Can I use BE to backup our Synology RackStation NAS? (as source)

[nosecam]

Hi,

the title says it all.

Is a NAS as source supported?

Thanks

[VJware]

Yes, using CIFS, you can backup the shares from the Synology NAS.

A RAWS license is required to be installed on the Backup Exec server. And if using BE 2012, here is a KB which will assist in setting the backup job - http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH189560

[nosecam]

Wow this would be great since we need to upgrade our backup infrastructure now and I prefer BEX over Veeam :)

I tried what you wrote witha  2012 trial version we have installed here and funny enough I can see the shares but identification fails from BEX, although the RackStation sees a connect (see screen shots on https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bvzq8n8bg787bza/AADk-ul8mfaSeDsBUzShWu_9a)

Could this be because the missing license you mention? (Unfortunately our trial is expired but I contacted licensing to renew it).

No further error description seems to be available.

Thanks

[VJware]

Do not run a test credentials test, instead run the actual backup and check if it fails or not.

[pkh]

You should add the BESA to the NAS as a local admin with full read/write capability to the entire device.

[nosecam]

Yes, thanks worked like a charm :)

Nevertheless, I am getting a message that:

"V-79-57344-3844 - The Backup Exec server was unable to connect to the Remote Agent on machine fileserver.xxxx. The Backup Exec server will use the local agent to try to complete the operation. V-79-57344-65277 - Snapshot Technology: Initialization failure on: "\\fileserver.xxxx\backups". Snapshot technology used: No. Remote Agent not detected on fileserver.xxxx. "

Does this mean the RAWS license is not installed correctly? AFAIK it is included in the trial I am using. Do I need to assign it to that machine somehow?

Thanks again

[Colin_Weaver]

Backups over shares (where remote agent cannot be installed) always return the agent not found error/warning which cannot be disabled and is not related to licensing, although you do need to own agent for windows licences and have at least one active on the media server (when not in evalauation period) in order to backup over shares. You would get an outright failure and no backup at all if you do not have an agent license (after the eval period ends)

The Snapshot failure error is because you have the open file options still enabled in the backup job and we cannot do snapshot (VSS) backups over shares.

FYI We also do not support incremental backups over shares

[nosecam]

>> FYI We also do not support incremental backups over shares

Oops!

Means it is alway a full backup? Also if the Jobtype says "incremental"?

So let me alter my question: is there an agent for Synology NAS then that supports incremental or differential?

[pkh]

No. There is no special agent for your NAS from Symantec. Some NAS vendors has custom BE agents for their NAS, but these are few and far between

[Colin_Weaver]

If the NAS can be attached to a Windows server as an iSCSI LUN (so that the file storage is then shared via the server and not shared directly from the NAS) then you can  install a remote agent on the Windows server and would then be supported for incremental backups against the content of the LUN. However this would involve a redesign of your current environment as you are in effect making the NAS into a SAN storage device attached to a server

BTW you might find that it is doing an incremental for you (check the byte count) but we can't guarantee that it won't decide to backup everything even though you have incremental set when backing up via a share with no remote agent.

Also there is one other thing we can't support on share level backups, the protection of access control information against the files and folders.

Finally sorry for my somewhat poor typing in my earlier post. I hope I have corrected it now. 

[Larry_Fine]

this technote may help

http://www.symantec.com/docs/TECH68920

Backup using "Differential/Incremental - using modified time" option backs up all the data rather than just the changed data when no remote agent is present.