Backup
To back up virtual machines, you must configure a backup task to define how, where, and when to back up the virtual machine data. A backup task can be used to process one virtual machine 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
- Before You Start
- Launch the Backup Wizard
- Backup Wizard
Before You Start
Make sure of the following before adding a hypervisor or virtual machine to Active Backup for Business:
- There is at least 8 GB of free space both on the backup destination and on the volume where the package is installed.
To add a hypervisor:
- Click Manage Hypervisor > Add.
- Fill in the server address and account information.
Note:
- Adding hypervisors with their IPv6 addresses is not supported.
Apart from adding VMware vSphere, you can also edit or delete the vCenter Server or vSphere Hypervisor (ESX/ESXi) in Manage Hypervisor:
- Edit: Select the existing servers and change the account names and passwords.
- Delete: Delete the servers that are not needed. If there are protected virtual machines in current backup tasks, you need to delete those tasks in order to delete the servers.
Launch the Backup Wizard
You can do any of the following to launch the backup wizard:
- Go to Active Backup for Business > Virtual Machine > VMware vSphere and single select a virtual machine or press shift or ctrl and left click to select multiple virtual machines that you want to back up. Click Create Task to launch the backup wizard.
- Go to Active Backup for Business > Virtual Machine > VMware vSphere, and click Create Task to launch the backup wizard.
- Go to Active Backup for Business > Virtual Machine > Task, and click Create > vSphere task to launch the backup wizard.
Backup Wizard
To select backup destination and virtual machines:
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 virtual machines for this backup task. Please note that a Btrfs shared folder "ActiveBackupforBusiness" will be created in your Synology NAS automatically after the installation of Active Backup for Business.
Note:
- If you have already selected a virtual machine in the VMware vSphere tab, the selected virtual machine will be automatically displayed in this step.
To configure backup destination settings:
When creating the first task in a backup destination, you can configure compression and encryption settings of the backup destination in this step.
- Enable compression at backup destination: Compresses data to save more storage at the backup destination.
- Enable encryption at backup destination: Encrypts data to enhance data security at the backup destination.
Note:
- The compression and encryption settings of a backup destination are not changeable after the first backup task is created. If you wish to use different settings for future tasks, please create a task in a new destination.
- Backup verification is not supported when compression or encryption at backup destination is enabled.
- Instant Restore to Microsoft Hyper-V or Synology Virtual Machine Manager is not supported when compression or encryption at backup destination is enabled.
To configure task settings:
- Maximum quantity of concurrent backup device(s): Configure the number of concurrent backed up devices. The maximum number of backed up virtual machines varies depending on RAM capacity.
- Enable Changed Block Tracking: Only transfers the blocks that have changed since the last backup and significantly reduce the transferred data size.
- Enable application-aware backup: Performs an application-aware backup to ensure application data is consistent. Please note that this feature leverages VMware Tools and Microsoft's Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to ensure the consistency of the backed up data for Linux and Windows virtual machines. Therefore, the latest version of VMware Tools must be installed, and the Windows virtual machines with the support for VSS is required.
- Enable data transfer compression: Compresses data during transmission to reduce transferred data size.
- Enable data transfer encryption: Encrypts data during transmission to enhance data security.
- Enable VMware vSphere datastore usage detection: Since taking snapshots may require additional space on the host datastore, insufficient space on the datastore may cause the suspension of virtual machine and data loss. By enabling this feature, the backup task will fail when the host datastore is lower than the certain percentage you have set.
- Enable backup verification: To enhance backup reliability, Synology Active Backup for Business integrates with Synology Virtual Machine Manager to verify the backups. After the device is backed up, the system will boot up the backed up device on Synology Virtual Machine Manager and take a video of the process at the same time. A preview of the video along with a notification email will be sent for you to ensure the backup device can be booted up properly.
- Take livevideo for … sec.: Specify the duration of the video according to your needs. The video will be played at 3x speed.
- Advanced settings: Set up the script and credential for individual virtual machines.
- Select single virtual machine or shift + left click to multi-select virtual machines to specify the script / credential settings for virtual machines.
- Click Script to browse the script executed in the guest OS and specify the script processing mode.
- Required successful processing: The virtual machine backup process will stop if the script failed to be executed.
- Ignore script execution failure and continue the VM backup: The virtual machine backup process will continue even if the script failed to be executed.
- Click Credential to specify the username and password for individual virtual machines.
Note:
- Active Backup for Business 2.2.0 and above versions support concurrently backing up 10 file servers. For personal computers, physical servers, and virtual machines, the maximum number for concurrent backups can be up to 50. The actual number varies by RAM capacity:
- Less than 8 GB: 10
- Between 8 GB and 31 GB: 30
- 32 GB and more: 50
- By setting up the script and enabling the virtual machine script execution, the credential of virtual machine is required. An error message will be displayed if the credential is missing.
- VMware Tools is required to be installed to execute a pre-post script.
- For free ESXi, CBT is required to be manually enabled. Please refer to this article for more information on how to manually enable CBT.
- The first backup of each task will be a full backup, and Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology will not apply. Active Backup for Business can conduct incremental backups from the second backup only if no snapshots are being taken by any other applications on the virtual machine.
- Data transfer compression cannot be enabled for versions below vSphere 5.1 because of VMware limitations.
- To ensure Backup Verification can be performed properly, please check the followings:
- Synology Virtual Machine Manager 2.3 or above version is installed.
- At least 3 GB memory on your Synology NAS is required for Synology Virtual Machine Manager to boot up the backed up device. Please refer to this article for more information.
- The cluster of Synology Virtual Machine Manager and Active Backup for Business backup destination are on the same volume.
- Your Synology NAS needs to be connected to the Internet to activate h.264 video codec if codec has never been activated on your Synology NAS before.
To check the services on virtual machines:
To ensure a successful backup, the system will check if the services on your hosts are correctly configured. If the services are not correctly configured, please refer to this article to enable the required services.
To set the backup schedule:
You may set up the backup schedule based on your backup policy.
- Manual Backup: A backup task will only be performed when Backup is clicked manually. No scheduled backup will be performed.
- Scheduled Backup: Define the desired backup schedule to daily or only on specific days. The task can run once a day or once an hour according to the settings. The backup task will be started when it is the set point of time on the defined days. For example, when the schedule is set as Run on: Wednesday and Saturday, Repeat type: Hourly, and Start at: 03:00, the task will start from 03:00 on Wednesday and Saturday each week and repeat running every hour until the end of these two days.
- Only run backup tasks within the allowed backup windows: Click Configure Backup Window to specify the time when the backup task is allowed or forbidden to be run in order to maintain the operational efficiency of the backup source device. Only the restore points scheduled by time will display on the time slot since the restore points of manual backup are not predictable.
To set the retention policy:
In this step, you can choose either one of the following retention policy to apply to the created task:
- Keep all versions: All the backed-up versions will be preserved.
- Apply the following methods:
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.

To configure privilege settings:
Check the user/group to whom you wish to grant the privilege for performing Guest Files (Windows / Linux) Restore for the task and browsing the backup versions of the 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 or after the creation of the backup task.
Note:
- Only administrators users are allowed to perform Instant Restore and Full Virtual Machine Restore for virtual machine backup tasks. Other users who are enabled in this step can only perform Guest Files (Windows / Linux) Restore from Active Backup for Business Portal.
- By default, the administrators group/users are eligible to restore the backup task.
To apply settings and back up the task:
- Confirm all the backup settings from the backup summary, and click Apply.
- Click Yes if you would like to run the backup immediately. If you do not wish the task to be executed immediately, please click No. You can go to the Task List tab, select the task, and click Back up later when you want to run the task.