Backup workflow: rsync / Crashplan vs. Owncloud / Nextcloud

[bodaciousYhetti]

I recently bought a 3102 and am looking for some advice on the best way to set up my backup workflow. My needs are the following: I have a lot of images on computer HD that I would like to sync to the NAS in essentially real-time. This is not an archive backup, as I will be editing the pictures on the NAS directly from a second computer as well. Then, I would like to backup all of the pictures to a secondary computer off-site. This backup should be an archive and can even be encrypted.

Additionally, my father would like to backup all of his videos to my NAS as well. He is, of course, in a remote location. The added bonus to this is that we could then setup the NAS to serve the videos to all of us on all of our devices.

So far, I've looked at Crashplan and rsync. With rsync, I would need to setup a client on my father's computer (Windows) and have it run at a regular interval. He has a lot of videos, so if I go this route, I would like to know if it would be possible to save bandwidth by first copying the videos over to my NAS prior to running the first sync. Crashplan is something I am looking at for backing up the NAS in an archive format and saving it off-site. Ideally, it would be run headless directly on the NAS, meaning I would need to migrate it over there, and I'm not sure how to do this.

But then I came across Owncloud / Nextcloud and the question came up: why not just do everything with this? Are there any disadvantages to performing all of my backup needs using Owncloud / Nextcloud? I don't strictly need the archive format / encryption on my off-site backup, and this might be a much simpler solution.

Thought I would throw this out there to see what kind of advice I could get on it.

[MikeG.6.5]

I use Nextcloud/OwnCloud for my LightRoom library storage, so I can have the LightRoom DB on a network location to get to it from networked machines. To make this work, you just need a good common practices of only using LightRoom on one machine at a time, and put the DB on the NextCloud folder on your machine. It gets moved to the NAS automatically when it's closed down. Then if you want to open LightRoom on another machine you get the same libraries, etc.

Then you just rsync that folder to a second off-site computer for backups and at least that is safe.

[bodaciousYhetti]

I guess part of my question is: if you've already gone through all the trouble setting up NextCloud, then why use rsync for the off-site backups? Couldn't you just install a NextCloud client on the off-site computer and accomplish it that way? Or are there some additional advantages to using rsync for the backup that I'm missing?

[MikeG.6.5]

Nextcloud is going to do the syncing RT, where rsync is going to do it during preset times. If you have issues with lagging out during "prime time" due to other machines on a cable or other poorer quality signal using rsync makes a lot more sense than trying to force through a connection that lags, drops packets or causes other potential problems.

Also rsync can be used for incrementals. Where NextCloud is going to maintain everything at the same state all of the time, or near enough....