Synology Active Backup for Business Admin Guide for File Servers User Guide

: October 29, 2023
: Synology

Table of Contents

Synology Active Backup for Business Admin Guide for File Servers
Introduction
What is Active Backup for Business?
Features and Management Tools
Backup management
Considerations and limitations
Backup tips
File Server Backup
Restoration Guide
Product Introduction
Product Features and Management Tools
Product Backup management
Product Planning and Preparation
- Backup Configuration
Product Restoration Guide
Best Practices
References
Read User Manual Online (PDF format)
Download This Manual (PDF format)

Synology Active Backup for Business Admin Guide for File Servers

Synology-Active-Backup-for-Business-Admin-Guide-for-File
Servers

Based on Active Backup for Business 2.5.0
Last updated: Feb 10, 2023

Introduction

About this guide

This guide provides information on Active Backup for Business, including setup and recovery instructions.

What is Active Backup for Business?

Active Backup for Business (ABB) is a commercial data protection solution based on the DSM operating system. It centralizes data protection across various environments, including virtual machines,physical servers, file servers, and personal computers. The solution offers a range of backup options and restoration tools, as well as optional technical and safety features.

Features and Management Tools

Backup and recovery features

ABB supports file server backups via common protocols such as SMB for Windows and rsync for Linux devices. It offers block-level transfer, encryption, compression, and bandwidth control for safe and efficient transfers. There are three backup modes available to meet each organization’s data protection, retention, and auditing policy requirements:

Multi-versioned: Offers multiple recovery points by creating a new version for each backup.
Mirroring: Suitable for users that need only the most recent version of their files, as it overwrites the backup on the target based on the changes made on the source.

Backup management

ABB provides a centralized admin console for administrators to deploy their preferred protection plan single-handedly. It supports FSRVP (File Server Remote VSS Protocol) integration to ensure the consistency of SMB server backups. In addition to file backups, you can also back up Windows ACL and Linux POSIX ACL.

Planning and Preparation

Requirements

For SMB servers, VSS must be enabled on the Windows server. For rsync servers, block-level transfer, encryption, compression, and bandwidth control must be enabled.

Considerations and limitations

There are no known limitations for ABB backup for file servers.

Backup tips

Maintain remote backup copies and relink.

Backup Configuration

File Server Backup

To create a backup task:

Select the file server to back up.
Select the backup mode.
Configure backup settings, including backup destination, Schedule, Versioning, Advanced options (encryption, compression,block-level transfer), and Options (backup Windows ACL or Linux POSIX ACL).
Create the backup task.

To manage backup tasks:

View the status of each backup task.
Edit or delete backup tasks.
View backup logs.

Restoration Guide

Recovery options

ABB offers various recovery options, including restoring files from a specific recovery point or restoring the entire system to a specific point in time.

Restore file server data

Select the file server to restore data from.
Select the recovery point to restore from.
Select the files to restore or select all files.
Select the destination for restored files.
Start the restore process.

Best Practices

Maintain remote backup copies and relink.

Learn more

Related articles and software specs are available for further information.

Product Introduction

About this guide
This guide will help you become familiarized with Active Backup for Business, walk you through the initial setup of a backup task, and provide information on recovery.
Intended audience
This guide is intended for anyone who wants to start using Active Backup for Business to back up their SMB or rsync file servers.

What is Active Backup for Business?
Synology’s all-in-one commercial data protection solution, Active Backup for Business (ABB), is based on the award-winning DSM operating system. ABB centralizes data protection across a variety of IT environments, including virtual machines, physical servers, file servers, and personal computers. Administrators can deploy their preferred protection plan single-handedly through ABB’s centralized admin console.
ABB also offers a wide range of backup options and restoration tools, as well as a number of optional technical and safety features.

Why should you use Active Backup for Business?

