Backing up from one location to another over internet

Support
1

Hi guys,

I have 3 questions, I have a synology NAS on one physical location (at work) and a Linux home made NAS on another physical location (at home). I would like to make a backup using duplicati from a home folder to the Synology NAS at work, and vice versa: I would like to backup a work folder to a my Linux NAS at home.
I have basically all choices open (probably somewhat more limited on the Synology NAS than on the Linux NAS). Just to avoid doubts: both backups are over internet.

My first question is: which option should I use on server side? FTP or SFTP, Webdav, SWIFT, S3 compatible, mount a drive over VPN,…
I am most interested in a failsafe solution which doesnt use too much of my internet bandwidth.

My second question: How should I do the initial backup? I have a rather big folder (200Gb+), can I somehow do my initial backup on a usb HDD, and copy it to the NAS and continue all further backups over internet?

Third question: At work I have a synology DS214+, which is a basic NAS. Can I use it to run duplicati on it, or should I just make my life easy and run duplicati on a Windows 2012 server?

Thank you!

2

Thanks for checking out Duplicati! I’m not well versed in Synology but I should be able to respond to some of your other questions while we wait for somebody else to chime in. :slight_smile:

  1. Choice of destination is really up to you and what you’re comfortable supporting. Personally, I’d leave basic FTP as a last resort due to it’s relative insecurity compared to other options. A VPN based drive mount probably has WAY more overhead associated with it than any other option. And I’m not sure what SWIFT is but I don’t see it listed in the current destination types supported by Duplicati. So that leaves SFTP, WebDAV, and S3 compatible. I like SFTP myself, but have found WebDAV (via NextCloud) easy to set up as well S3 compat. (via Minio). I expect in all cases (except maybe VPN map) the bandwidth needs will likely be about the same.

  2. Yes, with Duplicati you can “seed” your backing by setting up your backup job pointing to a local or USB drive, running it, sneaker-neting the files to your new destination, then updating the job to point to the new destination. Feel free to ask if you have questions, plus I know there are a few discusions in this forum from other people doing the same thing.

  3. From what I can tell the DS214+ supports at least DSM 6.1.2 but does NOT support Docker. I know Duplicati can run on DSM 6 - but don’t know much about how to make that happen. Searching for Synology or DSM might give you some guidance on setting that up.

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I run Duplicati on my Synology NAS to back up data stored on it. I also back up remote computers TO the NAS and I used WebDAV. I currently have an issue getting SSL to work with WebDAV but I am hoping to resolve that. For now I’m not using SSL.

If there is an S3 compatible service I can put on my NAS I may try that out…

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There is talk off offering Minio support for Synology:

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Cool, if they ever release a package for Synology I might switch from WebDAV…

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Out of curiosity, it looks like the Synology NAS DSM offers an SFTP option - did you try that?

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Do you think SFTP is more efficient than WebDAV? Seems like it might have more overhead but I don’t really know.

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My gut says yes, but I couldn’t tell you why other than this:

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SFTP is good, but has performance issues with high-latency and/or high-bandwidth connections (i.e. your LAN link will probably not be fully utilized):