Task List
In Task List, you can create and manage backup tasks and view the detailed statistics and backup versions of each backup task. Before creating a backup task for your device, you need to connect your device to Synology NAS with Synology Active Backup for Business Agent. For more information on how to add the device, please refer to the Windows and Linux articles.
To create a backup task:
Once the agent is installed on the physical server already connected to Synology NAS, a backup task will be created according to the matched template. You can also create more than one backup task for each device.
- Do either of the following to start the backup creation wizard:
- Go to Physical Server > Linux or Windows, select a device you want to back up, and click Create Task.
- Go to Physical Server > Task List and click Create.
- Select Target Device:
This step only appears if no device is selected before you click Create. A list of physical servers already connected to the server will be displayed in this step.
- Configure Task Settings::
- Task name: Configure the name of the task. It is suggested to have a naming pattern for faster filter/search for the task.
- Source type: The following types of source are supported.
- Entire device: The entire personal computer including the device settings, applications, and all the files will be backed up in this mode.
- Backup external hard drive: You can choose to back up the entire device including the external hard drive. This option is only available for Windows devices.
- System volume:
- Windows: The system volumes including data and Windows system data, such as boot partition, system partition, recovery partition, WinRE Tools (GPT), and system reserved partition (MBR) will be backed up.
- Linux: The system volumes including data and Linux system data, such as "/", "/boot", or swap partition will be backed up.
- Customized volume: Click Select then choose the target volume you wish to protect.
- Windows: Floppy drives, thumb drives, or flash card readers are not supported. Only external hard drive is supported.
- Linux: Backing up external devices is not supported.
- Data transfer settings: The following task settings can be configured in this step.
- Enable Data Transfer Compression: Compress data during transmission to reduce transferred data size.
- Enable Data Transfer Encryption: Encrypt data during transmission to enhance data security.
- Enable bandwidth consumption limit: Limit the data transfer rate from your computer.
- Computer power settings:
- Shut down computer after scheduled backup finishes: The computer will shut down after a scheduled backup is done. If the scheduled backup is canceled, the computer will not shut down.
- Prevent computer from sleeping when backing up: The option will not work if you make your computer sleep from the Start menu or by pressing the power button.
- Wake computer from sleep to run scheduled backup: Wake the computer from sleep mode before running a scheduled backup.
- Backup Destination:
Select a shared folder in Btrfs file system as the backup destination. During the package installation, the Btrfs shared folder "ActiveBackupforBusiness" will be created automatically.
- 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: Compress data to save more storage at the backup destination.
- Enable encryption at backup destination: Encrypt data to enhance data security at the backup destination.
Note:
- If you have also configured traffic throttling on the Settings page, the actual data transmission rate will depend on distributed bandwidth.
- If your device is Modern Standby-capable, Active Backup for Business cannot wake the device from sleep to perform backups due to the operating system's limitations.
- 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.
- Configure advanced settings:
- Windows:
- Enable application-aware backup: Performs an application-aware backup to ensure application data is consistent.
- 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.
- Enable pre/post script: Enable this option to execute the selected scripts before and after taking snapshots of the device. Please select .bat files less than 32 KB. Tick Successful script execution required to continue if you wish to stop the backup process when the script fails to be executed.
- Linux:
- 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.
- Enable pre/post script: Enable this option to execute the selected scripts before and after taking snapshots of the device. Please select .sh files less than 32 KB. Tick Successful script execution required to continue if you wish to stop the backup process when the script fails to be executed.
Note:
- 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.
- Schedule Backup Task:
- Manual backup: Manual backup means one-time-only backup. After creating a backup task, you can run the task by choosing to back up immediately in the last step or selecting the task then Back up in the Task List tab.
- 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 be displayed on the time slot since the restore points of manual backup are not predictable.
- Select 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.

- Backup now:
The wizard allows an immediate backup regardless of the schedule.
Note:
- Windows
- To streamline the backup process, Changed Block Tracking (CBT) technology is adopted for backup of physical servers by default. To ensure CBT is functioning properly, 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 uses VSS to take snapshots for devices and identify the changed block between snapshots. As a Microsoft's built-in technology, VSS 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 Synology NAS. In this way, you can save the bandwidth resources and speed up the backup process.
- The first backup of each backup task will be a full backup, and CBT technology will not be applied to the first backup. From the second backup, Active Backup for Business will only conduct incremental backup unless the VSS service of the device is turned off.
- Linux
- CBT (Changed Block Tracking) is mainly supported by the snapshot driver which was also installed when the installer was installed on your device. The snapshot driver will record the difference between the previous backup and the current backup, helping the device only transfer the changed block from the target device to the Synology NAS to save bandwidth and reach better backup performance.
To edit one or more backup tasks:
After creating the backup task, you can edit (or batch edit) the tasks. Except for backup destination, most of the settings can be modified. Please note that, when batch editing the tasks, the task name and the destination cannot be changed.
- Go to Task List.
- Select a task you wish to edit and click Edit. You can also edit tasks in batch by pressing Ctrl when selecting multiple tasks, and then click Edit.
- Click OK after editing the settings.
Note:
- When batch editing the tasks, please tick the checkbox of the section which you wish to modify to double check the settings. If the checkboxes are not ticked when you click OK, the options will remain unchanged.
To run a backup task:
You can run an immediate backup regardless of the schedule in Task List.
- Select the backup task you wish to run.
- Click Back up.
- The system will start to back up your device according to the task settings.
To cancel a backup task:
You can cancel an ongoing backup task in Task List.
- Select the ongoing backup task you wish to cancel.
- Click Cancel and the system will cancel the selected backup task.
To delete one or more backup tasks:
Go to Task List to select the task, and then click Delete. After confirming the action, the selected task will be removed and the backed up data will be deleted from the destination.
The device would 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 check the detailed information of a backup task:
In Task List, select the backup task you wish to view more information on and click Details. The following information will be displayed:
- Status
- Status: Complete, failed, or partially complete, suggesting the current status of the backup task.
- Source: All backed-up virtual machines in the task.
- Destination: Backup destination of the stored data.
- Execution time: Last backup time of the task.
- Transferred size: Volume of data transferred from the source side. The displayed number may be different from the actual used storage space due to deduplication.
- Duration: Elapsed time of the backup task.
- Log
- Type: The category that the log belongs to, information / warning / error, suggesting the severity level of the log.
- Time: The time of each log.
- Event: The backup process of each task or encountered issues.
To browse or delete backup versions of a backup task:
- In Task List, select the desired backup task.
- Click Version to browse the backup versions.
- If you wish to delete a backup version, please select the version and click the
icon.