, and can be hosted on the NAS. Though the NAS has no direct tools to create this, it is just a big file as far as it is concerned).
If you have an application where that opaqueness is an advantage, then by all means use iSCSI. But I don't have a need for it myself, and would just as soon be able to access the files directly from the NAS from any device. NAS backup is also more efficient (and easier) if you don't use iSCSI. And AntiVirus can be used, etc.
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