Your one-stop backup solution – Ensuring that everything in your backup environment is compatible can be a challenge, especially with so many factors to consider. ABB simplifies things by providing an all-in-one solution right on your Synology NAS.
Smart storage – ABB is designed with cross-platform, device, and version deduplication to help reduce backup time and improve storage efficiency. (See applicable models).
Unrestricted expandability – Increasing your number of devices and data? No problem. With ABB, you can protect an unlimited number of devices and data, license-free.
Centralized management – Remove the burden on IT workers of managing backup tasks and devices across several platforms by using ABB’s intuitive, web-based portal.
Integrated support – When something goes wrong, whether it’s hardware or software-related, Synology Technical Support is ready to help, reducing the time and effort needed when looking for help from different providers.

Product Features and Management Tools

Backup and recovery features
Support for SMB and rsync
Active Backup for Business supports file server backups via common protocols such as SMB for Windows and rsync for Linux devices, making it easy to deploy your backups without needing to install an agent.
For SMB servers
FSRVP (File Server Remote VSS Protocol) integration helps to ensure the consistency of SMB server backups. When VSS is enabled on the Windows server, Active Backup for Business can create a shadow copy of VSS-enabled server applications that store data on remote SMB file shares. In addition to file backups, you can also back up Windows ACL, allowing you to easily restore files and access control lists at the same time.

For rsync servers
You can enable block-level transfer, encryption, compression, and bandwidth control, enjoying safe and efficient transfers for rsync server backups. In addition to file backups, Linux POSIX ACL can also be backed up.

Backup modes
There are three backup modes for file server backups that can be used to meet each organization’s data protection, retention, and auditing policy requirements:

Multi-versioned: Offers multiple recovery points by creating a new version for each backup, allowing you to easily recover files from any previous point in time.
Mirroring: Suitable for users that need only the most recent version of their files, as it overwrites the backup on the target based on the changes made on the source.
Incremental: Ideal for archival purposes, since the backup will be overwritten by the newly added and modified files, while keeping the deleted files on the target device.

Incremental backup
Incremental backup is a backup feature that reduces the amount of data transferred for each backup, as well as the amount of duplicated data stored on your backup destinations. This is done by tracking changes and only backing up modified or new data to be added into the destination.

Product Backup management

Active Backup for Business Portal
The Active Backup for Business Portal is ABB’s affiliated restoration portal. This portal allows administrators and end users appointed by an administrator to access, browse, download, and restore backed-up data.

This tool is automatically installed during the installation of the Active Backup for Business package. Refer to the ABB Portal help article to learn more about how to navigate the portal, perform restores, and for other settings.

Product Planning and Preparation

Requirements
See the full specifications for Active Backup for Business for detailed information.

NAS system requirements
See How to select a suitable NAS for running Active Backup for Business? for recommendations.

Item	Requirements

Operating system

| DSM 7.0 and above (ABB 2.2.0 and above) DSM 6.2 and above (ABB 2.1.0 and above) DSM 6.1.7 and above (ABB 2.0.4 and above)
CPU architecture| 64-bit x86 (x64)
System memory| 4 GB RAM recommended for ideal backup performance
File system| Btrfs

For a full list of requirements for backups and restorations, refer to the Requirements and Limitations.

Supported systems

Backup type	System/version
File Server	SMB protocol

rsync 3.0 and above

For a full list of requirements for backups and restorations, refer to the Requirements and Limitations.

Considerations and limitations

NAS

To maximize backup performance, avoid running too many packages at once in DSM.
To perform a backup task, there should be at least 8 GB of free space both on the backup destination and on the volume where the package is installed.

Backup client (file servers)

Make sure that the file sharing protocol, either SMB (for Windows) or rsync (for Linux), is enabled on the source file server.
Make sure that the account used to add the file server has permission to access the folder that you want to back up.

Backup tips

Do not use the backup destination folder to store your files or other data that are not from the file server source. During a backup, any files or data that cannot be found on the source side when comparing the directory and the backup source will be deleted.
Only Multi-version mode will create several backup versions of your backup task. The other two backup modes will only keep a single version of your backup task.
Make sure that the device that you want to back up is supported on your version of ABB.
Set up a Retention Policy for your backup tasks to delete older backup versions so your backups don’t take up too much space on your multi-version task only.
Configure a backup schedule to maintain regular backups of your data.
Allow users access to the Active Backup for Business Portal so they can browse backups and recover individual files or entire folders as needed.
Add a second layer of protection to your data by implementing the 3 2 1 backup rule (3 backups: 2 on different storage mediums and 1 offsite) using Hyper Backup or Snapshot Replication.

