Synology Active Backup for Business setup and testing

[@YouAreOnTheWoodway]

I'm already using ABB, but i've never done a full restore. Thanks for the demonstration! Damn that's easy!

[@GiovanniStefani]

We do this all the time, and your video is great explaining the basic backup/restore concept, so Cody, here's your challenge 😉. You have two of these DS1631xs+ (one at your office and one in a datacenter). You backup locally and then replicate (snapshot replication) to the DC (datacenter). Your office DS1631xs+ crashes and you want to recover from the datacenter using failover. This is what ABB is supposed to be about. I just sold 2 DS1823xs+ to a customer who is running 7 servers (VMWare/vCenter). I'm able to backup using ABB locally and then replicate to the other, but when you go to recover, all failover options are greyed out. I deal with Veeam and Zerto on our high-end customers and they just work.

[@nobznezz]

Dude, I tried really hard to follow you but you spoke like you were talking to someone who already know how to do what you were doing. For future reference, slow your pace down and make an effort to explain what you're doing to help those of us who are trying to learn. Appreciate the effort, keep it up.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Thanks for the comment and suggestions will keep it in mind for future videos. If you’re trying to learn more about Synology search for spacerexwill he does a lot of video on Synology

[@Funkmastersquirrel]

I just took over as a solo IT for a small business and was considering doing this as well but with QNAP but you have me rethinking it.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

QNAP has had a lot of security issues in the past

[@Funkmastersquirrel]

@@MactelecomNetworks They did and totally purged them from my brain but came across some of their newer products and reviews and it seems they got it together now. Plus, I'm sure Synology has this but to boost performance with an nvme is pretty damn cool.

[@Lonestar101]

Thanks for explaining Active Backup for Business. I'd like to see a video about the differences between Active Backup and Hyper Backup, which I'm currently using.

[@richardturkson5916]

Love ABB and another great detailed video. The other use case where ABB is useful is when the hard crushes and all data is lost. Once the hard drive is replaced, you can return a computer to current state prior to the crush.

[@apristinemadani]

Great video... Question. Towards the end where you use the USB recovery media to get access to your full backup on the Synology NAS ... I am wondering if when you boot into that rescue media (USB) from outside windows (BIOS area).... Would it have access to Internet (and network connectivity) by the software that is installed on the rescue media? Otherwise I don't see how you can access the Synology Servers to download the full image backup of your laptop that you recovered in full. Thanks if you can let me know!

[@kjbathe]

Great video. Quick, dirty, to the point. Thank you.

[@THETIESKY]

how about the sign ins for say like adobe, steam etc. did you have to relog after the restore. want to use this to transfer everything to new pc and may have forgotten a few logins. very helpful guide thanks.

[@boomboom9244]

Good Video, May I know how can you create the USB disk?

[@madden4000]

I've been using Synology ABB for over a year. I love the product. Backed up a few computers that aren't on my physical network as well. I have yet to try the agent on my M1 mac.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

I need to try it remote didn't even know that was possible

[@QuikTechSolutions]

Good video Cody! ABB for Mac works pretty much the same with the exception of the “Bare Metal Restore” option. Only File/Folder restores are available at this time. Synology will be adding Bare Metal Restore for Mac in future releases.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Thanks Tony :) I may have to buy my self one of the new macs

[@QuikTechSolutions]

@@MactelecomNetworks until then, if anyone is interested in seeing the process on a Mac, feel free to point them to my vid. Have a great day.

[@ShinyTechThings]

I've been using ABB for years, works great for being free but it does have some caveats especially with cloned Windows VM's. Older hypervisors aren;t always supported but a physical backup inside of the VM instead of using the hypervisor will still work.

[@andrewenglish3810]

Cody, can you select where to save the backups on your NAS? You didn't mention or show this in your video. :)

[@dividedsky]

When it comes to logging into the Synology from the ABB client, should I just use a full admin-level account? Or would it be better to make a special user account for only Synology ABB clients? And if so, what privileges are needed?

[@chrisp7442]

Thanks, Cody. Does ABB created a mounted share or is your backup destination secure from being encrypted behind your back if your source machine gets compromised? 🍻

[@ryanmiller6887]

Cody, Great videos, fill your channel with Unifi and Synology stuff. Keep the synology videos comin. 100 thousand baby!!!

[@YanksOnTop]

How would you use this to backup PCs that are on different subnets? 🤔 I have PCs that are on 192.168.10.0 and 192.168.20.0 that I would like to back up to a NAS thats on 192.168.1.0. How would you set that up in a unifi network? Great video btw.

[@jobtechnologies3492]

ABB can also test your backups! You would need a powerful enough synology to do it. Only think I don’t like is that it doesn’t take a screen shot to let you know if it failed or not. Just puts it in an mp4 file with the backup

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Interesting I didnt know that. Is that built into the agent?

[@jobtechnologies3492]

@@MactelecomNetworks so I just looked, it’s only when you backup Virtual Machines. In the task edit page under general. Needs to have VMM installed on the synology too. I’m guessing they’ll come out with it for PCs eventually

[@yagPL]

Hey. You need also remember to forward TCP port 5510 on your router in order to connect ABB to NAS. Without that I received error although all connection info was correct.

[@neelshah2949]

Does Active Backup for Business have email notification feature. For each successful or failure backup email notification.

[@mishalalrefai8737]

Thank you, great video.

[@HowdySBC]

Can we spin up a computer backup as a vm on the synology itself?

[@andrewelder2739]

This is very helpful, but I'm stuck on Step 1: I don't see "Active Backup" in the package center. How do I go about getting that to appear?

[@FawazHarris]

HI... how do I run / test a VM from Synology Active Backup for Business - on the SYNOLOGY NAS - ON VMM ?

[@CheekyMiner]

So if you have the DS1621 on the network but its not part of the domain, must it join the domain if you want to backup shared folders on the AD server? It won't work if the NAS is using the default WORKGROUP and you want to access the server shares correct.

[@VladPustai]

Amazing tutorial!!! Thank you!

[@cenk82]

Hi, do you have any solution for the "partially completed" problem of ABB? Thanks.

[@2dfx]

If I just wanted to use my Synology NAS to automatically backup say, my mother and father's computers, would ABB be the best choice? Or is the built in one good enough?

[@panman2632]

I’ve been using “Synology drive” for backing up my PC, any reason I should choose this over Synology drive? Basic usage is just for my laptop.

[@FrankOmelWernby]

Hi please make a video on how to make af recovery media with correct drivers as wifi and mouse is not working on my lenovo laptop V340 - please show how to solve this problem

[@yourpcmd]

To add, Synology Active Backup for Business can be used for offsite computers as well.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Sweet ill have to try it out

[@kevinjaffe237]

I can't seem to get my remote machines to connect and see the server. I am using the quick connect but its not working. Suggestions?

[@cenk82]

Hi, thank you for the explanations. What I understand for restoring a PC is that 1- Bakcup to synology and create a bootable USB when everything is normal. 2- Your PC crashed or you just want to restore the entire PC etc. 3- Re-install Windows + make the connections to the synology (WIFI or LAN connection) 4- Only after re-installing a fresh copy of Windows, you can use your bootable USB as shown in this video explanation. Kind regards.

[@gerhard.seemueller]

Steps 3 and 4 are not necessary. The system was only reinstalled to simulate a data loss.

[@socratesa2536]

Treat us like we're 5. When you put the DNS server name, which one do I use? To connect to the synology? If I don't have one and I'm using an IP server address instead, where do I get that IP if I don't know it? etc. Downloading the app and following the instructions is not the hard part and is not why people look up instructions, they are clueless when it gets to the networking portion and we need our hand held there.

[@thepr0m3th3an]

where do you find the server address?

[@damd6792]

Hi! Thank you for the video. Only Thing that im be sad about client backup, ACTUALLY you cant do a bare metal restore to an Harddisk that ist is smaller as the one youve backuped. Cause it cant modify the target partition size to restore hdd. That is known by Synology in there KB´s, and ive made a ticket for a feature request. If that will be fixed, its great and can replace a freee veeam agent on the clients. Sry about my bad english. Greeting from Germany.

[@SAPCDTECH]

not working if your ext file format?

[@kjbathe]

Correct. You need to update to BTRFS. That's a chore and video of its own. :)

[@bisht231]

Hi Dear, Please help My laptop doesn't have a boot option from USB (in BIOS). It's a Lenovo V14.

[@online_now6834]

this should be enabled for ALL synology models-

[@AdrianSchwartzmann]

This isn't available on all Synology NASs. For example the DD220j can't run active backup for business. It looks like any NAS with and x86 CPU can run ABFB but ARM cpus aren't supported.

[@debatts]

Not working because I use ext4 volume. Any suggestions guys?

[@ifneeded1]

2 Advanced tips: 1) Set a dedicated certificate for ABB that doesn't expire, or else the clients will log out every once in a while. It's a setting in ABB. 2) ABB depends on VSS, so if you have an important Windows PC that usually gets hung up waiting to install windows updates, it's not a good solution, since the backups will fail until the PC is rebooted to complete the updates. Other tools such as msp360 will not depend on VSS so they work every time.

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Good tips. I have a cert need to check the expiration though :)

[@ifneeded1]

@@MactelecomNetworks in the settings for ABB you should see an option for enabling a dedicated certificate; I believe that it's a 10 year term.

[@ronm6585]

Thanks.

[@ph4se2]

VEEAM has something similar that is free and can target any SMB share called VEEAM agent. Using it to backup my windows and ubuntu machines.

[@Revoc]

I recent use this method and tried recovering computer using the backup. I pointed it at my 1 TB m.2 SSD to find out that my 500 gig m.2 SSD was overwritten. I thought it was my mistake and I clicked the wrong drive. But then I noticed my m.2 1 terabyte drive in drive manager was now named 500 GB. So something weird happened so be cautious

[@MactelecomNetworks]

Good to know thank you

[@nokiasix2759]

... "...and then you enter username and password..." ??? what username/password? did you create a special user for backup or you are using admin credentials or what?? this is very important...

[@leftywhat]

I'm guessing if a laptop was stolen and you bought an entire new laptop, I'm guessing using the "recovery wizard" wouldn't work, as I assume its recovering all drivers etc?

[@PowerUsr1]

I do appreciate the numerous ways of performing a backup but its confusing. So there is Cloud Sync, HyperBackup and Active Backup. They technically all do the same thing of backing up your NAS. Now its details. Active Backup can back up computers. HyperBackup and Cloud Sync can back up to cloud providers but apparently Cloud Sync has more options. Again, this is confusing.

[@asus12351]

I bought a Synology NAS to get this functionality, only to find out this particular software is only available on certain models. So, be sure to check your model before you purchase a Synology. I don't hear anyone talk about this so be warned.

[@ahmedghoraba2153]

Funny how mactelecoms doesn't have a mac

[@Haphazardhero]

Doesn’t have a Mac… Channel name starts with Mac. I wonder how often this confuses people. 😂

[@MactelecomNetworks]

LOL my last name starts with Mac

[@Haphazardhero]

@@MactelecomNetworks I figured it out pretty quickly and love your content just thought it was a funny thing 😃