Backups

[netsol]

We have a RAID server that is backed up to a cloud account daily.

i actually back mine up twice a week.
we do very few transactions

my largest client "snapshots" data 4 times a day.
they generate approx 600-1000 invoices daily

that is the big question, how long would it take to reconstruct the days orders (if there is a way to reconstruct them)


everyone's needs are unique

 

[CanuckSigns]

I have 2 synology NAS set up. one at the shop and one at home. I Manually sync them once per week. (no auto sync or any kind of link between them for security redundancy)

Each has about 60TB of storage and I have them about half way filled up. I can lose 2 hard drives in each NAS without any data loss

Cloud solutions for 30TB of data gets pricey plus alot of the files I need instant access to for reorders etc.

Honestly, this is the best option for 99% of small businesses, the synology NAS boxes when configured correctly are incredibly resilient against being hacked, and the automated backup options included just work, period.

We have a 4 bay synology at the shop that serves all our files to 10 different computers without any lag or slow down at all, when we save a file, it automatically makes a copy on a second HDD inside the unit, syncs the file to google drive and onedrive, and every night makes a true backup to backblaze.

You can set them up to take hourly snapshots of all files, and not to allow those files to be deleted or modifiedfor x number of days, by anyone, even the admin of the NAS, this means your files can not be encrypted in a ransomware attack. It also means when i mistakenly hit save instead of save as, I am able to quickly revert back to the file I saved over as it keeps multiple copies automatically.

I can also access all my files on my phone or laptop from home using tailscale, which is an encrypted VPN that is free to use and extremely secure.

I'm really happy we switched to the synology NAS, it's made my life much simpler and I fell much more confident that my files won't disappear. I've talked to other shop owners who have all of their files on their 10 year old laptop, with no backups, that shit scares me!

 

[WildWestDesigns]

Honestly, this is the best option for 99% of small businesses, the synology NAS boxes when configured correctly are incredibly resilient against being hacked, and the automated backup options included just work, period.

We have a 4 bay synology at the shop that serves all our files to 10 different computers without any lag or slow down at all, when we save a file, it automatically makes a copy on a second HDD inside the unit, syncs the file to google drive and onedrive, and every night makes a true backup to backblaze.

You can set them up to take hourly snapshots of all files, and not to allow those files to be deleted or modifiedfor x number of days, by anyone, even the admin of the NAS, this means your files can not be encrypted in a ransomware attack. It also means when i mistakenly hit save instead of save as, I am able to quickly revert back to the file I saved over as it keeps multiple copies automatically.

I can also access all my files on my phone or laptop from home using tailscale, which is an encrypted VPN that is free to use and extremely secure.

I'm really happy we switched to the synology NAS, it's made my life much simpler and I fell much more confident that my files won't disappear. I've talked to other shop owners who have all of their files on their 10 year old laptop, with no backups, that shit scares me!

You can do that with TrueNAS as well.

I don't, however, allow for files to be accessed offsite. If it's not backing up to my other offsite TrueNAS devices, that port is closed. It can be done and even in an isolated way, but I prefer local access only.

Has Synology improved the resilvering process, more granularity of control etc? It's been a loooonnnnnngggg time, since I have looked at them and at that time TrueNAS(or rather FreeNAS at that point in time) was just overall better. Just wondering if that had changed?

I'm not a fan of 3rd party solutions, some even less compared to others, but in general, I don't like 3rd party solutions. No company/person is going to care about my files at the same level that I do. Just not going to and even though some of them should be in the position to have better knowledge compared to myself, with some of the ways that they have fallen victim, makes me think that really isn't the case in practice.

 

[CanuckSigns]

You can do that with TrueNAS as well.

Yes I'm vaguely aware of trueNAS, I looked into it shortly before I bought the synology, but I felt it required more tinkering than I wanted to do, I understand it's likely a more powerful solution, but frankly I've got enough on my plate, learning to build and administer a trueNAS build was not something I wanted to add to my list of duties lol.

Has Synology improved the resilvering process, more granularity of control etc? It's been a loooonnnnnngggg time, since I have looked at them and at that time TrueNAS(or rather FreeNAS at that point in time) was just overall better. Just wondering if that had changed?

I have no idea what resilvering is lol.

Like I said in my post, I feel the synology is a great solution for 99% of shops, it's a great "set and forget" machine, that is leaps and bounds better than what most small businesses are currently doing, which is nothing.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I have no idea what resilvering is lol.

When it comes time to replace a NAS drive, that process will bare itself out at that point.

Like I said in my post, I feel the synology is a great solution for 99% of shops, it's a great "set and forget" machine, that is leaps and bounds better than what most small businesses are currently doing, which is nothing.

Just about anything would be better in that case. Shoot, even taking an external drive or two and manually doing that would be infinitely better compared to nothing at all.

 

[White Haus]

Honestly, this is the best option for 99% of small businesses, the synology NAS boxes when configured correctly are incredibly resilient against being hacked, and the automated backup options included just work, period.

We have a 4 bay synology at the shop that serves all our files to 10 different computers without any lag or slow down at all, when we save a file, it automatically makes a copy on a second HDD inside the unit, syncs the file to google drive and onedrive, and every night makes a true backup to backblaze.

You can set them up to take hourly snapshots of all files, and not to allow those files to be deleted or modifiedfor x number of days, by anyone, even the admin of the NAS, this means your files can not be encrypted in a ransomware attack. It also means when i mistakenly hit save instead of save as, I am able to quickly revert back to the file I saved over as it keeps multiple copies automatically.

I can also access all my files on my phone or laptop from home using tailscale, which is an encrypted VPN that is free to use and extremely secure.

I'm really happy we switched to the synology NAS, it's made my life much simpler and I fell much more confident that my files won't disappear. I've talked to other shop owners who have all of their files on their 10 year old laptop, with no backups, that shit scares me!

I've been really happy with ours too, reading/writing files is instant and everything just works smoothly. My only regret is getting a 2 bay instead of 4. I might have to look at getting a second one to keep at home, I kinda like that idea of having 2 physical copies in two different locations.

I need to finish setting up our backups - I got into it one day and started setting it up then realized I have way more files than I have storage w/ either OneDrive or Google Drive.

First I need to spend a day re-organizing our file folder structure so I can archive any old files that likely won't need regular access and cut down our backup size in half.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

First I need to spend a day re-organizing our file folder structure so I can archive any old files that likely won't need regular access and cut down our backup size in half.

Could also consider compressing in some archive format to help with space as well.



General question out there:
What RAID (0, 1, 5, 6, 10 I believe are the most common setups for situations such as everyone here, I use RAID 6) level does everyone use? Some, if they do use it, could be narrowed down due to the amount of drives that they have, but just out of curiosity how many do it and which level?

 

[Graphic Extremes]

I use Raid 6

 

[victor bogdanov]

General question out there:
What RAID (0, 1, 5, 6, 10 I believe are the most common setups for situations such as everyone here, I use RAID 6) level does everyone use? Some, if they do use it, could be narrowed down due to the amount of drives that they have, but just out of curiosity how many do it and which level?

I'm on SHR-2 , 2 drives can fail without data loss. I have 8 drives in my NAS.

If I remember correctly the Synology Hybrid Raid advantage over standard raid is that you start with a couple of drives and expand as needed, mix and match drive sizes etc.

I started with 4 drives, added 2 a year later and added another two a year after that. Was very easy to expand, it did take about a week to expand the volume but happened in the background

I have 8x 16TB drives

Another cool thing about Synology is that if the NAS hardware dies, I can purchase any 8+ bay Synology, pop the drives in and it'll be running again.

Also have the option to daisy chain 3 Syn NAS together to expand the single volume

Amazing how easy it is and what it can do.

Have mine on 10gig network and read/write speeds are 400-500MB/sec

 

[victor bogdanov]

Before I was on 1gig network and it was bottlenecking and annoying opening large files, upgrading network to 10gig and getting the 10 gig card for the NAS was worth it

 

[White Haus]

Also have the option to daisy chain 3 Syn NAS together to expand the single volume

That's awesome, I was going to ask about this. I mistakenly went with a 2 bay Synology NAS w/ only 2 TB drives (mirrored).........and we're out of space already.

So theoretically I could just buy another NAS and connect them all?

 

[WildWestDesigns]

I'm on SHR-2 , 2 drives can fail without data loss. I have 8 drives in my NAS.

If I remember correctly the Synology Hybrid Raid advantage over standard raid is that you start with a couple of drives and expand as needed, mix and match drive sizes etc.

I started with 4 drives, added 2 a year later and added another two a year after that. Was very easy to expand, it did take about a week to expand the volume but happened in the background

I have 8x 16TB drives

Another cool thing about Synology is that if the NAS hardware dies, I can purchase any 8+ bay Synology, pop the drives in and it'll be running again.

