Complete Backup Strategy for Synology NAS Devices (Automated 3-2-1 Backups)

for over three years I've had daily backups of my data without having to do anything one configuration done three years ago and that's it in this video I'll walk you through the entire process on how I back up all of my data I'll be showing a workflow meaning you can use a PC or a Mac truenas unrated Synology it doesn't matter we're going to get our data from our device to our Nas and then to the cloud and we're not going to have to do anything other than this one configuration and then everything else will run seamlessly before we get started I just want to point out that the general data I'm talking about in this video is data you cannot lose for the most part all of your data doesn't need to be backed up off-site but the important data should there are also many different tools you can use that will accomplish similar results but the process being shown is what's worked for me so we're first going to talk about the general idea of this and it's kind of important to understand how this works now we know that you're supposed to have three copies of your data on at least two separate mediums with one off-site that's just a general guideline that you could go based off of what we're going to do is set up a sync task on our device and anytime we update add or change an item it's going to automatically sync to our Nas at that point the NASA is going to be the center of this because the nas will then back up on a regular basis and you won't really have to worry about anything from there the data will automatically get from your device to your Nas and then your Nas will take care of the rest that's the general idea let's take a little deeper look at that now though so from a sync perspective I'm going to be using Synology drive I have a full video that I did last week on that I'll leave a pop-up to that now but you can use next Cloud as well or you can really use any other syncing service the idea is that we're going to take the data and automatically sync it from our device to our Nas so any sync job will automatically do that and therefore you can really use any tool that you want to use after the data gets to our Nest we're going to take a look at data protection so what I mean by that is we're going to automatically take snapshots of that data on a regular interval that will allow us to restore any of those snapshots if we ever need to now snapshots are configured for the most part very differently depending on the tool that you're using so the idea is the same but how you accomplish it will be different the final step in this is going to be the backup now I'm going to be backing up to the cloud you can back up to wherever you want the idea though is that you should really back up somewhere outside of your house somewhere other than where the data is currently living there's many reasons why we're not going to get into it in this video but the idea is that you have to have some separation so that in a worst case event if the data all of the data was lost you'll have a secondary location where you can restore that data from I'm going to be picking the cloud if you have a friend's house a family member's house that you want to stick computer or Nas or something you can use that too there's not a right or wrong way of doing this you just have to make sure that the data is outside of your house now this backup is really going to be used for a disaster recovery type of scenario so what I mean by that is in a worst case event the data is completely lost you have no copies of it and you need to restore that data that's what we're really going to be using this for so we're quickly going to walk through a demo and by the end of this hopefully you'll understand how the process works because like I said it's a process you can go through and you can apply this to anything that you want so what I set up here is I set up a sync task that will automatically sync from my documents folder to my Synology Nas the sync tool utilizes Synology drive like I said I have a video I'll leave in the description but the idea is anytime a file gets added updated or deleted it will automatically sync those changes to my Nas so at that point the central location that we're going to be talking about is my Nas now on my Nas I have snapshots configured depending on the type of data that you're syncing you can set up different snapshot schedules so for example if you're syncing video files and you're constantly editing throughout the day maybe you want to do it more frequently if you're looking at documents that don't change very often maybe it's daily the idea is that you're going to have some type of data protection from a snapshot perspective now snapshots while they're not backups they're the first line of defense if you actually have to restore one of these files so if they're ever lost for whatever reason deleted whatever it is you're going to go to the snapshot and you're going to restore it that's the first protection that you're going to restore from now that first step is a sync it's very important to to really remember that because if for whatever reason the source data gets corrupted or deleted or anything it's going to sync that change to the nas that's why you have to have snapshots configured now the reason why I like using a Sync here is because a sync will take the file and move it there instantly the idea is that the file will go directly from your device to your Nas instantly you don't have to do anything you save the file and it gets moved there in the case of a backup you're really looking at specific intervals I'm sure there are backup tools you could use that will back up more frequently but the idea is that I want that file from point A to point B instantly anytime it's saved so up to this point we have Synology Drive set up which syncs the data to the nas we have snapshots configured on the nas which