I've been using this Synology ActiveBackup software at one of my clients for a little over a year now. I have to admit for having the capabilities that it has included with the price of the NAS it was a huge life saver and has surprised me around every corner. I was implementing backup and DR policies for a business that had absolutely no backups and this was possibly one of the greatest blessings I ran into. It also made me look great as a consultant because I was able to implement it out of the box even though I was not sure if it was reliable long term (which it ended up being). I considered myself very impressed, I am even more reassured hearing that you felt the same way Wendell.
I purchased a Synology NAS just for the backup software for vmware. When you do the math, makes total sense to have backup hardware instead of paying for vmbackup software. Excellent vid and thanks!
Started using synology for some clients, not super advanced setups yet but glad you brought this product my way, wasn't even sure we could get it in Kenya but it is actually very available 👍🏾
Get to setup a client with a single ESXi host and a synology NAS in the next week, glad I remembered this video existed so I can test this. Few things make a customer happier than telling them they don't have to spend extra money on an unnecessary license
Hey Wendell - Thanks for this great video, it helped a whole lot in getting our backups started - You made a point that may be easily missed but is important to realize... You mentioned that Active Backup for Business was the only product that worked correctly for Differential Backup. I missed this completely and being new to the Synology world, I toddled off to find out where the Differential Backup option was - Well, as you stated, it's built in - What makes it work is the DeDuplication technology and the slick way the Retention profile is set. To see it work and the results you get really brings the point home. Thanks again
Correction: there is no Linux kernel on ESXi. This is a common misconception that people have. The issue I think relates to the older versions (ESX, without "i"), but it was also not completely true to state that it was based on a linux kernel. ESX (deprecated) had a console based on linux, and that was what you saw when booting up. It was also what you used for administration purposes, but it wasn't the linux kernel in charge of the hardware. It was used to boot up, but when the vmkernel (VMwares own code) loaded, it took control of the entire system and continued to run the Linux Kernel as a Virtual Machine. So, if you were directly connected with keyboard and video to the server what you were looking at was actually a VM running Linux. This was a prvileged VM, and any software issue that could occur could potentially crash the system. Nowadays, ESXi does not run a linux kernel whatsoever.
I agree it's not a linux kernel, but that's not the whole story. They port and use linux drivers and have a thin layer to translate between the linux kernel interface the driver expects and the vmkernel.
@666NedFlanders agreed my point is separate to that though. You seem to be commenting on ESX and the service console, I'm talking about includes ESXi current
I've worked with VMware ESX/ESXi, and it is an awesome product. Some years back I used to manage a software testing lab at HP, and we had dozens of ESX servers running hundreds of virtual machines...like every version/patch level of Windows in a few different languages...yes, different language versions of Windows can have slightly different sets of bugs/features. Maybe they fixed that by now. LOL! And not just Windows, Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu, Slackware...), and even OS/2 all under VMware. It has by far the best management tools out there for any hypervisor that I have used or played around with. It's nice to know that Synology has such tight integration with VMware. I've wanted to run ESXi at home, but had no real backup system available. I have been considering NAS box for other uses, and have been waffling between Synology and Drobo...but the features Synology has now has me leaning toward them. Thanx for the look at their system w/ESXi!
Seriously enjoyed this video. It's great to see how many of your videos' topics can be applied to small businesses and enthusiasts at home, who possibly run test environments or just love backups. Have you ever thought of making a video (correct me if you have) about Veeam? The Veeam Agent for Windows is totally free and has the ability to create standalone full backups, incremental backups and you even get version retention control to some degree. I have it setup on my main desktop pc to backup over the network to my FreeNAS box (10gig networking around the corner)... it's so simple to setup and use.
Excellent video, Thanks Wendell. Mostly interested in the free VMWare tutorial part, since I am not drinking the Synology koolaid yet, but the VMWare stuff was good. Looking forward the the accompanying article/ forum thread you mentioned.
The comedy embedded in that timestamp and 3x video attempts was hilarious. I get by happily with KVM and my own backups. But I love L1T content so cheers! Great as usual. ... I would like to try this TH4 whitebox server. 🤔
hey Wendell, any chance of you making a tutorial of explaining how VM Hypervisors handle physical processor cores/threads assignment to virtual machines, pros-cons, gotchas, etc?
