Hyperbackup Explorer (Synology)

Hey all, I have a NAS that works as a scheduled backup repository for my local network. It then offloads encrypted backups to three separate locations (cloud x 2 + local). All this is undertaken via Hyperbackup.

For recovery, is there a more appropriate (and maintained) tool other than Hyperbackup Explorer (which is currently broken and unmaintained)?

Interested to hear what recovery solutions other people with Synology devices are using on Arch.

I used a lot of Synology a few years ago. I don’t do that anymore. Not that it was bad, but the hardware was too expensive for what you got. I bought some Dell PowerEdge T40 instead and ran OMV. Now I’ve started moving on to TrueNAS instead.

I never do backup on computers. If there’s something wrong, I’ll reinstall everything. I never have data on computers. Not much anyway. I do backup of course, but everything manually. Works for me.

I have a Synology but I don’t use their backup stuff. There are few reasons for this:

  • It wasn’t very easy to get it decrypted if you lose your Synology
  • When it comes to encryption, I prefer to control the encryption myself
  • I am not an open source fanatic but I do prefer my encryption to be open source
  • I wanted a solution that would work on or off my Synology

I have a fairly complicated backup methodology that uses a combination of snapshots and onsite/offsite backup to achieve all my recovery objectives. However, if I simplify the backup part down to bare essentials, I am using borg to do my encrypted backups and then taking the locally encrypted backups and using rclone to sync them to cloud locations. I don’t see any reason you couldn’t do that on a Synology.

Alternatively, at work we use restic to do encrypted cloud backups of Synology.

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Thanks, that’s an interesting perspective, I would have assumed that Hyper Backup was independent (client side) of the NAS and could have connected and browsed to the cloud end-points directly. Certainly that’s the way I would have looked at it.

Two points:

  • Last I checked, there was a Windows only client but it was pretty awkward to use and not very well maintained.
  • It is essential with any backup strategy to test recovery from your offsite storage with the assumption that you lost everything. This means restoring to a different device than you use for your backups. You don’t want to find out you are missing something once you have a loss.
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That’s been a consideration for me too… I’d love to have a server-side central source of truth, but so far, enabling (functional) unix permissions on the Synology client-side has been a giant can of worms. For what it does, it’s a great little SMB share box, but I’m starting to think the functionality from a Linux client perspective, it a little lacking. Maybe it’s time to just build a simple Linux server.

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Use nfs instead of smb when you connect from Linux clients. The synology can handle both concurrently.

I haven’t tried it but sshfs would also likely work.

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The only issue with nfs shares is that you can’t encrypt the folders if they have nfs permissions. With my current setup the SMB shares are encrypted which at least allows for a layer of physical security should the device be stolen.

(A part of me misses the days when the entirety of my data fitted on one 1.44mb double-density floppy disk… :smiley: )

Addendum to this topic :

DO NOT update to the latest DSM release (v6.2.4) on your Synology if you have a DS420j, DS220j, DS418j, DS218play, DS118. It looks like they decided to arbitrarily disable btrfs support and not tell anyone. I think my 218+ will be the last device from them. Horrible behaviour.

I know this is a little uncertain. But if you like DSM, take a look at Xpenology. You can build a nice NAS on it.

That sucks. I would migrate away from my synology if I could find something with similar storage capacity, form factor and enough horsepower to comfortably run Linux.

I’m looking at building my own once the chip shortage settles. Fractal do incredible cases and the Core 500 feels like a good form-factor for mid-level HDD/SSD capacity. Synology is great for what it does, but it increasingly feels like you can’t get the kind of featureset you need for proper usage within Linux, without being pushed to higher grade kit.

I have a DS918+ and that holds 4 drives in an enclosure substantially smaller than that. That is the trade-off I am always facing.

That box reminded me of the ones I had as a NAS before. I had 4 HPE ProLiant MicroServer Gen10. Fit 4 3.5" disks + an SSD. I used OMV for a couple of years on them.