Confusion over backup options

[qness]

@ bioneural

It's too bad you haven't any info on ddns. If I learn anything I'll pass it on...

JK. Thanks for all that great info!

[Stuckster]

Hi All,

I'm a bit confused regarding the best way to mirror the contents of a shared folder (or specific shared folders, such as the web directory and Time Machine share) on one DiskStation to a remote DiskStation via the Internet, using DSM 4.0. The Wiki is outdated.

There seem to be several built-in options in DSM and I'm not clear if some of these are merely different ways to access the same functionality:

* Drop-down menu > Backup and Restore > Backup
* Drop-down menu > Backup and Restore > Shared Folder Sync
* Control Panel > Network Backup > Network Backup
* Control Panel > Network Backup > Shared Folder Sync
* Control Panel > Network Backup > Time Backup
* rsync

So, a few questions for the experts:

1. Would someone please enlighten me as to the differences between these options?
2. Is it possible for DS1 and DS2 to backup to each other simultaneously, or is it preferable they don't do this e.g. for performance reasons?
3. Will the preferred option require opening ports on the routers at either end (and if so, which)?

Many thanks, Bruce

We are currently in the process of going through a similar (extremely frustrating) discovery process with the various remote backup options ourselves.

It would seem that you should forget about using Time Backup as a viable or efficient solution viewtopic.php?f=163&t=45146

FIRSTLY... IT IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE THAT SYNOLOGY CUSTOMERS HAVE TO RESORT TO USER FORUMS AND TRIAL AND ERROR JUST TO UNDERSTAND THEIR PRODUCT FEATURES, LET ALONE DECIDE ON THE MOST APPROPRIATE SOLUTION, THEN IMPLEMENT IT.

- Wiki out of date
- User Guides out of date (DSM 3.x)
- No detailed documentation on any remote backup procedures anywhere to be seen.

We have lost count of the number of tickets we have had to submit every time we hit a dead end, simply trying to understand how the various product features work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Remote Backup one of the core pillars of data security? This should be one of Synology's primary focus points. How can they be getting this so wrong??

Not good enough by our standards.
Fix this Synology

[Stuckster]

The same shares that failed via Synology's Network Backup transferred using Transmit, and in a fraction of the time.

...I do find it difficult to believe Synology don't have backup between DiskStations totally nailed. This prospect was actually the reason I bought a second DiskStation, but I have lost the confidence to depend upon the built-in functionality. Network Backup is broken--unless someone can convince me otherwise?

Bioneural, you just summed up the current state with seemingly all of the Synology remote backup solutions. I too cannot begin to comprehend how and why they are not ALL OVER this.

I cannot imagine the hours you have sunk into troubleshooting/researching this issue with still no viable solution. I really feel for your situation and am growing increasingly angry with Synology. We actually sold a brand new Drobo and purchased a second Disk Station with the single purpose of running simple, efficient remote backups.

These forums are littered with stories of users hitting dead ends with no idea how to proceed and no solutions forthcoming from Synology. So many issues. So many frustrated customers.

After countless support tickets, we are still at a loss with no remote backup solution. It's seems what we now have are a couple of oversized, overpriced door stops Have a good mind to return them both under the warranty, stating that they do not perform some of the major functions as advertised.

Can you tell we're just a little bit peeved?

[Stuckster]

In a final effort to gain some well needed clarity amidst all the confusion we have submitted the following ticket to Synology requesting a detailed explanation of how each of the Network Backup solutions actually work.

We have recently setup a network backup between our DS411j and DS412+ over the internet. We are NOT using encryption or compression. Incremental backups seem overly large even when only very small changes have been made to the data set.

Questions
----------
1. HOW does each of your remote backup products manage changes to a data set? eg: when a file or folder is moved or renamed? Please provide details about each backup product (Network Backup, Time Backup and Shared Folder Sync).

2. Network backup seems to recopy entire files while Time Backup probably uses additional bandwidth making new versions every hour. Which backup product manages changes to the data set the most efficiently i.e: requiring the least amount of data to be transferred over the internet.

3. Which backup product would be best to use if we wish to minimise the size of incremental backups and total internet bandwidth and why?

4. Where can we find more detailed documentation on HOW Network Backup, Time Backup and Shared Folder Sync manage changes to the data set? The product pages and user guide are very general and do not contain more than a couple of paragraphs describing each option. We simply cannot find the information we need in order to make a decision on the most appropriate backup solution for our business, which is becoming increasingly frustrating.

I will post the response as soon as we receive something. Hopefully it might help.
I have also brought this thread to their attention.

[qness]

@ Stuckster and others monitoring this thread...

