Time Machine vs. CCC, and Lightroom on Synology NAS?

Question

For some reason, I decided that it was the perfect time to streamline my backups and photo importing/archiving two weeks before I have to be in Cancun to shoot a destination wedding...  And this has proven to me that I'm a lot less literate than I thought I was.  I couldn't find an obvious category for this, but it involves Time Machine which has something to do with Time Capsules/remote backups, so here goes.  Let me know if I should post it somewhere else.
Here's what's going on: 
I just bought a Synology DS214+ (running Synology's Linux OS Diskstation Manager (DSM) 5.0) and one 3TB drive.  The immediate game plan is to import photos through Lightroom 5, keeping the LR catalog on my computer's SSD and filing the master images on the NAS drive.  I might also move my iTunes library and a bunch of old video footage over to the NAS since both are taking up a lot of space on the SSD and I don't really need SSD performance for either.  I would also back up my computer(s) to the NAS drive, and then back up the NAS once or twice a week to an external HDD that I keep offsite.  Once the 3TB drive gets close to full and storage prices drop as they tend to do, I'd add a larger drive in JBOD, keep my photos/music/movies on the 3TB for an extra disc of redundancy, back up both that and my computer(s) to the larger drive, and back up the larger drive to the offsite external HDD.
(In the nearer future, I'd also like to get the NAS set up so that I can remotely access at least the photo library, if not everything, with my iPhone and Macbook Pro.  In the farther future, I'd like to use the NAS to host my [currently nonexistent] website and mail server.  Finally, of lowest priority would be hosting a Minecraft server on the NAS; I'm already financing one for my kid brothers as an ongoing Christmas gift, so for them to have a server while keeping that money in pocket would be nice.  I'm not begging for step-by-step instructions on all of this right now, but if you happen to know of any good links they'd be appreciated; and I want to make sure I configure the NAS now so that I can add all this in later.)
That's a lot of stuff for one piece of equipment... Anyone who has this hardware, is familiar with DSM, or has done any of this stuff: am I out of my mind or is this doable?
Here are the current questions:
Up until now I've been using Time Machine on a directly attached external drive, but this "bootable copy" that Carbon Copy Cloner (CCC) makes is intriguing.  However- that requires a locally mounted drive formatted in HFS+, and since my NAS is Linux based as far as I understand any drive I install will be formatted to EXT4.  I can set up an iSCSI LUN through DSM which would allow me to create the illusion of a locally attached drive, but could I format this 'phantom drive' to HFS+ so it will support OSX system files?  Even if yes, would I be able to boot off it - or does the iSCSI not kick in until after OSX boots anyway, effectively rendering it useless as a boot drive?  Not a huge deal since I can boot off an SD card, but it would be good to know since that would make things slightly more convenient.
If I can’t boot off the iSCSI 'phantom drive', then I should just be able to use Time Machine for backups to the NAS since it looks like DSM supports that.  I thought I’d still need CCC to back up the NAS to the offsite HDD, but it looks like DSM can do that too.  Would I have any other reason to buy CCC, then?  Would DSM be able to routinely backup the library drive to the main backup drive once I have both installed in the NAS?
How would I set up the NAS so that it always has the same network IP when rebooting?  I don't plan for this to be a frequent event, but it would be a minor inconvenience to have to go through Synology's disc assistant and change my browser's bookmark every time there's a power outage, which I’d like to avoid if possible.  (From the basic research I've done in that area so far it also seems like that would be more important for remote access and using the NAS as a web host or mail server.)
I'll want to get my mac to connect to the NAS automatically upon booting or waking, but it looks like there are adequate tutorials for doing that with automator and/or terminal.  Any experiences with this being fairly easy, or tips/tricks if it isn't?
I know I couldn't export them, but does anyone happen to know if I could still edit and/or display the sidecar images in my Lighroom 5 catalog while I was disconnected from the NAS containing the original files?  I guess that isn’t a deal breaker, but it’d be good to know if I can or if there’s any sort of additional setup to facilitate this.
Currently the NAS is set up as "basic" since it only has one drive.  When I add the second, I can convert the NAS to JBOD without erasing the current drive, right?
Should I do any sort of partitioning or formatting right now to make sure that the NAS is web hosting friendly, and that those accessing the future website or Minecraft server can’t get into or corrupt my personal files and backups?
That’s all my tired mind remembers for right now; I’ll add more questions if/when they come up. 
Thanks in advance for the help!

Answer 1

That's the problem with using a 3d-party NAS with Time Machine; it has it's own software that's supposed to interact with OSX, and when something goes wrong, it can be very hard to sort out just what and where the problem is.
First, make sure that model is fully compatible with Time Machine on Lion (some are, some aren't), and install any software/firmware updates Synology has for it.
Second, make sure the names (of all odd things) of your Mac and network aren't too long and don't contain any special characters, per #C9 in Time Machine - Troubleshooting.
Third, make sure you're following Synology's instructions exactly.