Outgrowing Time Capsule: drobo, synology, os x server on mac mini?
We have 14 macs in an office backing up to a 2TB Time Capsule, which
sometimes shows delays but generally works. We need more space and while I
can upgrade the drive to a 4TB I have a feeling we are working the
hardware pretty hard so I'm looking at other options.
We are using the user account based backups on the time capsule; users
backups should ideally be encrypted but at the very least need to have
file permissions so that users can not see other users' backups. I would
also like to have a quota for time machine backup size per user, which I
understand isn't really supported in OS X Server but can be done with
hand-created sparsebundles (ugh). With the drobo you have to create a
volume per user but can enforce the size that way.
Does anyone have experience running Time Capsule successfully in an
environment with around 10 to 50 computers? I am looking at a Drobo
(probably 5N), Mac Mini Server with a disk array, or perhaps a Synology
unit. 4TB is enough for now but I would like the storage to be expandable.
Finally, should I be using a cloud based service like CrashPlan? I really
like the ability to restore a mac that has been lost or destroyed, and the
fact that Time Capsule doesn't cause WAN traffic, but I don't like sys
admin time.
Thanks in advance.
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