1

In short, can I use a WHS as the backup agent to fetch data from our windows-based servers and perform backups to a Synology nas?

We just purchased a Synology 8-bay nas as our onsite backup device. We have several legacy servers as well as some newer file servers, all of them need daily backup and some of them weekly.

However, I soon found out the Data Replicator3 that comes with it doesn't function like we thought it would be. Its backup ability is somewhat limited, we have to install it on every client and what's worse, it can't perform differential backup.

I use several backup software on my own systems, they all work fine. But I don't want to break anything on those grandpa severs. We used to use BrightStor ARCserve which is capable of doing remote backup jobs but WHS is much cheaper now. We can install it in a virtual machine.

What I am not clear is the ability (wake-up, log-in, and backup locked files) of WHS in terms of backing up data on other windows-based machine (mostly winServ2003 maybe one or two win2000) in the same network.

Also, is there any way to backup the file with long path and file name other than zip it? THX

Improve this question
1
  • can WHS only perform image-based backup?
    – KuN
    Feb 7, 2014 at 20:33

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Windows Home Server has been withdrawn from sale, but the deduplicated image-based backup functionality "lives on" in the Windows Server Essentials "Role" on Windows Server 2012 (and 2012 R2). Windows Server 2003 and Windows 2000, however, are not identified as supported client operating systems and I'd be surprised if you could get them to participate in backups.

I'm unclear what the Synology NAS has to do with the question. So long as you can present it to the Windows Server Essentials (WSE) virtual machine as a virtual disk you could use it for storage of backup images. The backup needs to be stored on a physical disk, as presented to the WSE VM, so a simple SMB mount from the WSE VM isn't going to cut it. Your specific hypervisor and the Synology device's protocol support is going to determine how best to present storage on that device as a physical drive to the WSE VM.

Improve this answer
2
  • not sure whether iSCSI can be recognized by WHS as physical disk or not. But not supporting old OS is really the deal killer. I also found that it requires .NET framework to run.
    – KuN
    Feb 7, 2014 at 22:58
  • An iSCSI LUN could be made to appear to a Windows Server VM as a physical disk for sure.
    – Evan Anderson
    Feb 7, 2014 at 23:10

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .