Small business Backup solution

Synology
,
1

Hello everyone,

Thanks @Will for the info and platform you provide.

I’m in the process of setting up a backup solution for a small business. I am looking at the RS822+ I really need the rack mounted device, but Amazon is offering the DS1522+ for a very cheap price… should the price difference be considered or just get exactly what I need? What setup do you guys recommend for a small business (not very much to backup) SSD drives or no? which version of RAID or SHR? Sorry for the newbie questions, just curious what others recommend.

** No VM’s to back up.

Thanks.

2

Haven’t used any Synology NAS, just looking at the specs:

How much does any NAS downtime cost the business?

RS822+ uses a standard power supply cable.
RS822RP+ has a redundant power supply (two in total).

DS1522+ uses a Synology power adapter - worth checking how long it takes for you to order and get a spare one and how much it costs. Placing the AC/DC converter outside the case allows for a smaller case without the need for an extra fan to cool the power supply. And, ideally, you should be able to buy a spare one cheaply and easily. In my country (Serbia), as far as I know, that is not the case (I am also considering to buy a DS1522+).

Relja

3

A rack mount or desktop model does not matter for backup. Just buy what suits you best. Do not use SSD, it is a waist of money for backup. RAID type SHR or RAID 5 will do unless you have 6 or more disks, where I would prefer SHR2 or RAID 6 for 2-disk fault tolerance.

1 Like
4

Thanks for the reply. After thinking, I agree that a rackmount model is not necessarily needed in my situation. Question about SHR… If a drive does fail is the “rebuild” time slow? About the same as RAID5?

Thanks again.

5

Depending on the size of the storage medium, system load, etc., it takes several hours to several days in both cases. If the hard disks all have the same size, then according to my thoughts the time is similar.

6

Rebuild times for SHR will be the same as RAID5 (assuming all same drive size)

In general nothing to worry about, especially for a backup system

7

The DS1522+ is a better unit except for rack mount! Would not worry about it!

1 Like
8

Thanks for the reply, I will go with the DS1522+ If I purchased the RS822+ I was going to upgrade the RAM, for some reason it comes with only 2GB which I think is odd.

9

I have setup DS1522+ for several smallish customers and can confirm that this model is an excellent choice.

But I also would like to share some lessons learned:

  • Max out the drives - 5* 16/18/20 TB - and create only 1 volume SHR1 BTRFS

  • Activate notification service as ABB events are not tracked properly with Active Insight or SNMP

  • Either the devices is running ActiveBackupforBusiness or something else. Do not run additional applications - especially file server. In a disaster recovery scenario you do not want to have other services/applications between your legs.

  • A box with content exclusive to the backup is also “portable” and can stored in a fire safe location outside of the “server room”

  • Actively restore your backups with Virtual Machine Manager to see if the boot loaders work. If the machines do not boot with VMM any bare metal recovery will be difficult. (Write down if the boot requires UEFI or CSM/LEGACY settings in the bios). This will safe you hours of restore time. You can automate this by using the “verify backup” option in the task settings.

  • “Verify backup” is your friend. Help it by maxing out RAM

  • If you plan for off-site backups you could define a 2nd local storage folder and define (additional) backup tasks with lower frequency and use Snapshot replication via VPN to sync with a 2nd NAS (any old + models, also very old used models, are perfect). For off-site you need the lower job frequency to be absolutely sure that the sync jobs can actually finish.

  • You can define local DSM users (e.g. ABBServer and ABB02Workstation, member of user group) and define task templates specifically assigned to each user. When you setup the windows clients you can easy select the backup template by entering the related DSM user)

IMPORTANT for databases and ActiveDirectory

  • Do not trust ABB to fully restore Databases as restoring RAM can be tricky. Do additional backups (only of the DB, not the whole computer) with database backup tools (or have a script within the database to do a backup)

  • With Windows Domain Servers install the role “server backup” and create a windows task to periodically write a backup to a shared folder on the NAS. The build in windows backup has the extremely powerful “SYSTEM BACKUP” feature that allows to restore only the AD on a new Windows Server. As this backup can not run versioning on network shares you want this share to be on your NAS with BTFRS Snapshotting active. This allows to (Step1) select the snapshot with the last working ActiveDirectory and (Step2) restore the AD on a different machine allowing you to (Step3) replace your PDC with the new machine.

** When your AD is corrupt this is an EXTREME LIFE SAVER. **

2 Likes
10

Thank you, very informative! I’m going with the DS1522+ I’m definitely interested in off site back ups, replicating with another NAS. I may have a few questions when I get to that point.

Thank you all for the info!