Best Online Backup of a NAS?

[nasman]

I was referring to cloud backup clients integrated into the NAS itself. As you noted, very few cloud providers allow backup of networked shares, either directly or mapped. Some allow attached drives to be backed up.

Ah sorry.

I think I would be happy enough going with a client on a machine on the network but I'm not sure now.

Are there any specific advantages of having the client residing on the NAS only other than not having to have a local machine running all the time?

 

[thiggins]

Are there any specific advantages of having the client residing on the NAS only other than not having to have a local machine running all the time?

Depends on how you use your NAS. If it is as a central store, running a backup client on a mapped drive on a network client isn't really a great way to do things. Too many points of failure, plus the load the backup places on the client.

 

[stevech]

Synology and others have integral support for services like Amazon S3. It's in my DS212.

But I, like many, have a low upstream data rate for my home's Internet service. Way to slow to backup GB of data.

Much better to just use an external USB or eSATA drive and automated backup schedules, or, as I do, use the Time Backup (months of history of versions).

 

[nasman]

Just to update, I've taken a monthly subscription with Bulldog Backup - I figured I can always cancel if it doesn't suit.

Initial impressions are good although one thing to keep in mind if your looking at these guys is they charge per network share so if you have more than one share on your NAS you'll have to pay for each one you need to backup.

I'm still keeping my options open on using S3 so if anyone can point me in the direction of a tutorial for setting this up on a FreeNas powered NAS I would appreciate it.

 

[stevech]

most but not all backup services are oriented to backup of small files. And most limit the max file size to 2GB (or less, like SkyDrive at 300MB (!)).

 

[loyukfai]

Some NAS vendors have their own cloud backup, like ReadyNAS Vault (https://vault.readynas.com/). And QNAP supports S3, ElephantDrive and Symform by default (http://www.qnap.com/useng/index.php?lang=en-us&sn=2349). Others are probably doing the same thing, more or less...

BTW, IIRC, some people has made available custom plug-ins for CrashPlan for some proprietary NAS OS. Also, CP has a Linux client and can run headless, some tinkering is needed though.

Never heard of Bulldog before, care to share more about your experience...?

Cheers.

 

[stevech]

CrashPlan has no 2GB or other file size limit. Only other I've found that likewise has no limit is Amazon Web Services S3 - a client for which is in many NASes such as Synology/QNAP.

But I don't use on-line for drive images or full backups - my ISP speed is only 20Mbps down and 1Mbps up, with the latter being too slow for full backups. So instead, I use external disk drives that are kept away from thieves' eyes. That's the backup-backup - to the Time Backup history in my NAS- goes back 90 days of file revisions.

 

[nasman]

Never heard of Bulldog before, care to share more about your experience...?

Cheers.

My initial impressions are pretty good at the moment. The software has probably uploaded around 500GB of 1TB to date.

Like all these things I'm going to reserve judgement for the first month so I get a chance to fully roadtest it.

Things which may put others off include the fact that you have to run the software on a machine that is connected to the NAS and a file size limit of around 7GB (from what I can gather).

I'll update those who are interested at the end of the month.