How to Backup complete NAS?

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Throntorus
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How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by Throntorus »

Hello,

i'm completely new to Asustor, buyed a Lockerstor 2 Gen 2 and wondering now, how i can do a full backup of my NAS.

I'm looking for a possibility like the "Windows Server Backup" on Windows Servers. It should be a backup i can restore easyly if the whole NAS was damaged (for example i have to do a factory reset because of malware). So it would be great, if the bakcup contains all the data but also the complete system/ADM.

Is there such a solution?

Thanks.
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Nazar78
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Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by Nazar78 »

You can do backups of the selected data folders (including app data) using the Backup & Restore function. In it, you can also scheduled a system backup under System Settings > Scheduled Export. All these you can choose to backup to separate internal volumes, external USB or network location (prior mounted CIFS Folder via Access Control > Shared Folders). Unfortunately for the system backup, it doesn't cover everything. I've submitted a suggestion to Asustor to include complete OS backup not long ago. Until that happens, I manually scheduled system/app backups using custom scripts doing tar-gz+rsync.
AS5304T - 16GB DDR4 - ADM-OS modded on 2GB RAM
Internal:
- 4x10TB Toshiba RAID10 Ext4-Journal=Off
External 5 Bay USB3:
- 4x2TB Seagate modded RAID0 Btrfs-Compression
- 480GB Intel SSD for modded dm-cache (initramfs auto update patch) and Apps

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Throntorus
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Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by Throntorus »

Nazar78 wrote:You can do backups of the selected data folders (including app data) using the Backup & Restore function. In it, you can also scheduled a system backup under System Settings > Scheduled Export. All these you can choose to backup to separate internal volumes, external USB or network location (prior mounted CIFS Folder via Access Control > Shared Folders). Unfortunately for the system backup, it doesn't cover everything. I've submitted a suggestion to Asustor to include complete OS backup not long ago. Until that happens, I manually scheduled system/app backups using custom scripts doing tar-gz+rsync.
Thanks for your replay. I think the system backup and data folder backup will do it for now. But a classic "whole system backup" is a must for a nas operating system - let's hope, it will be there soon.
oldwood
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Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by oldwood »

I am looking for the same solution as the OP.

I run Linux OS on all my computers excepting in VM on 2 of them. When I ran windows I would do drive images with Acronis drive images and this prevented me ever having to reinstall the windows operating system. I use Time-shift on Linux I would always have a drive image that was less than a month old of the OS drive and more regular images of the data drive.

With the NAS now running so many apps and all the configuration necessary to get back to a operating system if the Volume 1 fails it is imperative we have a better solution for backing up the NAS OS.

I do not use raid, I backup to external drives for data.

Would it be possible to pull the volume 1 drive and do a drive image of it then restore that image to another drive to recover from a volume 1 drive failure?

I do backups of the OS setting but as I understand it that would not help me with all the apps and their configuration.

My NAS is a AS6104t

TIA

Gerry
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Nazar78
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Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by Nazar78 »

oldwood wrote:Would it be possible to pull the volume 1 drive and do a drive image of it then restore that image to another drive to recover from a volume 1 drive failure?
You can shutdown the NAS, remove single volume1 disk then clone the entire disk containing x4 partitions on another PC. You'll then have the OS/configs/data on the cloned disk. However this requires user intervention and downtime.

There's two types of damages that could occur to the NAS, both are equally important:

1. Disk failure. Raid array mirrors would better handle this situation. You can just simply hot swap the failed disk and the system will rebuild the new disk from another mirror. You should really consider doing a RAID mirror setup since it's available on the NAS.

2. Data corruption or malware damage. This requires the data to be backup regularly elsewhere for safe keeping. BTRFS snapshots will also help. The OS keeps all the settings in the system volume0. It's the 1st partition of your disk. You can't see this volume0 unless you SSH into the NAS. The app/data/config are stored in the volume1. This is the 4th partition of your disk. Their individual location depends on the app itself but mostly within the volume1, i.e. /share/app-name /home/app-name or /volume1/.@plugins/AppCentral/app-name (need SSH). So you need to know where the apps keeps their config/data in order to be able to backup them in the first place.
AS5304T - 16GB DDR4 - ADM-OS modded on 2GB RAM
Internal:
- 4x10TB Toshiba RAID10 Ext4-Journal=Off
External 5 Bay USB3:
- 4x2TB Seagate modded RAID0 Btrfs-Compression
- 480GB Intel SSD for modded dm-cache (initramfs auto update patch) and Apps

When posting, consider checking the box "Notify me when a reply is posted" to get faster response
oldwood
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Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by oldwood »

"You can shutdown the NAS, remove single volume1 disk then clone the entire disk containing x4 partitions on another PC. You'll then have the OS/configs/data on the cloned disk. However this requires user intervention and downtime."

