[SOLVED] Help with backing up a NAS to another NAS.

[integraoligist]

Hi all,

For our shop we have a Synology 16tb NAS, it's a 4 bay with 4tb drives. This holds all our shop data and is accessed daily.

I want to have a backup of this whole NAS in another building just in case there is a disaster in the main building.

I'm looking at a WD Cloud with 2 bays, and 8tb drives for 16tb.

Will there be any issues having the WD system accessing the files on the Synology to mirror the system once a week? As I can't install backup software on the Synchrony to auto push the data to the WD because it's not a windows based system.

Thanks all.

 

[kanewolf]

Hi all,

For our shop we have a Synology 16tb NAS, it's a 4 bay with 4tb drives. This holds all our shop data and is accessed daily.

I want to have a backup of this whole NAS in another building just in case there is a disaster in the main building.

I'm looking at a WD Cloud with 2 bays, and 8tb drives for 16tb.

Will there be any issues having the WD system accessing the files on the Synology to mirror the system once a week? As I can't install backup software on the Synchrony to auto push the data to the WD because it's not a windows based system.

Thanks all.

I would get a second Synology. There is built-in functionally to easily sync and restore to another Synology.

 

[integraoligist]

Couple of things. I would strongly recommend against having a RAID 0 as your backup. It's just not safe enough. So are you saying that the Synology NAS is also a 16TB RAID 0? Or might it be a RAID 5 and therefore 12TB (ish) in size?

I am a data recovery bod rather than backup so someone else may want to chip in. But why can't you 'pull' the data to the new NAS over the network with software. I would also recommend a Cloud Backup if possible.

Yes the Synology NAS is 16tb Raid0. We're not concerned with that data getting corrupted or lost as much as the building itself, fire/water/electrical issues and physically destroying the NAS. This is why we're just looking to have a simple backup in a whole other building on the property.
I've used a WD Cloud device on Windows PCs before, it works perfectly however the backup software running is installed on those PCs as well. Seeing as you need to Login to the Synology to access the files, I'm not sure how exactly we'd setup the WD to login to the Synology to access the files to mirror.

I would get a second Synology. There is built-in functionally to easily sync and restore to another Synology.

Thats interesting, will there be any issues with new Synology units talking with older (about 8 years old) units?
I'd be looking at the DS220j then.
Thanks!

 

[kanewolf]

Yes the Synology NAS is 16tb Raid0. We're not concerned with that data getting corrupted or lost as much as the building itself, fire/water/electrical issues and physically destroying the NAS. This is why we're just looking to have a simple backup in a whole other building on the property.
I've used a WD Cloud device on Windows PCs before, it works perfectly however the backup software running is installed on those PCs as well. Seeing as you need to Login to the Synology to access the files, I'm not sure how exactly we'd setup the WD to login to the Synology to access the files to mirror.



Thats interesting, will there be any issues with new Synology units talking with older (about 8 years old) units?
I'd be looking at the DS220j then.
Thanks!

A DS220j is not 8 years old. The 20 in 220 is an indication of the model year. That is a 2020 model device. The J units are the lowest performance tier of Synology.
Since this is a work situation, do you have a Windows domain? If so, I would look at the "+" series of units like the DS220+ because they have the capabilities to join the Windows domain and use the domain accounts.

 

[kanewolf]

Just seems sensible to me that if you are buying a new unit, but one with at least some redundancy.

If they can live with the down time of a backup from yesterday and the restore time required when a disk fails, then they can choose to live dangerously. If it were me, I would not choose that implementation. Time is money in a commercial installation.

 

[integraoligist]

Correct the DS220j is new, that would be the new 2 bay unit for the other building as a backup.

This backup is just a worst case scenario if the main NAS gets destroyed. The "downtime" is not an issue, as it would be weeks before the building is operational again anyway. Their looking for simple cheap insurance, and just now decided to spend a few hundred $ on a simple backup... over the last 8 years they didnt want to spend anything, so this is a step up. It may not be up to par, but it's something.
And Cloud storage is not an option as everything has to stay on the LAN.

 

[USAFRet]

On the new WD Cloud thing, can you instantiate an FTP server?

I know for my QNAP, to push some or all of the contents to a different box, there are multiple options.
Synology probably has similar.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Hi all,

For our shop we have a Synology 16tb NAS, it's a 4 bay with 4tb drives. This holds all our shop data and is accessed daily.

I want to have a backup of this whole NAS in another building just in case there is a disaster in the main building.

I'm looking at a WD Cloud with 2 bays, and 8tb drives for 16tb.

Will there be any issues having the WD system accessing the files on the Synology to mirror the system once a week? As I can't install backup software on the Synchrony to auto push the data to the WD because it's not a windows based system.

Thanks all.

How is the Synology setup? Raid 0, 1, 10, 5? Or are they a drive pool as one big drive? Or are they individual drives.

Since you are looking for 16tb, I'm going to assume it's a drive pool as one big drive, or individual drives which is just asking for disaster. (Edit: I see RAID 0...that IS WORST CASE SCENARIO!) The likelihood of a second drive failure during a rebuild is actually considerably higher when trying to copy or rebuild arrays because the drive operates 24/7 with sustained reads and writes. As the drives are all of the same build and likely mfg date, that means they are likely close to failing around the same time. Those WD Cloud 2 bays also likely contain shingled drives which are horrible for rebuilds and regular read/write access. And when I say horrid, I mean HORRID. There was a whole class action built around the use of SMR in "NAS quality" drives where WD failed to disclose this fact to consumers.

While I applaud a use of an off-site backup, your backup plan needs work. I recommend you backup using an online backup service until you figure out how to do this properly. (Backblaze or Crashplan for example)

Personally if it were me for business purposes, I would use UNRAID or FreeNAS with device sync plugins that have fail over with backup and history copies (prevents ransomware), or use something like a crash plan plugin if you don't want to build 2 devices. I would then use a personal VPN on the second building so both buildings appear as 1 big network. It's about a months worth of education on learning how to do this.

You're likely looking at a $5K investment if I do it my way. BUT ask yourself this...How much will you lose if you do lose your drives? How long will your business be down? How long will your employees be twiddling their thumbs, or spending time trying to piece together what they have instead of processing real work? Goodness help you if it's your books.

Where I work, IT KNEW our code server was dying. They sat on their hands knowing it was a ticking time bomb. They let it fail. The only copies left were various states on our local computer. Tape backups were over a year old and this was unacceptable as building off this code base would break everyone. Hundreds of thousands of lines of code that has to be hand reconciled between 4 machines. It took over a month. That cost them over $30,000 for ignoring the issue. And the only reason we are still going is because our local machines had some copies. Some work including source changes history were irrevocably lost making tracking down errors difficult.

We have a MUCH more robust system with several layers of backup and security. (I obviously can't comment the exact nature to protect against hackers.) But an ounce of prevention and a small investment would have saved a lot of pain for everyone involved.