I'm curious how you handle offsite backup storage? I'm deploying a couple of these units for some small businesses but I'm having to run separate software to backup files offsite because the Active Backup for Business doesn't seem to have a way to replicate its storage anywhere that I've found and its not good to not have an offsite copy.
I found an issue I cannot find a workaround for. With many solutions like this, such as Windows Server Essentials, the backup server can send a WOL message to the client to take it out of sleep, then the client keeps it awake during the backup. Using this, a WOL is never sent, so I can't back up a sleeping PC in the middle of the night, and if I manually fire off the backup, the PC goes to sleep before it finishes. Synology needs to support WOL and their client needs to prevent sleep before this is what I would consider a finished product.
Hello Willie, first of all I want to thank you for all the videos you post. They offer great insight into a lot of Unifi and Synology stuff. I was immediately taken by this powerful backup solution and backed up two windows machines. My experience trying to restore these backups so far is not that great. I followed the Active Backup Recovery Media Creator procedure a number of times to create a bootable USB stick but almost every time I got stuck with error messages. (error code 0x57). Only ones I made I to the end of the procedure with another USB stick and then when I tried booted it, it works fine except for the fact that the required network drivers to be able to make a connection with the Synology NAS were not installed. Then when you try to find answers to these problems Synology does not have a lot of additional information except the standard knowledge base articles. I’m wondering what you experience in this department is? What would be your path to fully restore a PC?
Great video Willie. I would like to know your specific comprehensive backup strategy and rotation for both NAS and PC. If you have done that already, I don't see it. Thanks.
Willie, I am considering using Synology Active Backup with Agents to backup workstations, VMWare Virtual machines, file servers file level, bare metal etc. It seems like awesome software. Plus there are not fees or licenses. :) I am struggling with backing up to the cloud. How do I best do that?
Willie.. great video but after completing I could not figure out how to get to the physical and virtual machine videos.. or if you ever had a chance to create them??? Would have loved to see links in the comment section!
OK not sure what is going on with mine - but I installed the package, installed agent on a pc. When I go to templates - there is no option for bare metal?! Mine says "Entire device" (with option for external hard drives as well) and "Sys Vol". Did they change the verbiage or is my install missing something??
Hi Willie, Just a technical question: imagine you want to backup a server and there's an external (USB) hard disk connected to the server. Will a bare metal backup include the external disk ? I'm looking into backing up a remote server which has an internal disk of 500GB which contains the data of interest. However, there's a 2TB external disk connected to the server which I do not want to include in the backup... Thanks, Mario
Tried this on my Esxi VM machines and found it wanting. It requires you turn on SSH and the ExiShell. Also when it does the backup it backs up the whole virtual disk. Mine are thin provisioned and one had 2 drive of 120GB and 80GB. They only had about 60GB of data between them but ABB made it take up 200GB on my Synology. I would assume it would have written them back as that as well turning them from thin provision to thick provision. There appears to be no option to turn on compression except for the transfer stream.
Hey Willie love the videos have learned a lot from them we have this solution deployed to a client now. I like the solution however if I understand it right there is no way to restore the active backup backups if the Synology box get hosed, even from a hyperbackup of the Synology box. I could be wrong correct me if I am I have not done enough testing yet. I still think it is a great solution, however I am looking at using user location changed Desktop and documents to NAS shares with snaphots enabled, as I know I can restore from a hyperbackup backup if I need to. I will continue to test, keep up the videos lots of great info!
Fantastic video and I'm really looking forward to the subsistent videos on this topic. I've just started playing with active backup and am really excited to be able to learn from your experience. Thank you as always for the excellent videos. On a side note, do you think you might be able to a video on using the built in Synology reverse proxy server for providing port specific forwarding to other servers and services we might be hosting behind a single FQDN? It would help take my home network to the next level! Thanks again Willie!
What nobody tells you is that each computer will need its own recovery media USB stick created on that device. And, once you create it, try booting from it. Mine didn't work because network drivers were missing. And getting them installed on that USB stick is no easy task. That really sucks when you need to do a bare metal restore and you think you did everything correctly.