@666NedFlanders *4 virtual cores per logical thread on the physical core*. This is exactly what most people do not understand, how hypervisors like Hyper-V or VMware Workstation or ESXI handle assignment of physical cores/threads to VM when you play around with those settings. For example, in VMWare Workstation you can assign xy number of processors and xy number of cores to the particular VM. So lets say you have 8core/16thread Ryzen CPU on that host machine, and for example if you assign/set that VM to have 1 Processor and 2 cores, how much of the real physical CPU cores/threads does hypervisor actually give out to that particular virtual machine? Does assigned cores on VM actually mean logical threads on the host physical CPU, or does the hypervisor actually grants that VM access/resources of those 2 real physical cores when they need it? That is the tutorial explanation of basics many would like to see from guys that understand it and can explain it in simple terms.
For older Synology Diskstation models upon which Active Backup for business is not compatible (as per www.synology.com/en-uk/dsm/packages/ActiveBackup), it may be possible to use Nakivo which offers a free 'basic' version (www.synology.com/en-uk/dsm/packages/NBR) for ESXi VM backups
"Peas and carrots" means overcooked peas and under-cooked carrots. I reject the premise that these are things that go together; I reject its use as a simile. Okay, now tell me about VMWare.
@Wendel, one cool thing I like is that with cloud backup and hyper backup together from synology you can have both a real time instant live backups (up to 32 version of a file per hour) and then as in this video with the hyper backup you can have X number of backup per Y time (for example 5 versions per day, then 7 version per week, then 4 per month and so on). I have set up hyper backup to fire off every hour on its schedule to see if there are any new or changed files to backup. I've used both DS916+ and DS918+ for this to backup solution the the local main servers. Timeline function included :)
And now for something completely different: I am using a network of four virtualized instances for a project. One of the instances is running windows 10 for general office automation (excel macros and whatnot) and the other three are running ubuntu desktops (deconstructed LAMP, one is hosting a simple register-login webpage, another the mysql db and the third one is hosting an instance of Hachicorp's Vault). The instances are communicating using SSH tunneling and HTTPS. I am running this setup for server interconnection security exercises but I really want to push towards some DevOps best practices like configuration management through Ansible. In what way should I venture with the goal of automating the deployment and management of the concurrent and interconnected instances? Should I go for containers? Perhaps try Vagrant or Kubernetes orchestration? Thank you for any input.
Running this for a year now and the only issue I have had is that I have orphaned data sitting on the disks from retired vms. Probably easily avoided but something to consider. I cluster high priority machines into a single backup and that may be a mistake if space can become an issue.
Of course, if you're still queasy about the phoning home bit, you can always go to your router's admin page and look on its DHCP table for the Synology's IP address that way.
Thanks for the new video @wendell. Actually... It would be nice to see another video on this topic. To explaining more of the details you alluded to. About the main differences between using kvm, proxmox, and esxi. Because the backup feature being touted here specifically, well it was: block level / delta transfers for the vm backups, right? Well that sounds like something which I can already do by combining zfs and kvm. Which I already have / am using. Saving incremental snapshots of the kvm based vms in zfs, and then just using zfs send/recv to make backups of those datasets on to another zfs server. Which would then make the 2nd zfs machine the backup server (instead of Synology, not having those type of NAS). So I am left wondering what the other main are of why esxi is better than kvm. If not for that, then what else makes it a more attractive platform? On side node: I *do* very much wish that they could evolve proxmox project, to split it in half down the middle. So that there were 2 independant parts of proxmox: the distro environment, and then ontop of that layer to sit all the user interface to kvm / the vms. Because then it might be possible to eventually diverge the project. And have a version of the proxmox frontend run independantly by itself on the other major linux distros. Because the proxmox interface can be nicer to use than 'virt-manager' gtk app. Or perhaps somebody else outside the proxmox project can forked it, to try to achieve that goal. Whichever. It's just a great asset to the open source community. So I hope that it can be better leveraged. So if they are so good, then why I have never tried either proxmox or esxi myself? I am just trying to avoid getting addicted to creature comforts and features which may be lacking or missing on my other chosen platform. Things which I cannot have! So a seperate video covering what these trade-offs are (the weak and strong points of each) would be nice to hear about. At least if we cannot switch whatever is our preferred and curent platform.... then we can at least know better what they should be trying to improve in the future. Which sort of direction it should be going in order to fill in those missing gaps. And have some understanding to know if that is realistically a possibility. Or otherwise if it is not going to be likely to happen. --> then I need to reconsider changing my platform of choice to something else and try to come up with other solutions or workarounds for the other things which I might end up loosing from what I had before.