will be taken based on on Whatever frequency we specified and now we're going to take a look at backups now for backups there are many many ways to back up your data the idea is that you want to get the data somewhere outside of your primary location so family members house friends house or what I'll be using which is the cloud I'm going to be recommending backblaze B2 this is not a sponsored video this is not I don't have any affiliate links it's nothing like that I'm suggesting them because I've used them and it works I'm sure there are tons of other backup destinations that you could use other tools I have no doubt that those work as well I'm going to be showing backblaze B2 you can use whatever you want here I'm going to be using that and the reason I like to use that is because it allows me to use hyper backup on my NAS from hyper backup I can then configure that as a destination and I could specify the backups as frequently or as infrequently as I want so like I said earlier the goal of this backup is disaster recovery I do not want to restore any of these files from this Cloud location unless I absolutely have to the reason is because there are costs associated with downloading the data if you're using backblaze B2 if you're using something else there might not be cost but regardless the idea is that not only is there potential costs but it's going to be slow you're downloading the data from a Cloud Server the the process if it's an individual file it's probably going to be fine if you're backing up and restoring terabytes of data it could be days or weeks you don't want to get into that if you don't have to so on a nightly basis this data gets backed up to the cloud at that point anytime a file has changed it syncs automatically from my device to my Nas a snapshot is taken at Whatever frequency I specified and then nightly it gets backed up to an outside location that has been running that's the exact process I've been running for over three years now I've never one time thought about backups because it's all automatically done now that final stage being a backup is important because up to this point everything was a sync you don't really want to have a full sync set up because at that point you're really relying from a disaster recovery perspective on individual file Restorations and it can get messy because if you're syncing everything you're going to be syncing all the way up so if you sync a corrupt file it sinks to your Nas and then it syncs to the cloud you don't want that you want a backup so that's the process but it's important to understand that there are potential break points with this so a potential break point as an example if you lose connection to your Nas on the initial side the the sync side if you lose a connection to your Nas the data is not going to sink to the nas it's then not going to get backed up so you have to keep an eye on that you have to periodically check and make sure that everything is syncing properly secondary backup you have to make sure your backups are running this is a little easier to monitor because you can set up alerts so inside of DSM I have notification set up I have an article for that I'll leave it in the description of the video but the idea is that if a backup task ever fails I'm notified of it so I get an email I know right away it failed and at least I can go in and try and figure out why so from that perspective it's a little easier to monitor the bigger issue is honestly that primary section where you're not actually syncing the data though you think you are so you got to keep an eye on that now the notifications are true for snapshots as well because if you're not taking the snapshots and you think you are you could potentially be in a situation where you think you have some form of data protection and you don't now to take it one step further with newer released NASA's and Synology DSM 7.2 you can take immutable snapshots I'm purposely keeping that out of this video because I think that deserves a full video itself and I will be doing a video on that in the future but the idea is that you kind of have to understand when you're using them because you're not going to be able to delete the snapshots if you ever have to it's a great feature great feature but if you implement it incorrectly you could find yourself in a situation where you're storing tons of data for a specified period of time and you can't do anything to get rid of it so that's one layer that you can add on top of this that I will get to in a later video and if you understand how it works and you want to implement it great but if you don't stay tuned because you might want to implement that so the process I just showed you is the exact process that I've used for over three years and every single one of my files has been backed up to the cloud and I haven't thought about backups once the times that I've had issues they've been very very few and far between at one point one of my devices lost connection to my Nas I noticed it basically right away because I noticed that one of the files I had edited on my other device wasn't updated on the secondary device that was easy to fix the second thing was backups I don't I can honestly say I don't think I have had a single time where I've backed up to backblaze B2 and ever had a backup issue I have had it when backing up to an off-site Nest but honestly it's not something that you really have to worry about I was using specific tools that I probably shouldn't have been using testing out different Nas manufacturers and it just didn't go well but that's besides the point so if you made it this far thank you for watching if you have any questions feel free to leave them in the comments if not I will see you next time

Channel: WunderTech

Views: 9,078

Keywords: synology nas backup, backup strategy

Id: rvSESOF9ie4

Length: 10min 49sec (649 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 19 2023