Connecting a Synology DS220+ to a Mac M1 using iSCSI/SMB

[Enquiries]

Hi Team,

Thanks for providing a very useful way to ask NAS related questions. (Fantastic website and videos by the way!)

I'm looking to upgrade from my current NAS (1 bay QNAP) to a 2 bay DS220+ and access it via my Mac Mini M1 in order to do things like Time Machine / Files /Photos backups, while using the DS220+ as my future Plex Server instead of my Mac Mini.

Going through your YouTube channel, I came across episode #8 of the 'Synology NAS Setup Guide' where you connect to the SAN using iSCSI on a Windows PC.

Given I run a Mac M1 at home, I'm looking to see if you guys have connected a Synology SAN to a Mac before and if so, get your advice / recommendation on the best method (SMB or iSCSI) I should use to connect to the this new NAS (on my 1GB Wired LAN) from a performance point of view?  I have quite a large Photos collection which I access on a regular basis and so accessing this using the fastest method would be ideal.

Thanks for any help you can provide and I look forward to hearing from you soon.

[ed]

You can use both methods of connecting. ISCSI seem to be the best-performing way to use file server. But you can only connect a single device. So this could be used for virtual machine backups of video editing. You can also enable AFP / SMB to connect multiple users to the same shared folder (or multiple).
We did few speed tests comparing the best way to connect a MAC here https://nascompares.com/answer/afp-vs-sm...-protocol/
Regarding Plex server, a NAS will be a more power-efficient way to stream locally. But if you do like remote 4k streaming then MAC will outperform a NAS.


I hope this helps.