Thanks for your posts and trying to get Synology to address it. I had to put this project on the back burner for a bit and plan to get back to it in August. But I'm still monitoring the thread and interested in what everyone is experiencing and learning.

[tkman26]

I am also trying to figure out a way to implement an effective incremental backup solution using my 1812+.
I wondered about that backup failure issue and came across this in the Synology backup guide.
It states that the full file name and path has to be 996 bytes or less.
As well as a manual way to determine which file(s) is/are the problem.

Looking forward to seeing people finding a good solution.

Backup Procedure Failure & Error Messages

The rsync backup process has a directory & file path name limitation imposed by Linux of 1024 bytes, in windows it is 248 bytes. The synology servers use 58 bytes for the servername_MacAddress path record. Hence the following rules apply to rsync backups:

Any files where the path exceeds 996bytes (=1024-58) will NOT be backed up and the procedure will finish reporting backup failed. It will be reported by email (if configured) and in the Network Backup log.
Any files where the path exceeds 190bytes (=248-58) will be backed up and a warning listed in the Network Backup log. You can check the existence of those files using FTP, but if you browse them by Samba they will be invisible as samba does not support such long file pathnames.

To view the directory&filename path lengths;

Create a file containing all the files names with their full paths, i.e.
For Windows - Map a network drive to the Synolgy Server folder containing the data you want to rsync. Open the command prompt (DOS) change to the mapped network drive (e.g. enter the command "m:" for drive m), make sure you are at the root of it (i.e. enter "cd \") and then enter the command "dir /a/s/b > list.txt" which will create a file called list.txt in the root of m:
For Linux - Lets assume your errors are when backing up your music folder, enter the command "cd /root" and the use the command "find /volume1/music -name * > /volume1/music/list.txt" to create a file /volume1/music/list.txt. Note: we changed to "/root" because the find command sometimes produces errors if you are not in "/root".
Open the file list.txt in a spreadsheet program (e.g. excel) and use the string length function (LEN in excel) to display the number of characters in each filename path, and then sort the results to find the the longest culprits.

[Jeremie]

Hi All,

I'm a bit confused regarding the best way to mirror the contents of a shared folder (or specific shared folders, such as the web directory and Time Machine share) on one DiskStation to a remote DiskStation via the Internet, using DSM 4.0. The Wiki is outdated.

There seem to be several built-in options in DSM and I'm not clear if some of these are merely different ways to access the same functionality:

* Drop-down menu > Backup and Restore > Backup
* Drop-down menu > Backup and Restore > Shared Folder Sync
* Control Panel > Network Backup > Network Backup
* Control Panel > Network Backup > Shared Folder Sync
* Control Panel > Network Backup > Time Backup
* rsync

So, a few questions for the experts:

1. Would someone please enlighten me as to the differences between these options?
2. Is it possible for DS1 and DS2 to backup to each other simultaneously, or is it preferable they don't do this e.g. for performance reasons?
3. Will the preferred option require opening ports on the routers at either end (and if so, which)?

Many thanks, Bruce

We are currently in the process of going through a similar (extremely frustrating) discovery process with the various remote backup options ourselves.

It would seem that you should forget about using Time Backup as a viable or efficient solution viewtopic.php?f=163&t=45146

FIRSTLY... IT IS COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE THAT SYNOLOGY CUSTOMERS HAVE TO RESORT TO USER FORUMS AND TRIAL AND ERROR JUST TO UNDERSTAND THEIR PRODUCT FEATURES, LET ALONE DECIDE ON THE MOST APPROPRIATE SOLUTION, THEN IMPLEMENT IT.

- Wiki out of date
- User Guides out of date (DSM 3.x)
- No detailed documentation on any remote backup procedures anywhere to be seen.

We have lost count of the number of tickets we have had to submit every time we hit a dead end, simply trying to understand how the various product features work.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Remote Backup one of the core pillars of data security? This should be one of Synology's primary focus points. How can they be getting this so wrong??

Not good enough by our standards.
Fix this Synology

Hi Stuckster,

Thanks for pointing out the update issue on the wiki.
In the meantime, this tutorial can help with the steps to take:
http://www.synology.com/tutorials/how_t ... lang=us#t3

Your feedback has been send to our product manager, and we'll be working on making our backup solutions and the related documentation more clear in the future.

Jeremie

[bsung]

I've had basically the same issues that are described here... long file names and encrypted shared folders.

For long file names, it takes a while to find but if you don't have too many, you can select half your subfolders and run a backup to see if there are any errors (remember not to have synoloyg delete files not being backed up). Then, choose half of the files that's creating a backup failure, etc, etc. Even if you have a million files, you should be able to find the culpurit with no more than 20 attempts (2^20).

