Go to application for windows backup to SCALE

[ladal1]

Hi, I finally have more time to work with my home server and want to know what is the go to way to backup my windows machines to my server. The laptops are mostly outside of the LAN of the server, since more people than me backup to it. I was using Veeam agent (over SMB through VPN) as a simple to setup solution as I didn't have much time to spend on it previously, but lately it has been exceedingly slow and I think I need a more thought through solution. I was looking at syncrify, but before I spend too much time on setting it up I wanted to check what people more experienced think.

Thanks

 

[Al Fuller]

ladal1 - did you settle on a backup solution, and if so - what?

I'm in need of setting up something to replace my old setup, which was rsync from windows hosts to FreeNAS/TrueNAS. I used DeltaCopy server on the windows machines and a plain old rsync task on the server. After the ASRock motherboard on that machine died I built a new machine and installed TrueNAS Scale. Unfortunately, I have been unable to get the rsync tasks nor the rsync app on TrueNAS to talk to windows hosts.

Ideally, I would jut setup rsync again - if I can get it to connect!

 

[chuck32]

Ideally, I would jut setup rsync again - if I can get it to connect!

Maybe you can share your setup and where there are problems. I have the rsync app running on my scale system and it works. There wasn't much to configure either.

 

[beagle]

I used Deltacopy in the past but I've been backing up my Windows laptop using FreeFileSync for file backups and AOMEI backup for image backups via SMB for a couple of years now.

Recently migrated the target server from CentOS 7 to TrueNAS Scale. It's been a smooth migration.

AOMEI was particularly useful when I had to do a full restore when I replaced my HDD for a SSD. AOMEI can create a WinPE boot disk and restore the full disk image. It works as smoothly as a MacOS restore using TimeMachine.

 

[danb35]

I have UrBackup running as a "custom" Docker app, and it seems to be OK. Not sure there aren't other, better, solutions.

 

[Al Fuller]

Maybe you can share your setup and where there are problems. I have the rsync app running on my scale system and it works. There wasn't much to configure either.

Thanks for the offer of help! I [finally] had the chance to get back to this and did get it working as intended. It turned out I had several issues: (1) I seemed to have scrambled the credentials, so was not actually making contact between the server and the backup target. When I fixed that, the server was able to reach the target, but issue (2) was the backup failed due to setting the Rsync task to preserve modification times of files. Long story shortened is I let it backup the first (test) directory without 'Times' enabled, and now all the other Rsync tasks operate correctly with 'Times' enabled. I don't know why or how this is, but I just moved on. Finally issue (3) was tasks failing when compression was enabled. I was able to find information here in the forums indicating this to be a common problem, so I just turned it off and the backups work as intended.

FWIW, I did try the rsync app but it never worked right, and I am perfectly comfortable setting up individual Rsync tasks for various jobs.

THANKS again for the offers of help, and also to those who pointed the right direction on the compression issue.

 

[Al Fuller]

Maybe you can share your setup and where there are problems. I have the rsync app running on my scale system and it works. There wasn't much to configure either.

Humm - I responded, but half of the response has strikethrough. Just to be clear, I did intend it all to go through...

 

[danb35]

half of the response has strikethrough

That's likely because you typed target(s), but with square brackets rather than parens. If you edit your post to change that, the strikethrough will go away.

 

[Al Fuller]

That's likely because you typed target(s), but with square brackets rather than parens. If you edit your post to change that, the strikethrough will go away.

Thanks - I did edit the post to remove the square brackets... BTW, I notice you reference Uncle Fester's Basic Configuration Guide in your signature. I remember that being great when I got my first FreeNAS box, and didn't realize it was or is still relevant. I'll have to take another look!

 

[Yorick]

I'm doing Windows Veaam Agent Free to an SMB share. Have been doing that for years and never had issues with a restore when I needed it.