Early in 2016 I published a post on how I setup my Synology NAS to backup to CrashPlan from Code42. It certainly wasn't an out of the box process and involved a lot of behind the scenes hacking on both the Synology and my laptop in order to get it going. It did, however, work well.
For a time.
I started to notice a pattern in that, with every iteration of the DSM platform or Java update, the CrashPlan service would just stop. I'd get it going again, but each time, it was not as simple as clicking the Start button next to the Service window. No, it was always far more detailed than that and I started to grow weary. I even went weeks at times without backing up my NAS, and this was not a situation I could tolerate any more.
At the time, when researching backup solutions, I felt disappointed that Backblaze weren't offering any kind of solution for this. I had been using Backblaze for several years on my Mac devices and always found it to be a solid, reliable and unobtrusive piece of software. I've only needed to restore a few items in that time, yet each time the process was quick and easy. This is what I ideally wanted on my NAS.
Well, now I do.
Backblaze now offer a B2 Cloud Storage which links directly to my Synology NAS. Rather than paying a fixed monthly fee, B2 works in a very similar mould to it's cloud storage competitors in that you will pay per GB (currently $0.005 per GB), so working out your appromiate monthly bill is simple.
I'm considering going with B2 for cloud backup due to the inability to restore more that one file at a time from Synology C2. Can any B2 users take me through how to restore from B2 via a browser & also confirm that B2 has to use CloudSync instead of HyperBackup? I did try using the Minio b2 gateway with hyperbackup on a synology as a test but it seemed to get tied in knots trying to download a 0 byte file it had created. It was also a bit of a pain to setup as it requires minio setup for DNS style bucket names. (Hyperbackup doesn't support path style) Not sure if that's a synology or minio b2 gateway bug. Tune in to Synology 2021. Join us online for our annual event. Experience Synology's most acclaimed DSM operating system for free today! Boost productivity. Sync files on demand and work together in real-time. Synology video tutorials. Get started and learn more about Synology. Synology NAS & Backblaze B2. Seamless Shared Storage, Backup, and Collaboration Solution. Seamless Integration Provides. The b2listfilenames request will be sent once for every 1k files in the remote path, providing the checksum and modification time of the listed files. As of version 1.33 issue #818 causes extra requests to be sent when using B2 with Crypt. When a copy operation does not require any files to be uploaded, no more requests will be sent.
The best part about this solution is, without question, the ease of setup and subsequent lack of worry. You can 'set it and forget it', just like on your laptop or desktop machine. Backblaze provide an intuitive guide which lays out the steps in a logical, well explained manner.
I'd say more, but once the guide was followed, I haven't had to carry out any more maintenance. It's important to note that this is a Cloud Storage solution for your NAS as opposed to a fully fledged Backup solution. I use this solely for duplicating all of my NAS content to cloud storage. I can then download on any device with an internet connection.
So quick, so simple, so hassle-free.
That's enough of a selling point for me.
[This article was originally drafted in September 2018. At long last…]
The Task
Backblaze B2 is an incredibly cost-effective cloud-based archival platform. I had a few TBs of large file video footage stored on a Synology NAS that I wanted to archive to B2, in case anything happened to my local array.1
Synology Cloud Sync
Synology offers a built-in tool that syncs to many cloud providers, called Cloud Sync. In fact, it worked great and I created a bunch of jobs to archive nearly 8 TBs.
Cloud Sync even offers an Advanced consistency check option to compare checksums! All good right?
Hash me Not
Although I had selected the checksum option I was surprised to realize not all files uploaded had their checksums written in B2. Only the small ones did.
That meant all the actual video files didn’t have checksums sent to B2. Yikes.
Design “Feature”
Not knowing this limitation was my mistake, as I did not understand the Cloud Sync documentation2 thoroughly beforehand.
With Enable advanced consistency check ticked, Cloud Sync compares the hash (in addition to file size and last modified time) of each file between the public cloud and the NAS to enhance the integrity check of the sync results. This will require more time and system resources, and depends on the public clouds’ support for advanced attributes. Please refer to the bottom of the page for more information.
Synology B2 Encryption
And what the bottom of the page say?
Hash values are not available for files uploaded to Backblaze B2 via b2_upload_part upload.
b2_upload_part upload… After consulting the B2 API documentation3, that command is used for uploading large files in segments. As you can see I had it set to 512 MB; the maximum is 4 GB.
Whose Limitation is it Anyway?
To be clear, the checksum limitation is on the Synology end. Torchlight download free. Cloud Sync is simply not sending SHA-1 checksums to Backblaze. B2 in fact supports and encourages4 sending checksums for large files— and they can even be sent at the end!
So what can upload to B2 with checksums for large files?
Rclone FTW
Rclone is a command line workhorse for syncing files with cloud storage. It’s actively maintained, and writes and verifies checksums with B2 perfectly5. However, it’s only for folks not afraid of the terminal.
Synology B2 Hyper Backup
Installing rclone is super simple on the Synology.6
- Login via SSH as an admin
- Run
curl https://rclone.org/install.sh | sudo bash - Verify it is installed with
rclone -Vandrclone -h - Run
rclone config, enter cloud credentials, etc.
Synology B2 Backup
How to use the rclone sync and rclone verify commands are deatiled in Rclone B2 docs. Best practices of using rclone with using B2 coming soon.
Conclusion
If you care about checksums for files over 4 GB, don’t use Synology Cloud Sync. Instead roll up your sleeves are get cracking with rclone on the Synology.
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