I have not found a solution for backing up encrypted folders. Ideally, I'd like to use sync while leaving my backup location unmounted. As I understand it, synology encrypts individual files and therefore I don't see why I can't just backup the encrypted files through a sync function.

I don't have any great answers but figured I'd chime in the complaint in case people at synology are reading this thread.

[infobleep]

I bought a Synology DS1512+ in order to access my data whilst not at home as well as allowing me to expand my storage capacity without having to copy files to a new hard drive each time. I also bought a DX510 in order to back up to.

From reading various online forums, everyone seemed to be rating the Synology compared to others, although some preferred QNAP which was very good. I am now beginning to wonder if I made a mistake. How well does Qnap handle backing up? If Qnap is just as bad, then I hate to think what the cheaper NAS drives are like!

I guess I could return the NAS stating it doesn't work as advertised, e.g. I can't see how to get incremental backup working and I'm not alone on this!

One doesn't wish to pay £1200 for a solution which doesn't work. By solution I include my 3x3TB hard drives which Snyology don't make but are required in my set up. I've not copied any of my data onto the Synology because I'm concerned it will go wrong and I might lose it all. Synology are creating this level of concern by their lack of decent up-to-date guides and help. I've not contacted them myself but perhaps I should be.

Perhaps Synology are just living off their name and reputation as being good when in fact they are not that good. Perhaps Synology would care to disagree and explain what they are doing to help their customers? Not everyone is an expert and I don't see their Web Site proclaiming only experts should buy. I work in IT so it's not as if I can't understand it, given the right information and documentation.

Kind regards

[qness]

@ infobleep

Not related to the backups specifically, but I had a very bad experience with QNAP.

I bought a rack mount 4 bay server in 2009. In the 32 months that I owned it, I had 2 power supply failures and 4 drives fail, which I later discovered was due to the power supply failures. When the power supply failed the second time, I called to get a replacement and was told that they no longer support the product. Needing to get my data off of the unit, I asked which newer model I could purchase that would accept my drives and allow me to recover my data. I was told that they had no new units that used the same RAID setup and there was nothing that they could do to help me recover my data. So the $2500 solution that I planned to use for 5 years was obsolete with no support or repair options in less than 3 years!

I ended up finding the company that built the power supply for QNAP and got them to do a repair. I got my data off and switched to Synology.

I don't mean to say that Synology is great (as demonstrated by this thread), but I'll never do business with QNAP again.

[ALE]

For me Synology is also much better then Qnap. I have had some very bad experience with that company and I do hope I won't get it with Synology. But to be honest, I'm struggling and facing the same problems as many others have with a backup between two identical raid5 (my case 2 x DS1812+) boxes.
I would like to backup unit A to B and vise versa, unit B to A both backup's stored encrypted. Somehow I can't get it fixed despite the "updated" wiki and all the other advice in this post. Maybe I have too long filenames including the paths, I really don't know. But this can and should be fixed by the manufacturer so we all are able to backup outside the building too.

Hopefully in the next update the engineers fix this issue and make it much easier to accomplish a working, reliable and encrypted backup between two devices.

Waiting for a reaction of Synology.
Best regards,


ALE

[Steph]

Someone from Synology recently told me that the backup of folder A on NAS A to an ENCRYPTED folder B on NAS B is NOT SUPPORTED -__-

And apparently, it's for now not a planned feature ...

[ALE]

Someone from Synology recently told me that the backup of folder A on NAS A to an ENCRYPTED folder B on NAS B is NOT SUPPORTED -__-

And apparently, it's for now not a planned feature ...

Thanks Steph for your feedback. You are kidding me! Who would like to store his data outside the perimeter without any security (= at least encryption)?

I'm lacking of knowledge but how difficult can it be if I encrypt a folder and put data in there at home it works. But if I backup data from NAS A to NAS B and on the last one I want to store the data it in an encrypted folder it won't work! For me the only difference is that there is an extra carrier in the process, e.g. the internet.....


ALE

[Steph]

It's scary how Support doesn't always give clear answers.

Backuping to an encrypted folder is supported, but the length of the path of the file/folder has to be less than 147 characters.

Backuping FROM an encrypted folder IS NOT supported.

[Puzzle]

Backuping FROM an encrypted folder IS NOT supported.

Well, I don't know about the official specs, but in my setup this actually works. It works regardless of encryption turned on or not.
I didn't setup any special configs or scripts on the Diskstations.

The summary of my setup:

- source: DS508(DSM4.0-2228, target: RS212(DSM4.0-2228)
- fix IP's(I hate DDNS...) at both sites
- portforwarding(NAT) and firewall rule for SSH on my firewall(ZyWALL USG50) at target site
- firewall of Synology turned off(I happily rely on my ZyWALL)
- sourcefolder that's to be backened-up is encrypted