Wendell, awesome information as well as the way you presented it. Two questions: does it also work with a paid version of ESXi 6.5? I would hope so. Also, which versions of the synology DSM will it run on? I have an old Synology (around 2012) that it may be worth breaking it out of retirement for. Thanks!
Yes it does work with 6.5 paid without ssh and it is quite efficient at that. I run this on 30 vm's with 21 backing up on week nights and with cbt enabled it does them in 25 minutes. You have to have a Synology device that is running Btrfs for this application. Check the Synology website if your are not sure.
Small clarification: VMware includes a busybox-like machine, but it is not the hypervisor, so I guess yes it includes a Linux kernel but it isn't running the VMs
You should look into the free version of veeam and veeamone monitoring software. You can do active full backups even if the free esxi doesnt have change block tracking. However, yes you do have a larger backup size but it's free on free esxi. Or you can install a backup agent that has it's own Change block tracking driver. Best part is they have windows and linux agents for free.
Thanks Wendell! I run both ESXI at work and home and Synology at both, and have been looking for a better way to do backups. I gotta play with this. It looks way nicer than the software I'm paying for at work even! Does it integrate well with VCenter too?
This is what my plan was to use with my ds213j, but it isn't supported. Trying to figure out which synology I should upgrade to and use this as a redundant backup or something.
My home lab is running 3 ESXi 6.7 with VSAN, VMware PKS, NSX-T, NSX-V, vCloud, vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations... It's enterprise software, they don't give a crap if you run it on a home lab. You can have the liceses directly from VMware...
I use Synology (1819+) for backing up my ESXI server... Once my Pi-Hole (Debian 10.0) wasn't turning on itself. I deactivated the root account. After months there was a error and a boot up problem... I tried restoring my backup... It didn't worked... I still have to try it out on a demo VM!
Wendel, would it be possible to work with Synology to make some home application videos? Like running clonezilla on pxe on synology with so your pcs backup automatically on schedule or setting a secondary box at your parents house and utilize apps such as Moments, which is very much like google photos. Protect your household, if you will.
Hi... I am sorry I just see this video. I have a synology with a windows server 2016 backup... I know is there I can see it . But I have no idea how it was created... jaja The server machine is a VM into a VMWare. Have you any suggestions to recover that server 2016?
Have you actually tried a full restore and monitor the restore speed? As soon as I restore a server image the restore speed is automatically crippled.. if one would restore a regular windows 10 client it will restore at max speed, but server images are crippled
Which solution would you recommend between a free version of VMWare Esxi and Proxmox. I've read some reviews which states that Proxmox is a better solution for different reasons. What do you guys think?
Would you want to shutdown a SQL VM prior to these backups? If all backups are live, is the best practice to backup the SQL at the application level for potential restore? Live backups on an application server have caused me issues in the past.
You are talking about application-consistent backups which require an OS agent, these backups are crash consistent. There are other ways to backup SQL depending on your app and use case. In many cases now people are using SQL-DAG/AAG's.
I don't get it, why would SSH be dangerous to use? I never use anything else with my servers. No password login, changed the SSH port, I don't see what other way would make it inherently safer?
As I understand it the only advantage to ESXi vs VMware workstation is in terms of sharing Video cards with the VM. Of course I have to get AMD video cards for that since nVidia wants too much money for that feature.
I use Unraid which has similar functions to both Synology and ESXi... however, there is no way to back up an Unraid VM to Unraid storage. Really missing a key benefit to using a VM in the first place.
Is there any way to only backup actual data with that? Cause I really don't want to backup 30GB all the time for a VM (Proxy) that really only uses 1-2GB where the other space is reserved just in case...
@@jsnjyn I currently pull backup my virtualized nas with veeam. But i want to move it to bare metal as my storage grows. I believe a lot of solution is avaliable on windows but i haven't really looked into it yet.
I just want an honest opinion looking at the best NAS that Qnap or Synology provide, witch one would last the longest features and hardware vies? Ok back to the video bbl
Tried this, and it immediately corrupted my VM. This shows in the ESXi console: "The redo log of 'Debian Buster-000001.vmdk' is corrupted." The condition is not recoverable, the VM is lost. Did you do as suggested and enabled "Changed Block Tracking"? This - along with snapshots - seems to corrupt the virtual disk. Since Synology explicitly asks to enable this it's kinda also their fault... I created a fresh VM and enabled CBT even before installing Debian, but the error came back right away.
Also NOT doing a backup, but instead making a snapshot triggers the problem. I think ESXi is not meant for me... Luckily there are other hypervisors out there.
That is a nice selling feature for Synology (particularly the incremental backup). However if I'm not using Synology NAS, can anyone recommend a good (agentless) backup solution for free ESXi? Non-free is OK. For a free option maybe you could just SSH into ESXi and run custom shell scripts (invoking dd) to backup full VM images to your NAS? I'm considering switching from Xen to free ESXi for my next home server & I'll appreciate any sage advice here.
vonkruel ESXi free has all the backup APIs disabled so that eliminates almost all the normal players that do agentless backups, unfortunately. Maybe Nakivo has something? I can’t remember but they might be one to look at.
@@jsnjyn Thanks, I did find a KB article on Nakivo's site that talks about limitations when using their software to backup VMs hosted on free-licensed ESXi. Based on that article, Naviko backup does look usable for me. I'll look into other options too, and yes those options are quite limited without that vStorage API.
I used to be a VMware person, but these days, I find Nutanix much, fairer. Maybe it's just the money? IDK, I wonder if Wendell had played with it or not. /s
If you could get free EXSi hosts to shutdown on UPS events without a license, you would have a really good and cheap setup. AFAIK that's not possible. Anyone? I have an Essentials license for backup and UPS only. It's worth it imo, but a dollar saved ...
Maybe I'm just being a pedantic ass, but it really Grinds My Gears when folks refer to ESXi as "VMware" or talk about "VMware" being a good product. ESXi is great (and expensive), but VMware makes so much more (granted, most of the "more" is all stuff for ESXi, and I totally get it when folks call ESXi VMware... but... grrr)! Good video though!
I've been using this Synology ActiveBackup software at one of my clients for a little over a year now. I have to admit for having the capabilities that it has included with the price of the NAS it was a huge life saver and has surprised me around every corner. I was implementing backup and DR policies for a business that had absolutely no backups and this was possibly one of the greatest blessings I ran into. It also made me look great as a consultant because I was able to implement it out of the box even though I was not sure if it was reliable long term (which it ended up being). I considered myself very impressed, I am even more reassured hearing that you felt the same way Wendell.
I use active backup on all my Synology devices and love it! Glad to see you make a video about it!
Oooo, they nailed the backup retention options, that's nice, simple, and well thought out
I purchased a Synology NAS just for the backup software for vmware. When you do the math, makes total sense to have backup hardware instead of paying for vmbackup software. Excellent vid and thanks!
Started using synology for some clients, not super advanced setups yet but glad you brought this product my way, wasn't even sure we could get it in Kenya but it is actually very available 👍🏾
Synology is pretty cool, and sponsoring you guys made them even cooler
Get to setup a client with a single ESXi host and a synology NAS in the next week, glad I remembered this video existed so I can test this. Few things make a customer happier than telling them they don't have to spend extra money on an unnecessary license
I have always been happy to see the free option of the ESXi and have been using it for years now. Thank you for this cool piece of information.
This proved to be a HUGELY valuable video to me. Thank you.
Hey Wendell - Thanks for this great video, it helped a whole lot in getting our backups started - You made a point that may be easily missed but is important to realize... You mentioned that Active Backup for Business was the only product that worked correctly for Differential Backup. I missed this completely and being new to the Synology world, I toddled off to find out where the Differential Backup option was - Well, as you stated, it's built in - What makes it work is the DeDuplication technology and the slick way the Retention profile is set. To see it work and the results you get really brings the point home. Thanks again
Correction: there is no Linux kernel on ESXi. This is a common misconception that people have. The issue I think relates to the older versions (ESX, without "i"), but it was also not completely true to state that it was based on a linux kernel. ESX (deprecated) had a console based on linux, and that was what you saw when booting up. It was also what you used for administration purposes, but it wasn't the linux kernel in charge of the hardware. It was used to boot up, but when the vmkernel (VMwares own code) loaded, it took control of the entire system and continued to run the Linux Kernel as a Virtual Machine. So, if you were directly connected with keyboard and video to the server what you were looking at was actually a VM running Linux. This was a prvileged VM, and any software issue that could occur could potentially crash the system. Nowadays, ESXi does not run a linux kernel whatsoever.
