Create Backup Task

To back up VMs, you must configure a backup task to define how, where, and when to back up the VM data. A backup task can be used to process one VM or more. You can configure a backup task and start it immediately or save the task and run it later. This section will guide you through how to create backup tasks step by step.

Contents

  1. Before You Start
  2. Launch the Backup Wizard
  3. Backup Wizard

Before You Start

Before you start, please check if there are existing VMs. If not, please follow the steps below to add the vCenter Server or vSphere Hypervisor (ESX / ESXi) to have VMs available.

  1. Click Manage VMware vSphere > Add to connect to VMware vSphere.
  2. Fill in the server address and account information to connect to VMware vSphere.

Note: The storage space of the backup destination and the volume where the package is installed must be at least 8GB to perform a backup task.

Apart from adding VMware vSphere, you can also edit or delete the vCenter Server or vSphere Hypervisor (ESX / ESXi) in Manage VMware vSphere:

Launch the Backup Wizard

Backup Wizard

To select backup destination and VMs:

After the backup wizard has been launched, select a shared folder in the Btrfs file system as the backup destination. Then, specify the backup task name, and select the VMs for this backup task.

Note:

If you have already selected a VM in the Virtual Machine tab, the selected VM will be automatically displayed in this step.

To configure task settings:

Note:

  1. By setting up the script and enabling the VM script execution, the credential of VM is required. An error message will be displayed if the credential is missing.
  2. VMware Tool is required to be installed to execute a pre-post script.
  3. For free ESXi, CBT is required to be manually enabled.  
  4. Synology Virtual Machine Manager is required to be installed to enable backup verification.
  5. Data transfer compression cannot be enabled for versions below vSphere 5.1 because of VMware limitations.

To set the backup schedule:

To set the retention policy:

In this step, you can choose either one of the following retention policy to apply to the created task:

To configure privilege settings:

Privilege settings are configurable when creating a backup task. To ensure that only eligible users can have access to restore backed-up files and versions of the backup task, privilege settings can be configured during task creation. You can always edit the task to change the privilege settings.

Check the user/group that can browse and restore backed-up versions of the task.

Administrators group/users are default eligible to restore the backup task.

To apply settings and back up the task:

    After configuring all the backup settings, a backup summary will be displayed. Please follow the instructions below to finalize the backup after confirming your settings:

  1. Click Apply to create the backup task and a pop-up window will appear.
  2. Click Yes if you would like to run the backup immediately, or you may click Backup on the task list if you want to run the task afterward.