To backup personal computers, Synology Active Backup for Business Agent is required to be installed on the target personal computers. You can configure the backup tasks for personal computers on DSM. There are three backup types to protect your personal computers: bare-metal, system volume, and customized volumes.
Once the agent is installed on the personal computer and the personal computer is connected to the server, a backup task of the connected server will be created according to the matched template. It also supports creating more than one backup task to each device. To create a new task of a specific device: Go to PC, you can either start from the device view, select the target device, and then click Create to enter the task creation wizard, or go to Task List > Create, and decide which device you wish to protect later in the task creation wizard.
Task name: Configure the name of the task. It is suggested to have a naming pattern for faster filter/search for the task.
This step only appears if no device is selected before clicking Create. A list of personal computers that have been connected to the server will be shown in this step.
During package installation, a Btrfs shared folder - ActiveBackupforBusiness will be created automatically. Only Btrfs shared folder can be selected as the backup destination on the NAS.
Three types of source are supported:
Task Settings: The source data can be compressed and encrypted when transferring according to the task settings. Click Task Settings and configure your preference.
In this step, you can choose either one of the following retention policy to apply to the created task:
You need to set at least one policy if you check Apply the following methods.
Keep only the latest versions means the maximum number of the recent versions you may keep. The exceeding versions will be rotated based on the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention policy or will be deleted when no other retention policy is configured.
Synology employs the Grandfather-Father-Son (GFS) retention policy. You can configure the time ranges of backup versions to be retained for the following time ranges respectively: daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly. If more than one backup version exists within a 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 the backup task which will be run every hour per day, only the version backed up at 23:00 will be kept.
Please note that every configured policy overlaps with each other. For example, if you would like to set the policy as keeping daily backup versions in the first three months, weekly backup versions in the second three months, and monthly backup versions in the third three months. Please tick the checkboxes and insert the numbers as the below picture displays.
The duration of 24 weeks includes the previous daily backup versions of 90 days, and the first weekly backup will be equal to the seventh daily backup. The duration of 9 months also includes the previous weekly backup versions of 24 weeks and daily backup versions of 90 days, and the first monthly backup will be equal to the fourth weekly backup.
The wizard allows an immediate backup regardless of the schedule.
It supports both editing tasks individually and in batch. Other than backup destination, most of the settings can be modified. However, in batch edit, the task name as well as the destination cannot be changed.
To avoid mistakenly change the settings that varied across different tasks, the settings are set to remain as they are by default. Tick the checkbox of the section that you wish to change when batch editing is required.
Go to Task List to select the task, and then click Delete. After confirming the action, the selected task will be removed while the data will remain in the backed up destination.
The device would still remain connected to the server even when no task attached to it. This device can always be found on the Device List, and you can create a task for the device at any time.
To streamline the backup process, Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology is adopted when backing up personal computers by default. To ensure CBT is functioning well, please make sure Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) on each protected device has been turned on.
The CBT technology adopted in Active Backup for Business leverages VSS to take snapshots for devices and identify the changed block between snapshots. VSS belongs to Microsoft's built-in technology, and thus it can avoid performance interference while Active Backup for Business is performing the CBT technology. After the first full backup, the CBT technology allows each device to transfer only the changed block to your NAS. Therefore, it helps you to save the bandwidth resource and speeds up the process of backing up.
Agent can be updated by installing a newer installer directly on the device. To remotely update the agent, administrators can install the newer agent on multiple devices with the existing Microsoft Windows Active Directory Domain Services or go to DSM > Active Backup for Business. You can follow the below instructions to update the agent from Active Backup for Business:
cp /[volume_where_you_uploaded_the_installer_to]/[name_of_the_folder_where_you_uploaded_installer_to]/[installer_name]/[volume_where_you_install_Active_Backup_for_Business]/\@tmp/For example, the location of the installer is /volume1/Files/Synology Active Backup for Business Agent-2.0.4-0621-x64.msi and Active Backup for Business is installed on volume1. The command would be:
cp /[volume1]/[Files]/[Synology Active Backup for Business Agent-2.0.4-0621-x64.msi]/[volume1]/\@tmp/
You may change the device type and have a personal computer protected as a physical server when the personal computer needs to be backed up and perform Instant Restore to VMware or Instant Restore to Synology Virtual Machine Manager (VMM).
You can download Synology Active Backup for Business Recovery Media Creator in Download Center.