Backup Configuration

The following sections provide instructions on adding file servers, creating and executing new backup tasks, and configuring options and settings.

File Server Backup

Add a file server
Before creating a file server backup task, you must connect to a file server:

In DSM, go to Active Backup for Business > File Server > File Servers and click Add Server.
Follow the instructions in the wizard to finish adding your server.

Notes:

Make sure that My Network Places is enabled on the SMB server.
Make sure that the permission settings are properly configured.

Create a backup task

In Active Backup for Business, go to File Server > File Servers.
Select the file server that you want to back up and click Create Task.
Follow the steps in the wizard to configure your backup mode, the folders you want to transfer, and a retention policy.

Select your backup mode

Multi-versioned: Each time the task runs, a new version containing any changes made on the source will be copied in its entirety to a new folder on the destination.
Mirroring: Each time the task runs, any changes made in the source folder will be copied to the destination, overwriting the existing file and making the destination folder a complete mirror-copy of the source.
Incremental: Each time the task runs, newly added and modified files on the source will be copied to the destination, overwriting the previous version of the file.

Notes:

For Linux sources, block transfers can be configured later on in the setup.

Refer to the following table for more details about the backup file variations for each backup mode:

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Task settings
Indicate what you want to transfer using the following states:

Subordinate folders or files in this folder will not be backed up.

All subordinate folders and files in this folder will be backed up.

Only selected subordinate folders and files in this folder will be backed up.

All files in this folder, along with selected subordinate folders, will be backed up.

If you’re configuring rsync backup, you will have the option to configure the Bandwidth as well as enable compression and block transfer.
If you selected Multi-versioned as your backup mode, you will have the option to set up a Retention Policy to manage backup versions by automatically deleting unwanted versions to free up storage space.

Select a retention policy

You can choose to store all versions of a backup, limit the number of stored versions, or keep certain versions according to a schedule.
You can choose to set rules for keeping backup versions, such as to retain the latest version of each day, week, month, or year. You can edit the retention policy at Active
Backup for Business > File Server > Task List > Select the task > Edit > Retention > Advanced Retention policy > Set Rules.
Selecting the Keep only the latest … versions option will store a certain number of versions regardless of the time intervals set. If more than one backup version exists within a certain time range, only the latest one will be kept. For example, if you set a policy as Keep the latest version of the day for “1” day for a backup task that will run every hour, only the version backed up at 23:00 will be kept.
A version can meet more than one retention rule at a time. For example, a version can be retained by the weekly retention rule and the daily retention rule at the same time.
Advanced retention policy employs a Long-Term Retention Policy (GFS).

Notes:

Files cannot be backed up under the following circumstances:
- The file/folder path is longer than 4096 characters.
- The file/folder name is longer than 255 characters, is “.” or “..”, or contains @ActiveBackup or target.db.
- The file/folder is within an encrypted shared folder and has a name that exceeds 135 characters.
SMB backup does not support the backup of Microsoft accounts or junction points.
SMB backup supports the use of Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure data consistency. Windows VSS is supported on Windows Server 2012 and above. When VSS is enabled on the Windows server, Active Backup for Business can create a volume shadow copy of VSS-aware server applications that store data on remote SMB file shares.
Administrative shared folders (E.g. C$, D$) do not support Windows VSS by default.
Authentication by SSH key will require an SSH key. Supported key types include RSA2, DSA, ECDSA, and ED25519. RSA1 keys and SSH keys that require a passphrase are not supported.

Apply settings

Confirm your backup settings and click Apply. A pop-up window will appear.
Click Yes if you would like to run the backup immediately. If you want to run the task later on, go to the Task List, select the task, and click Back up.

Manage backup tasks
All existing tasks are displayed under Active Backup for Business > File Server > Task List.
Edit or delete backup tasks
To edit tasks individually or simultaneously, select one or several tasks (Ctrl + left click), and click Edit.
To delete backup tasks, select one or more tasks in the corresponding task list. Doing this will remove the backup tasks and their settings, but will not remove your backed up data.