Hi, very interesting videos I always watch. But I am having issues trying to connect the agent to another computer to backup remotely, I opened port 5510 but still getting internet error... would be nice to get some help... thank you
Hi Willie. I have a 916+.....I cant find the option for bare metal backup - I have reviewed the video a fair few times - the app has been updated - is it possible it is not available on the 916+ Cheers Dan
Totally lost me as I don't have any btrfs folders, maybe you should start with that? Have to convert from ext4 to btrfs. Before I can do that, i have to backup the ext4. Before I can do that,..,.. PLEASE START FROM THE BEGINNING Beginning. You know, like when someone gets the machine out of the box, and....???
I've been trying to use this with a Windows 10 machine. Can't even get past the format the usb drive portion. It gets stuck in a loop. Have had nothing but issues with Active Backup For Business when trying to do a bare metal restore with my Windows 10 machine.
Great deduplication features. we have 13 computers and it deduplicated from 8TB to 2.5TB. On our Synology we set up in Jan 2020, there isn't a Bare Metal option. There are 3 options, Entire Device, System Volume, or Customized Volumes. Can you advise which ones will work for bare metal restores.
Willie, The only disapointent with Synology Active Backup is that it deas no backup open files. Have you ever try backup open files? I love your videos by the way. Peace.
I have been backing up my new Hyper-V server a few days now. Active backup claims successful backups each time. However in the logs I can read that 2 volumes have not been baked up due to unsupported filesystem... HOW CAN IT CLAIM A SUCCESSFUL BACKUP !?!?!? No ReFS support. So... I think I need to pull another 500 bucks for altaro or something that does not lie...
Be forewarned - I wanted to use this Active Backup For Business - I just migrated from a dead DS415+ to a DS920+ and wanted to setup cloning of my Windows10 machines to the NAS - well I installed the Active Backup For Business software and all was going well until I tried to setup the templates - that's when I discovered that unless you are using BTRFS you are basically $hit out of luck. My NAS is done using EXT4 and therefore cannot set up the required share that Active Backup For Business requires. (too bad the software does not tell you this during the install). I truly don't want to go through the steps to convert the NAS over to BTRFS so I guess I will be looking at Clonezilla, Acronis, or Macrium as a solution.
Very useful, but didn't realize ABB requires HDDs to be btrfs volume rather than ext4. Some Synology NAS's do not support btrfs. I am currently trying to figure out the most simple way to replace two HDD 6TB ext4 with two 10TB Btrfs. Might make a good tutorial video.
Thks for the video. I'm trying to learn a little about DSM before I buy a Synology NAS. But now I'm confused about which backup app to use. For backups there's: Active Backup Suite, Snapshots, Hyper Backup, Cloud Station Suite (DS cloud, Drive, Backup, ShareSync), & last but not least USB Copy ?????The obvious question is where/why to use which????? Thks ???Is this close??? Active Backup Suite: Single interface for sys admin to backup all PCs, HW servers, file servers, VMs, etc Snapshots: For account user to make versioning copies of his personal data & not bother sysadmin Hyper Backup: Classic sysadmin NAS backup to local storage Cloud Station Suite DS cloud: For account user to backup mobile devices Cloud Station Suite Drive: For account user to 2way versioned sync their personal data Cloud Station Suite Backup: For account user to 1way versioned sync their personal data Cloud Station Suite ShareSync: Sysadmin backups between NASs USB Copy: For account user to copy personal data to/from attached USB drive Recycle bin: For account user to recover deleted files
Hello Willie estoy viendo tus videos des Republic Dominican, no hablo mucho inglés pero puedo entender la mayoría de las cosas. Me interesa bastante tus temas y la tecnología de synology
Quick and probably dumb question about this. I've backed 2 Laptops in bare metal mode, and both running windows 10. Both have different programs & data on. So.....Do i need to create a recovery media usb for each machine, or will one work for both machines ? Many Thanks for any help ;-)
Just for clarification for the non-admin types: this does the same thing like Symantec Ghost right (except the NAS handles the operations)? Is this really able to backup all core windows files with the machine running?
Willie, Have you noticed once you setup your backups with a template if you go back and edit the template it doesn’t seem to affect the clients that use that template. They stay the same as when they were setup for me. Just curious if this is an issue or if the client needs to be reinstalled with the template changed.
xboxhacks12 I would agree. Veeam is fast, dependable and provides the same service. It will back up my desktop in a couple of hours. I’ve been running the synology business backup for the last 18 hours and it’s only 70% done. I love the idea behind the Synology Active Backup for Business, but it’s slow.