I agree it's not a linux kernel, but that's not the whole story. They port and use linux drivers and have a thin layer to translate between the linux kernel interface the driver expects and the vmkernel.
@666NedFlanders agreed my point is separate to that though. You seem to be commenting on ESX and the service console, I'm talking about includes ESXi current
I've worked with VMware ESX/ESXi, and it is an awesome product. Some years back I used to manage a software testing lab at HP, and we had dozens of ESX servers running hundreds of virtual machines...like every version/patch level of Windows in a few different languages...yes, different language versions of Windows can have slightly different sets of bugs/features. Maybe they fixed that by now. LOL! And not just Windows, Linux (RHEL, Ubuntu, Slackware...), and even OS/2 all under VMware. It has by far the best management tools out there for any hypervisor that I have used or played around with. It's nice to know that Synology has such tight integration with VMware. I've wanted to run ESXi at home, but had no real backup system available. I have been considering NAS box for other uses, and have been waffling between Synology and Drobo...but the features Synology has now has me leaning toward them. Thanx for the look at their system w/ESXi!
Really fun video considering at the in-depth technical information and the host did a good job explaining the details.
Nice video. Didnt know Synology had this feature available.
Seriously enjoyed this video. It's great to see how many of your videos' topics can be applied to small businesses and enthusiasts at home, who possibly run test environments or just love backups.
Have you ever thought of making a video (correct me if you have) about Veeam? The Veeam Agent for Windows is totally free and has the ability to create standalone full backups, incremental backups and you even get version retention control to some degree. I have it setup on my main desktop pc to backup over the network to my FreeNAS box (10gig networking around the corner)... it's so simple to setup and use.
"Which isn't too shabby for 6 disks of spinning rust." - laughed too hard at this!
Thanks for this Video. Exactly my setup!! :-) Appreciate the really great production quality.
Excellent video, Thanks Wendell. Mostly interested in the free VMWare tutorial part, since I am not drinking the Synology koolaid yet, but the VMWare stuff was good. Looking forward the the accompanying article/ forum thread you mentioned.
The things are great for the SMB market. Really easy to setup too.
The comedy embedded in that timestamp and 3x video attempts was hilarious.
I get by happily with KVM and my own backups. But I love L1T content so cheers! Great as usual.
... I would like to try this TH4 whitebox server. 🤔
Amazing thank you Wendell just set this up in my homelab
hey Wendell, any chance of you making a tutorial of explaining how VM Hypervisors handle physical processor cores/threads assignment to virtual machines, pros-cons, gotchas, etc?
@666NedFlanders *4 virtual cores per logical thread on the physical core*. This is exactly what most people do not understand, how hypervisors like Hyper-V or VMware Workstation or ESXI handle assignment of physical cores/threads to VM when you play around with those settings. For example, in VMWare Workstation you can assign xy number of processors and xy number of cores to the particular VM. So lets say you have 8core/16thread Ryzen CPU on that host machine, and for example if you assign/set that VM to have 1 Processor and 2 cores, how much of the real physical CPU cores/threads does hypervisor actually give out to that particular virtual machine? Does assigned cores on VM actually mean logical threads on the host physical CPU, or does the hypervisor actually grants that VM access/resources of those 2 real physical cores when they need it? That is the tutorial explanation of basics many would like to see from guys that understand it and can explain it in simple terms.
For older Synology Diskstation models upon which Active Backup for business is not compatible (as per www.synology.com/en-uk/dsm/packages/ActiveBackup), it may be possible to use Nakivo which offers a free 'basic' version (www.synology.com/en-uk/dsm/packages/NBR) for ESXi VM backups
I run a ESXi daily at home, I have an old A10 4 core AMD APU 16GB Host where I have my PfSense Firewall gateway and Ubiquity Wi-Fi server.
"Peas and carrots" means overcooked peas and under-cooked carrots. I reject the premise that these are things that go together; I reject its use as a simile. Okay, now tell me about VMWare.
*@**2:29** you mention talking about vSAN for a little bit ... is that actually in here or is there another video on it?*
@Wendel, one cool thing I like is that with cloud backup and hyper backup together from synology you can have both a real time instant live backups (up to 32 version of a file per hour) and then as in this video with the hyper backup you can have X number of backup per Y time (for example 5 versions per day, then 7 version per week, then 4 per month and so on). I have set up hyper backup to fire off every hour on its schedule to see if there are any new or changed files to backup.