If I restored the disk image to a new drive do you think it would boot up and run normally? I would need to use the same size of drive but don't know if any other factors like going from WD to Seagate would cause an issue. If I did not need to remove the drive from the caddy to do the imaging this might be something I could do as a worst case scenario for volume 1.

I do pretty regular backups to external drives for my data and I think they are needed regardless if you run raid so I am pretty comfortable with the safety of my data. Deadbolt pointed out how important it is to have offline backups.
I have looked at raid but never wanted to lose half my drive space to it when I still needed a full backup anyways. Is it possible to do raid1 with the first 2 discs and leave the other 2 as single drives?

Is it possible to replace the volume 1 disk without having to reinstall and reconfigure everything other than a disk image? My volume 1 disk is the oldest drive in my NAS.

Thanks for the response I appreciate you taking the time.

Gerry
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Nazar78
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Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by Nazar78 »

If I restored the disk image to a new drive do you think it would boot up and run normally? I would need to use the same size of drive but don't know if any other factors like going from WD to Seagate would cause an issue. If I did not need to remove the drive from the caddy to do the imaging this might be something I could do as a worst case scenario for volume 1.
If it's cloned properly then yes it will boot, don't matter which brand even HDD to SSD whilst obviously you'll need the equivalent or larger disk space to clone to.
I do pretty regular backups to external drives for my data and I think they are needed regardless if you run raid so I am pretty comfortable with the safety of my data. Deadbolt pointed out how important it is to have offline backups.
Yes RAID is not a backup, it's redundancy.
Is it possible to do raid1 with the first 2 discs and leave the other 2 as single drives?
Yes perfectly fine, just if you don't realise even for single drives your disk will be partitioned as RAID1 and the ADM OS resides on one of its partitions. This is by design.
Is it possible to replace the volume 1 disk without having to reinstall and reconfigure everything other than a disk image? My volume 1 disk is the oldest drive in my NAS.
Since this is a single drive not a RAID array with at least two mirrors, you'll need to clone the disk by external means. If it's the said RAID, you can easily hot swap each disk then let them rebuild one after another thereafter expand the volume if the new disks are larger. If you're planning to add RAID1 (on top of replacing the old single disk volume1), simply use the ADM migration as mentioned here https://www.asustor.com/online/College_topic?topic=352.
AS5304T - 16GB DDR4 - ADM-OS modded on 2GB RAM
Internal:
- 4x10TB Toshiba RAID10 Ext4-Journal=Off
External 5 Bay USB3:
- 4x2TB Seagate modded RAID0 Btrfs-Compression
- 480GB Intel SSD for modded dm-cache (initramfs auto update patch) and Apps

When posting, consider checking the box "Notify me when a reply is posted" to get faster response
oldwood
Posts: 25
Joined: Sun Apr 28, 2019 6:05 am

Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by oldwood »

That is great information. I will do some thinking and make a plan on how to proceed.

Thanks for taking the time.

Gerry
oldwood
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Joined: Sun Apr 28, 2019 6:05 am

Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by oldwood »

So I got around to trying to clone volume 1 in my NAS from a 8TB WD red to a 8TB Seagate Iron wolf drive. I moved as much data as possible off of volume 1 to make the process faster. The drive now has only 102 gb of data.

I first tried FoxClone, and it came the error used blocks can not be determined. When I tried running it, it copied the partition structure but none of the data. It took 5 seconds to run, so it was clear that did not work

Then I tried Acronis clone drive, and it came up with an error that the Seagate target drive was 127 MB too small, although Gparted showed both drives being the same size.

I reinstalled the original volume 1 drive and I am looking for options.
ilike2burnthing
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Re: How to Backup complete NAS?

Post by ilike2burnthing »

Have you reduced the partition to ~102GB rather than the whole disk, then clone the partition rather than the whole drive?
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