Also have the option to daisy chain 3 Syn NAS together to expand the single volume

Amazing how easy it is and what it can do.

Have mine on 10gig network and read/write speeds are 400-500MB/sec

View attachment 177975

I did do the same thing with regard to drives, started off at a certain level, expanded pools (in one instances added a pool), got different drive sizes (although maybe I have replaced all of the old ones by now, hard to remember, I've slept since I switched over).

I don't think daisy chaining 3 TrueNAS systems for a single pool is doable, at least not straight forward. Never thought of it though.

As far as hardware dying and swapping out drives, can do that with a TrueNAS system. Long ago, I started with Qnap systems and while I had no issues, that was a concern that I had with system (and that was 20 yrs ago I think, somewhere around there) and prompted a switch to TrueNAS (or at the time, it was known as FreeNAS).

 

[victor bogdanov]

That's awesome, I was going to ask about this. I mistakenly went with a 2 bay Synology NAS w/ only 2 TB drives (mirrored).........and we're out of space already.

So theoretically I could just buy another NAS and connect them all?

You would have to check your model to see if it supports linking multiple together.

Probably easier/better in the long-run to get a 4 or 8 bay one

 

[WildWestDesigns]

You would have to check your model to see if it supports linking multiple together.

Probably easier/better in the long-run to get a 4 or 8 bay one

I would agree, plus, I would suggest getting off a RAID 1. Data loss can be a big thing, either accidental or otherwise due to how quickly things propagate to the mirrored drive.

 

[netsol]

I have no idea what resilvering is lol.

Like I said in my post, I feel the synology is a great solution for 99% of shops, it's a great "set and forget" machine, that is leaps and bounds better than what most small businesses are currently doing, which is nothing

We have a RAID server that is backed up to a cloud account daily.

we (my client) had all that. it was a new ransomware variant so trend micro didn't recognize it and didn't "break the chain" so the veeam backup process, which normally protects us, transmitted the "infection" to the veeam backup server, which, being windows based intself, was immediately infected.

best practice, to my thinking, is to backup all your DATA to 100gb blu ray disks. (this can be done in 2 ways, DO NOT choose the "like a flash drive" option or
the disks can be infected as soon as they are loaded. better to have them populated with your data and made read only

you still have to deal with reinstalling OS on servers and workstations, retrieving product keys, duplicating settings but if you ask anyone who has been hit
if they would rather have a read only copy of all their data, the answer is of course

 

[yetti320]

suggestion. Have 2 separate internal hard drives. the C drive is for programs only. The E drive is a separate hard drive that is where you keep your data. If your computer fails its probably the c drive.
Rebuild the c drive connect your e drive. Backup the c and e files to an external. Use something like carbonite.

 

[Goatshaver]

I don't have enough to warrant a RAID or NAS. I use FreeFileSync to backup my work files to a portable SSD and have a copy on my home computer that I sync to daily or every other day.
For system back ups I've been using Macrium Reflect to do a full backup then incremental backups daily. I do not trust cloud services with this kind of stuff, I'd much rather have multiple copies on physical drives in my possession.

 

[WildWestDesigns]

suggestion. Have 2 separate internal hard drives. the C drive is for programs only. The E drive is a separate hard drive that is where you keep your data. If your computer fails its probably the c drive.
Rebuild the c drive connect your e drive. Backup the c and e files to an external. Use something like carbonite.

If "you" are only going to have one source of backup, you mentioned Carbonite. I would actually suggest throwing a backup on an external drive that you take home with you. I personally, this is just me mind you, wouldn't use a 3rd party backup as the sole source of the backup. I wouldn't use a 3rd party backup at all, but certainly not as the sole backup.

"You" are going to be bound by their terms and conditions and turn around times. The whole point of having backups is to minimize turn around time from incident to recovery. Too many cases of slow turn around times (there shouldn't be 1 case in my mind) that I would be leary that it would happen to me.

 

[netsol]

suggestion. Have 2 separate internal hard drives. the C drive is for programs only. The E drive is a separate hard drive that is where you keep your data. If your computer fails its probably the c drive.
Rebuild the c drive connect your e drive. Backup the c and e files to an external. Use something like carbonite.

Data drives fail just as often.
ONLY PROBLEM WITH CARBONITE…

don’t know if it still that way but they used to make your data available after 48 hours not immediately