I've used both DS916+ and DS918+ for this to backup solution the the local main servers. Timeline function included :)
whats the best free hypervisor? also can you do a video on comparing all hypervisors?
xen, kvm, proxmox, esxi free
Xcp-ng seems to be the best free at the moment
Hyper-V! Can manage everything with PowerShell.
@@sirius4k 😒 good luck.
@@sirius4k I love powershell. I still use windows because of powershell. I know powershell was released for Linux but I havnt tired it.
And now for something completely different:
I am using a network of four virtualized instances for a project. One of the instances is running windows 10 for general office automation (excel macros and whatnot) and the other three are running ubuntu desktops (deconstructed LAMP, one is hosting a simple register-login webpage, another the mysql db and the third one is hosting an instance of Hachicorp's Vault). The instances are communicating using SSH tunneling and HTTPS. I am running this setup for server interconnection security exercises but I really want to push towards some DevOps best practices like configuration management through Ansible.
In what way should I venture with the goal of automating the deployment and management of the concurrent and interconnected instances? Should I go for containers? Perhaps try Vagrant or Kubernetes orchestration? Thank you for any input.
Running this for a year now and the only issue I have had is that I have orphaned data sitting on the disks from retired vms. Probably easily avoided but something to consider. I cluster high priority machines into a single backup and that may be a mistake if space can become an issue.
Of course, if you're still queasy about the phoning home bit, you can always go to your router's admin page and look on its DHCP table for the Synology's IP address that way.
Why would I do this in VMWare as opposed to Docker?
Thanks for the new video @wendell. Actually...
It would be nice to see another video on this topic. To explaining more of the details you alluded to. About the main differences between using kvm, proxmox, and esxi. Because the backup feature being touted here specifically, well it was: block level / delta transfers for the vm backups, right? Well that sounds like something which I can already do by combining zfs and kvm. Which I already have / am using. Saving incremental snapshots of the kvm based vms in zfs, and then just using zfs send/recv to make backups of those datasets on to another zfs server. Which would then make the 2nd zfs machine the backup server (instead of Synology, not having those type of NAS). So I am left wondering what the other main are of why esxi is better than kvm. If not for that, then what else makes it a more attractive platform?
On side node: I *do* very much wish that they could evolve proxmox project, to split it in half down the middle. So that there were 2 independant parts of proxmox: the distro environment, and then ontop of that layer to sit all the user interface to kvm / the vms. Because then it might be possible to eventually diverge the project. And have a version of the proxmox frontend run independantly by itself on the other major linux distros. Because the proxmox interface can be nicer to use than 'virt-manager' gtk app. Or perhaps somebody else outside the proxmox project can forked it, to try to achieve that goal. Whichever. It's just a great asset to the open source community. So I hope that it can be better leveraged.
So if they are so good, then why I have never tried either proxmox or esxi myself? I am just trying to avoid getting addicted to creature comforts and features which may be lacking or missing on my other chosen platform. Things which I cannot have! So a seperate video covering what these trade-offs are (the weak and strong points of each) would be nice to hear about. At least if we cannot switch whatever is our preferred and curent platform.... then we can at least know better what they should be trying to improve in the future. Which sort of direction it should be going in order to fill in those missing gaps. And have some understanding to know if that is realistically a possibility. Or otherwise if it is not going to be likely to happen. --> then I need to reconsider changing my platform of choice to something else and try to come up with other solutions or workarounds for the other things which I might end up loosing from what I had before.
Wendell, awesome information as well as the way you presented it. Two questions: does it also work with a paid version of ESXi 6.5? I would hope so. Also, which versions of the synology DSM will it run on? I have an old Synology (around 2012) that it may be worth breaking it out of retirement for. Thanks!
Yes it does work with 6.5 paid without ssh and it is quite efficient at that. I run this on 30 vm's with 21 backing up on week nights and with cbt enabled it does them in 25 minutes. You have to have a Synology device that is running Btrfs for this application. Check the Synology website if your are not sure.
Small clarification: VMware includes a busybox-like machine, but it is not the hypervisor, so I guess yes it includes a Linux kernel but it isn't running the VMs
Wow, you said the months backwards without stopping. That's about as bad as saying the alphabet backwards. Kudos to you!
You should look into the free version of veeam and veeamone monitoring software. You can do active full backups even if the free esxi doesnt have change block tracking. However, yes you do have a larger backup size but it's free on free esxi. Or you can install a backup agent that has it's own Change block tracking driver. Best part is they have windows and linux agents for free.