Details
To view information on the Status and Logs for your task, such as the source, execution time, duration, and log time of backups, select your task and click Details.

Versions
To view information about backed up versions, such as the status and time of creation, select your task and click Version. You can also click the folder icon to browse your backed-up data.

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Product Restoration Guide

Recovery options
Granular (file or folder-level) restore: Choose a backup version, select files or folders for recovery in the Active Backup for Business Portal and automatically restore them to their original location, or download the data to a different device or location. You can also assign users restore or download permissions via Control Panel in DSM.

Restore file server data

In Active Backup for Business > File Server, select the task and click Open Restore Portal.
Under View role at the top of the page, select a user with the appropriate restoration privileges.
Under Task, confirm the source device to which or from which you want to restore files.
Select the folders or files that you want to restore.
Use the slider at the bottom of the page to select a backup version from which you wish to restore folders or files, then click through the folder structure in the file explorer to select the directory or file.
Choose if you want to Restore or Download the data. If you select Restore, your backup agent will download the files or folders and restore them to the specified location on your device. You can also choose if you want files with the same name to be skipped during the restoration by ticking the related checkbox. If you select Download, the selected files will be downloaded via your browser to your chosen download location.

You can view the progress of the restoration by clicking the Restore Task icon in the upper right-hand corner.

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Notes:

To learn how to only back up and restore Microsoft SQL or Exchange servers, refer to the respective tutorials:
- Back up and restore Microsoft SQL servers
- Back up and restore Microsoft Exchange servers

Best Practices

The following sections provide recommendations for how you can protect your backup data against loss by creating remote backup copies and relinking.

Maintain remote backup copies and relink
Active Backup for Business safely stores backup data from all of your devices on your Synology NAS. However, issues that occur on one device can affect an entire infrastructure.
Natural disaster, theft, or network issues can prevent you from retrieving your data or slow down the recovery process. Therefore, we strongly recommend you to keep remote copies of all of your backups on a different device and in a different location.
Keep in mind that you should always maintain three copies of your data (the original copy, a backup, and a copy of that backup in a different location). This is referred to as the 3 2 1 backup strategy. To make things easy, Synology NAS has everything you need to implement this strategy.

Create remote copies
The following two DSM applications can be used to copy your Active Backup for Business data and configurations from Synology NAS to other devices or the public cloud.

Snapshot Replication: This option is recommended if you have access to a secondary Synology NAS. You can replicate your ABB data and settings to another Synology NAS and quickly restart all of your ABB tasks on that device.
Hyper Backup: This option allows you to back up your ABB data and settings to other locations, such as portable drives, file servers, and public cloud storage. However, recovery requires you to first restore the backup to a functioning Synology NAS before relinking and restarting ABB tasks.

Relink
After creating a replication or backup task, it is important to make sure that you can successfully restore or relink your existing Active Backup for Business tasks and backup data, whether they exist on a secondary NAS, in public clouds, or other storage media.
For detailed instructions on how to back up and relink your Active Backup for Business data using Snapshot Replication and Hyper Backup, refer to the following tutorial:

How do I back up and relink Active Backup for Business data to a destination Synology NAS?
Make sure that your Synology NAS has 64-bit processors, is running DSM 6.1.7 or above, is running Active Backup for Business 2.0.4 or above, and has the necessary packages installed.
See the Environment section in the tutorial for more details.

Learn more

Related articles

Frequently asked questions about Active Backup for Business
How do I select a suitable NAS for running Active Backup for Business?
How do I back up individual files/folders on Windows PC and File Server using Active Backup for Business?
How to create backup tasks with compression or encryption settings for file servers
How many devices can I back up concurrently with Active Backup for Business?

Software specs
Refer to the Active Backup for Business software specifications to learn more about the package’s features, components, and limitations.

Other resources
For more step-by-step tutorials and visual information, feel free to also check out Synology’s YouTube channel. There, you can find related videos by searching for “Active Backup for Business”.

You can also find admin guides, brochures, technical specifications, user guides, white papers and more for Active Backup for Business in Synology Documentation.