I setup the first computer without any problem. When & try to add additional computers I get the following error. "Internet error. Please check your internet connection. Please contact you, administrator, if error remains." Any idea on the problem. I am ready to take a hammer to this thing.
Can it backup/restore just a single volume on Windows server. Most of our Servers have a system volume and would like to have the ability just to backup/restore that volume.
Yes, there if a specific check box when you create a new template or go to edit the settings of a backup already in place that lets you select either: System Volume, or Entire PC.
Dear Mr Howe, can you clarify what 'you' mean when you refer in this video to "Bare Metal" please? It is my understanding that it is the process to allow restoration to dissimilar hardware, but i am unsure that is what you are referring to.. Cheers bud
Followed you for years so I would never expect you to be a wise guy, but having been involved with this stuff for many years, I just feel that they way it was described at say 1:15 was more in line with a simple restore of an image to the same device it was created from, whereas 'bare metal' restorations would often be to dissimilar hardware that would then require the drivers to be loaded for different hardware like nic/video and even chipsets, this is how I have had to do it on many servers especially HP, and trust me that takes a long time, even using storagecraft shadowprotect and the likes. OR I could be misunderstanding the way you are describing it, and no offence was intended in any way.
@@SilasHack I get where you're coming from but to Willie's defense Synology refers to this type of backup in Active Business Backup as a "Bare Metal Backup" including the system Volume and other local drives. As a Bare Metal Backup you could easily replace hardware with something somewhat compatible and then restore to a raw machine and be right back up and running, no windows disk or the like required. By their very nature a backup of anything would assume a predefined environment to restore to else it would just be a copy of data for a new machine (which you could also do here). I think you might be getting hung up on the concept of a Bare Metal installation image that would have various drivers and such loaded for various hardware configurations, like esxi or something similar. It seems the symantec that we are debating here is more about a "backup" vs an "install" image, not so much the meaning of "Bare Metal."
Your title stated "Bare Metal Backup" when you finally came to the bare metal part you freaked out on the .pdf file and stated it's for another video that I didn't found in your channel. Sry but that's a thumbs down for you.
WOW!
Great looking backup solution. I hope it can do spin up tests for the virtual machines.
FYI everyone:
Applied Models
19 series: RS1619xs+, RS1219+, DS1819+
18 series: FS1018, RS3618xs, RS818RP+, RS818+, RS2818RP+, RS2418RP+, RS2418+, DS3018xs, DS418play, DS918+, DS718+, DS218+, DS1618+
17 series: FS3017, FS2017, RS3617xs, RS3617RPxs, RS4017xs+, RS3617xs+, RS18017xs+, DS3617xs, DS1817+, DS1517+
16 series: RS2416RP+, RS2416+, RS18016xs+, DS416play, DS916+, DS716+II, DS716+, DS216+II, DS216+
15 series: RS815RP+, RS815+, RC18015xs+, DS3615xs, DS415+, DS2415+, DS1815+, DS1515+
14 series: RS3614xs, RS3614RPxs, RS814RP+, RS814+, RS3614xs+, RS2414RP+, RS2414+
13 series: RS3413xs+, RS10613xs+, DS713+, DS2413+, DS1813+, DS1513+
12 series: RS3412xs, RS3412RPxs, RS812RP+, RS812+, RS2212RP+, RS2212+, DS3612xs, DS712+, DS412+, DS1812+, DS1512+
11 series: RS3411xs, RS3411RPxs, RS2211RP+, RS2211+, DS3611xs, DS411+II, DS411+, DS2411+, DS1511+
* Please note that DS712+, RS2211RP+, RS2211+, DS411+II, DS411+, DS2411+, and DS1511+ are not compatible with Active Backup for Business since they do not support Btrfs. Only Active Backup for Server can be installed on these models.
@@WillieHowe I don't think it does MacOS yet... Thanks for the awesome Video WIllie! 🍻
I'm curious how you handle offsite backup storage? I'm deploying a couple of these units for some small businesses but I'm having to run separate software to backup files offsite because the Active Backup for Business doesn't seem to have a way to replicate its storage anywhere that I've found and its not good to not have an offsite copy.
