Synology hired me to do a series of sponsored tutorials covering the hundreds (thousands?) of features embedded in their line of network attached storage devices (NAS).
In this first video we take a look at their Active Backup for Business app, which consists of a management app that resides on the NAS and an installable “agent” that runs on Windows PCs on your network. The software agent conducts total system backups of the Windows PC which can be scheduled and/or set to execute whenever the system is logged out, locked, etc.
These backups are incremental in that it won’t copy the entire contents of the system every time – just the changes that were made to it since the prior backup. Additionally there is a layer of deduplication intelligence that stores only one file on the NAS even if that file resides on multiple PCs. There is no limit to the number of PCs that can be backed up – it will take as many as you have storage for.
Additionally there is support for backing up file shares on the network (like SMB), and support for VMware virtual machines too. The feature is available on most Synology NAS devices with an x64 based Intel or AMD processor (usually the + series NAS’s).
You can watch the full tutorial here. The next episode will look at backing up files from your cloud services to the NAS using their Active Backup for Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace.