I have a Synology DS415+ that performs wonderfully as a NAS. It's used mostly as a place for shared content, Time Machine backups and redundancy of video data. It's great to have 16TB of available network storage, but there are limited options for a cost-effective cloud backup of multiple terabytes of data.

A couple of years ago, there was one decent option for backing up Synology data to the cloud. Crashplan had an unlimited personal plan for less than $5/month and their client could run directly on the Synology. The downside to Crashplan was that every time the Synology OS would be updated there was risk of the client breaking and needing to be re-installed and/or re-configured. For the price and the self-contained solution, this was an acceptable tradeoff, at least for me. In 2017, Crashplan did away with their personal plan, so this route is no longer an option.

With a 1-1 mapping between files on-prem and objects in the cloud, all of your data is secure and ready to restore. Long-term retention and 3-2-1 backups of your Veeam data have been simplified and made easily accessible with the joint solution from Backblaze B2 and Tiger Bridge. So let’s focus on the Synology part of it. First, log into your Synology and open up Package Center. Download and install the CloudSync Application. Next open Cloud Sync and Click the + sign to add a vendor. As you can see there is a ton of vendors to choose from. We are going to pick BackBlaze B2 and click Next to continue.

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Over the last year, I've tried some other options (like hubiC) for larger inexpensive storage. They offer 10TB for €50/year. I didn't find their control panel or service to be consistently reliable, so I've been on the search for other solutions and have two that work decently well. They aren't without some tradeoffs, but if you are looking for inexpensive, unlimited cloud backup, these are two decent options.

Backblaze over iSCSI

Backblaze offers an unlimited personal backup plan for $5/month that will back up any local drives from a computer. Their client only runs on a Mac or PC, but is written natively for the platform (unlike Crashplan which had a memory-intensive Java client). So, this option requires a dedicated computer to run the Backblaze client and the Synology has to be mounted as a local drive as Backblaze does not support network shares. Remember, I said there were tradeoffs.

A Mac Mini is perfect for this task. It's small and quiet and can easily be run headless. To set up an iSCSI target on the Synology, open up the iSCSI Manager (from the main menu), click on Target and create a new target and LUN. The wizard will walk you through the creation of both and will have you create a LUN of a size of your choosing. Note that this will be a new drive on your Mac or PC that will be formatted by the operating system. Any data you wish to have backed up will need to be moved or copied to this drive. Again, tradeoffs.

macOS does not come with an iSCSI initiator which is required to mount the iSCSI target as a local drive. The options out there are pretty bleak. Most people recommend globalSAN ($89) or Xtend SAN($249), both of which are pricey options (remember, we are trying to keep this solution cost-effective). A third option I came across was KernSafe, which has a free pricing tier for personal use. This seemed promising from a cost perspective, but I could not get it to work (at least on Mojave). After trying and failing with KernSafe, I decided to give the open source iSCSIInitiator a try. Before installing, you will need to disable unsigned kernel extensions protection by running csrutil disable. I also had a lot of trouble with the downloadable binary on Mojave. I would get segfaults nearly every time I ran the tool (about 1 in 10 tries would give me a successful run). So, you do need to build the tool and install from source which is not a difficult task as the shell scripts work very well (just make sure you have Xcode and tooling installed). This is a command line only tool, so once it's installed, here is a quick guide to getting it up and running:

After running the login command, you should see a prompt that an external drive has been connected. Open DiskManager and format the drive to the file system of your choosing. Add the data to this drive that you wish to back up, install Backblaze, and start backing up to the cloud.

Google Drive Sync

A second option is to sync all your data to Google Drive using Synology's Cloud Sync app. You can get unlimited data on Google Drive for $10/month if you sign up for G Suite business plan. The admin user on this account will get unlimited storage on Google Drive which is perfect for syncing a large set of data from a Synology. This has none of the tradeoffs of Backblaze over iSCSI; the need for a dedicated computer, a complicated setup, and a separate drive that can't be easily shared on the network like other NAS shares. However, the big tradeoff of Google Cloud sync is that it is only syncing your data (you can choose if this is bi-directional or one-way sync) and not creating backup sets like Backblaze would do. The Cloud Sync app will also hog all of the upload bandwidth where Backblaze will throttle the upload. To alleviate this, I set the sync schedule of Cloud Sync to only run at night. This method also costs $5 more per month, but does not require the upfront cost of a dedicated computer or the cost of running and maintaining one.

Because each of these options has their tradeoffs, for now, I run both of them to get the best of both worlds. I was already paying for a G Suite business plan and already had a Mac Mini, so there was little additional cost. It also has the benefit of multiple backups being created which is far better than just one backup.

We have finally made it. We’ve made it to the last section of this project. Now that we’ve set up the main services on the NAS and moved our files to it. Drivers primera usb devices. Let back it up just incase the whole thing implodes (*knocks on wood). There is a lot of options between CloudSync and Hyper Backup to create a backup of the NAS and now there is a lot of options for cheap cloud storage. All of them have their pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages, and different capabilities.

Before we go into configuring CloudSync lets break down Hyper Backup vs CloudSync first.

• Hyper Backup is mainly used to replicate a traditional backup software to a Cloud Storage location. You configure a standard backup retention schedule like daily, weekly, monthly etc.
• CloudSync is mainly used for taking what is on the NAS and dumping it somewhere else or used to keep 2 locations in sync. You and sync a folder on your NAS to a folder in your onedrive account. The connection can be a single direction or by directional.

For this process I choose to use Backblaze B2 Cloud Storage. More specifically I’m going to configure a one way sync to Backblaze and configure Backblaze to hold everything with version control. Lastly, in this configuration I will configuration not to download and changes from BackBlaze. This last step is a precaution just incase backblaze is comprised then what ever changes are made will not impact the NAS files. Then I can just delete the BackBlaze container and reupload everything.

I’m not going to go through the BackBlaze account setup because it’s pretty straight forward. You create an account, create a bucket, and some encryption keys. Then you’ll need put that information into CloudSync. It’s a similar set up to any other vendor out there. So let’s focus on the Synology part of it.

Synology Backblaze Personal Backup

First, log into your Synology and open up Package Center.

Download and install the CloudSync Application.

Next open Cloud Sync and Click the + sign to add a vendor.

How To Backup Synology Nas

As you can see there is a ton of vendors to choose from. We are going to pick BackBlaze B2 and click Next to continue.

For BackBlack specifically they need the following items.

• Account ID /applicationKeyID
• Application Key

Once you put those 2 items in you’ll be able to select the bucket you created. If you have a bigger BackBlaze account with multiple buckets you can choose which bucket to use.

Click Next to continue.

On this page is where you start creating your synced folders. After you create the first folder you can add more folders. Since I’m using this for Backups and not synced cloud access I’ve selected “Upload local changes only” for sync direction. If you want to scope the schedule you can do so under “Schedule Settings”.

When you can enable Data Encryption you’ll have to create a password for the encryption. Don’t loose the password or else you’re backups will be useless.

Click Next to continue.

The process is complete. Click OK and you can go back to the Overview tab to see the status.

If you have more folders to sync click on Task List and you can add them there.

Backup Nas To Backblaze

That is it. That is the process to easily sync your Synology NAS to Backblaze. I hope you’ve found this guide and the other ones in this series useful.

Synology Cloud Backup Options

-Terry Sheridan