I just set this up a few days ago and then you release this!! Stop reading my mind. About to set this up for all my clients
I found an issue I cannot find a workaround for. With many solutions like this, such as Windows Server Essentials, the backup server can send a WOL message to the client to take it out of sleep, then the client keeps it awake during the backup. Using this, a WOL is never sent, so I can't back up a sleeping PC in the middle of the night, and if I manually fire off the backup, the PC goes to sleep before it finishes. Synology needs to support WOL and their client needs to prevent sleep before this is what I would consider a finished product.
Hello Willie, first of all I want to thank you for all the videos you post.
They offer great insight into a lot of Unifi and Synology stuff.
I was immediately taken by this powerful backup solution and backed up two windows machines. My experience trying to restore these backups so far is not that great. I followed the Active Backup Recovery Media Creator procedure a number of times to create a bootable USB stick but almost every time I got stuck with error messages. (error code 0x57). Only ones I made I to the end of the procedure with another USB stick and then when I tried booted it, it works fine except for the fact that the required network drivers to be able to make a connection with the Synology NAS were not installed. Then when you try to find answers to these problems Synology does not have a lot of additional information except the standard knowledge base articles. I’m wondering what you experience in this department is? What would be your path to fully restore a PC?
Synology should do better on technical info regarding restoring. It's not something we do everyday. Willie Hint Hint
From what I remember the restore only works if your restoring to the same hardware and same or larger Hard Drive.
Great video Willie. I would like to know your specific comprehensive backup strategy and rotation for both NAS and PC. If you have done that already, I don't see it. Thanks.
Willie, I am considering using Synology Active Backup with Agents to backup workstations, VMWare Virtual machines, file servers file level, bare metal etc. It seems like awesome software. Plus there are not fees or licenses. :) I am struggling with backing up to the cloud. How do I best do that?
Willie.. great video but after completing I could not figure out how to get to the physical and virtual machine videos.. or if you ever had a chance to create them??? Would have loved to see links in the comment section!
OK not sure what is going on with mine - but I installed the package, installed agent on a pc. When I go to templates - there is no option for bare metal?! Mine says "Entire device" (with option for external hard drives as well) and "Sys Vol". Did they change the verbiage or is my install missing something??
Same here Peg. Did u find a solution? regards
Dan
Hi Willie,
Just a technical question: imagine you want to backup a server and there's an external (USB) hard disk connected to the server. Will a bare metal backup include the external disk ?
I'm looking into backing up a remote server which has an internal disk of 500GB which contains the data of interest. However, there's a 2TB external disk connected to the server which I do not want to include in the backup...
Thanks,
Mario
Tried this on my Esxi VM machines and found it wanting. It requires you turn on SSH and the ExiShell. Also when it does the backup it backs up the whole virtual disk. Mine are thin provisioned and one had 2 drive of 120GB and 80GB. They only had about 60GB of data between them but ABB made it take up 200GB on my Synology. I would assume it would have written them back as that as well turning them from thin provision to thick provision. There appears to be no option to turn on compression except for the transfer stream.
Hey Willie love the videos have learned a lot from them we have this solution deployed to a client now. I like the solution however if I understand it right there is no way to restore the active backup backups if the Synology box get hosed, even from a hyperbackup of the Synology box. I could be wrong correct me if I am I have not done enough testing yet. I still think it is a great solution, however I am looking at using user location changed Desktop and documents to NAS shares with snaphots enabled, as I know I can restore from a hyperbackup backup if I need to. I will continue to test, keep up the videos lots of great info!
It would be nice to see the process of media creation and restoring the PC to completely new HD.
Got it working at home. Will create a video about it
Great video Willie.
I totally wasn't aware of this and would use Synology all the time.
Cheers
Bummer - it appears that the server requires a BTRFS folder/partition. Maybe it is not so bad, as performance is less of an issue for backups
Fantastic video and I'm really looking forward to the subsistent videos on this topic. I've just started playing with active backup and am really excited to be able to learn from your experience. Thank you as always for the excellent videos.
On a side note, do you think you might be able to a video on using the built in Synology reverse proxy server for providing port specific forwarding to other servers and services we might be hosting behind a single FQDN? It would help take my home network to the next level! Thanks again Willie!
What nobody tells you is that each computer will need its own recovery media USB stick created on that device. And, once you create it, try booting from it. Mine didn't work because network drivers were missing. And getting them installed on that USB stick is no easy task. That really sucks when you need to do a bare metal restore and you think you did everything correctly.
Hi, very interesting videos I always watch. But I am having issues trying to connect the agent to another computer to backup remotely, I opened port 5510 but still getting internet error... would be nice to get some help... thank you
Hi Willie. I have a 916+.....I cant find the option for bare metal backup - I have reviewed the video a fair few times - the app has been updated - is it possible it is not available on the 916+
Cheers Dan
Totally lost me as I don't have any btrfs folders, maybe you should start with that? Have to convert from ext4 to btrfs. Before I can do that, i have to backup the ext4. Before I can do that,..,.. PLEASE START FROM THE BEGINNING Beginning. You know, like when someone gets the machine out of the box, and....???
I've been trying to use this with a Windows 10 machine. Can't even get past the format the usb drive portion. It gets stuck in a loop. Have had nothing but issues with Active Backup For Business when trying to do a bare metal restore with my Windows 10 machine.
Great deduplication features. we have 13 computers and it deduplicated from 8TB to 2.5TB. On our Synology we set up in Jan 2020, there isn't a Bare Metal option. There are 3 options, Entire Device, System Volume, or Customized Volumes. Can you advise which ones will work for bare metal restores.
Willie,
The only disapointent with Synology Active Backup is that it deas no backup open files. Have you ever try backup open files? I love your videos by the way. Peace.
Thank you for this one Willie, this one is a big deal
I have been backing up my new Hyper-V server a few days now. Active backup claims successful backups each time. However in the logs I can read that 2 volumes have not been baked up due to unsupported filesystem... HOW CAN IT CLAIM A SUCCESSFUL BACKUP !?!?!? No ReFS support. So... I think I need to pull another 500 bucks for altaro or something that does not lie...
Be forewarned - I wanted to use this Active Backup For Business - I just migrated from a dead DS415+ to a DS920+ and wanted to setup cloning of my Windows10 machines to the NAS - well I installed the Active Backup For Business software and all was going well until I tried to setup the templates - that's when I discovered that unless you are using BTRFS you are basically $hit out of luck. My NAS is done using EXT4 and therefore cannot set up the required share that Active Backup For Business requires. (too bad the software does not tell you this during the install). I truly don't want to go through the steps to convert the NAS over to BTRFS so I guess I will be looking at Clonezilla, Acronis, or Macrium as a solution.
Very useful, but didn't realize ABB requires HDDs to be btrfs volume rather than ext4. Some Synology NAS's do not support btrfs. I am currently trying to figure out the most simple way to replace two HDD 6TB ext4 with two 10TB Btrfs. Might make a good tutorial video.
Just what I have been looking for.
Great video, easy to follow.
this is only for version of plus is not got ex. 218 or 218j or play is only 218+ , can i install this in other version ?
Thks for the video. I'm trying to learn a little about DSM before I buy a Synology NAS. But now I'm confused about which backup app to use.
For backups there's: Active Backup Suite, Snapshots, Hyper Backup, Cloud Station Suite (DS cloud, Drive, Backup, ShareSync), & last but not least USB Copy
?????The obvious question is where/why to use which????? Thks
???Is this close???
Active Backup Suite: Single interface for sys admin to backup all PCs, HW servers, file servers, VMs, etc
Snapshots: For account user to make versioning copies of his personal data & not bother sysadmin
Hyper Backup: Classic sysadmin NAS backup to local storage
Cloud Station Suite DS cloud: For account user to backup mobile devices
Cloud Station Suite Drive: For account user to 2way versioned sync their personal data
Cloud Station Suite Backup: For account user to 1way versioned sync their personal data
Cloud Station Suite ShareSync: Sysadmin backups between NASs
USB Copy: For account user to copy personal data to/from attached USB drive
Recycle bin: For account user to recover deleted files
Hello Willie estoy viendo tus videos des Republic Dominican, no hablo mucho inglés pero puedo entender la mayoría de las cosas. Me interesa bastante tus temas y la tecnología de synology
Where is the video on the bare metal restore?
Quick and probably dumb question about this. I've backed 2 Laptops in bare metal mode, and both running windows 10. Both have different programs & data on. So.....Do i need to create a recovery media usb for each machine, or will one work for both machines ? Many Thanks for any help ;-)
Anyone ?
@@wolfy1beer The same recovery media works with all restores, not just one backup
@@bobowens3837 Thanks Bob 👍🏻
Just for clarification for the non-admin types: this does the same thing like Symantec Ghost right (except the NAS handles the operations)? Is this really able to backup all core windows files with the machine running?
Yes, it works.
Willie, Have you noticed once you setup your backups with a template if you go back and edit the template it doesn’t seem to affect the clients that use that template. They stay the same as when they were setup for me. Just curious if this is an issue or if the client needs to be reinstalled with the template changed.
@@WillieHowe Thats what I had thought but after I make a change to the template the update is stilled greyed out. Thanks
If you were just backing up just personal computers, I would recommend using Veeam Backup for Windows
xboxhacks12
I would agree. Veeam is fast, dependable and provides the same service. It will back up my desktop in a couple of hours. I’ve been running the synology business backup for the last 18 hours and it’s only 70% done.
I love the idea behind the Synology Active Backup for Business, but it’s slow.
@@bitpickersplace494 That's been my experience too, SABB is slow. Veeam just works!
Hey mate, without trawling through all your video's, what model synology and storage capacity you using?
@@WillieHowe Thanks buddy
Good Stuff ! - Thanks
I setup the first computer without any problem. When & try to add additional computers I get the following error.
"Internet error. Please check your internet connection. Please contact you, administrator, if error remains." Any idea on the problem. I am ready to take a hammer to this thing.
You have to change the synology abb server to sign on using local admin credentials. I had the same problem, been working for two months now
@@bobowens3837 I was able to get all of my computers setup & doing backups to my Synology.
Can it backup/restore just a single volume on Windows server. Most of our Servers have a system volume and would like to have the ability just to backup/restore that volume.
Yes, there if a specific check box when you create a new template or go to edit the settings of a backup already in place that lets you select either: System Volume, or Entire PC.
So can these backed up images then be run as a virtual machine on the NAS?
Willie Howe You are a master, thanks.
Went to try this on my synology NAS... Guess what... It wasn't there. So which NAS do you have to have to support this software?
Probably the + models, models with a + at the end of the number.
Would this tool be an an option for backing up another NAS on a local network? I notice that file server is an option in the profiles.
@@WillieHowe another Synology in fact. Looks like a more polished tool than some of the other options.
@@pigsnack Instead of Hyper Backup?
Any options for silent deployment? Scripted or GPO?
Can you do a video of backup a third party camera?
But have you tested the backups ;)
how to backup database from sql?
I wonder when they will support HyperV??
Does it support Macs?
Great video......tks
Dear Mr Howe, can you clarify what 'you' mean when you refer in this video to "Bare Metal" please? It is my understanding that it is the process to allow restoration to dissimilar hardware, but i am unsure that is what you are referring to.. Cheers bud
Followed you for years so I would never expect you to be a wise guy, but having been involved with this stuff for many years, I just feel that they way it was described at say 1:15 was more in line with a simple restore of an image to the same device it was created from, whereas 'bare metal' restorations would often be to dissimilar hardware that would then require the drivers to be loaded for different hardware like nic/video and even chipsets, this is how I have had to do it on many servers especially HP, and trust me that takes a long time, even using storagecraft shadowprotect and the likes. OR I could be misunderstanding the way you are describing it, and no offence was intended in any way.
@@SilasHack I get where you're coming from but to Willie's defense Synology refers to this type of backup in Active Business Backup as a "Bare Metal Backup" including the system Volume and other local drives. As a Bare Metal Backup you could easily replace hardware with something somewhat compatible and then restore to a raw machine and be right back up and running, no windows disk or the like required. By their very nature a backup of anything would assume a predefined environment to restore to else it would just be a copy of data for a new machine (which you could also do here). I think you might be getting hung up on the concept of a Bare Metal installation image that would have various drivers and such loaded for various hardware configurations, like esxi or something similar. It seems the symantec that we are debating here is more about a "backup" vs an "install" image, not so much the meaning of "Bare Metal."
fain
Your title stated "Bare Metal Backup" when you finally came to the bare metal part you freaked out on the .pdf file and stated it's for another video that I didn't found in your channel.
Sry but that's a thumbs down for you.