Nice video, thanks ! Is it also possible to backup the esxi host configuration using this tool (not its virtual machines but the esxi host itself) ?
Thanks Wendell! I run both ESXI at work and home and Synology at both, and have been looking for a better way to do backups. I gotta play with this. It looks way nicer than the software I'm paying for at work even! Does it integrate well with VCenter too?
Does it handle quiescing the VM if you are running vmtools?
Yes. The application aware check box when setting up the task does just that.
Where is the EPYC CPU video?
its still on the way from newegg :D
I'm running a RS3618xs and an ancient DS211+ at home.
This is what my plan was to use with my ds213j, but it isn't supported. Trying to figure out which synology I should upgrade to and use this as a redundant backup or something.
Got the older DS1815+, this could be very useful to play about with at home :)
Nice video, my home lab is running:
- Microsoft Hyper-v Server 2016 = free
- Windows Admin Center = free
I got free Windows Server 2016 and free Hypre-V 2016, yet I still run Manjaro with VMs in KVM.
Same
My home lab is running 3 ESXi 6.7 with VSAN, VMware PKS, NSX-T, NSX-V, vCloud, vRealize Automation, vRealize Operations...
It's enterprise software, they don't give a crap if you run it on a home lab. You can have the liceses directly from VMware...
Thanks for making videos man
I use Synology (1819+) for backing up my ESXI server... Once my Pi-Hole (Debian 10.0) wasn't turning on itself. I deactivated the root account. After months there was a error and a boot up problem... I tried restoring my backup... It didn't worked... I still have to try it out on a demo VM!
Wendel, would it be possible to work with Synology to make some home application videos? Like running clonezilla on pxe on synology with so your pcs backup automatically on schedule or setting a secondary box at your parents house and utilize apps such as Moments, which is very much like google photos. Protect your household, if you will.
Hi... I am sorry I just see this video. I have a synology with a windows server 2016 backup... I know is there I can see it . But I have no idea how it was created... jaja The server machine is a VM into a VMWare. Have you any suggestions to recover that server 2016?
Does this still work with esxi 7 and 8 (free esxi versions)?
Do you do data science work yourself?
Now i need to buy a new synolgy box... My Ds211j is to slow
Thank you for you video. it was very informative. l love your sense of humor and your smart ass expressions... LOL
Can I encrypt the backups? (not the volumes on the NAS) then copy those encrypted backups to an Amazon S3 bucket?
9:37 Damn it felt like he was looking trough my VPN setup at home xD
Can Active Backups work with Proxmox or is there a way to get it to work with Proxmox? Great video btw.
I wanted to see the Microsoft 365 backup :)
Have you actually tried a full restore and monitor the restore speed? As soon as I restore a server image the restore speed is automatically crippled.. if one would restore a regular windows 10 client it will restore at max speed, but server images are crippled
What do you think about running a Windows Server VM with Veeam on a Synology RS3617XS+? Using the Synology as storage for the backups.
Is this capable of recover objects by application type? like an AD user or GPO?
Which solution would you recommend between a free version of VMWare Esxi and Proxmox.
I've read some reviews which states that Proxmox is a better solution for different reasons.
What do you guys think?
Would you want to shutdown a SQL VM prior to these backups? If all backups are live, is the best practice to backup the SQL at the application level for potential restore?
Live backups on an application server have caused me issues in the past.
You are talking about application-consistent backups which require an OS agent, these backups are crash consistent. There are other ways to backup SQL depending on your app and use case. In many cases now people are using SQL-DAG/AAG's.
I don't get it, why would SSH be dangerous to use? I never use anything else with my servers. No password login, changed the SSH port, I don't see what other way would make it inherently safer?
An ESXi Install Guide was mentioned. Does anyone have a link to that guide on forums.level1techs?
As I understand it the only advantage to ESXi vs VMware workstation is in terms of sharing Video cards with the VM. Of course I have to get AMD video cards for that since nVidia wants too much money for that feature.
I use Unraid which has similar functions to both Synology and ESXi... however, there is no way to back up an Unraid VM to Unraid storage. Really missing a key benefit to using a VM in the first place.
ua-cam.com/video/ntjQphOSPPI/v-deo.html You can fairly easily do this on unRaid
Is there any way to only backup actual data with that? Cause I really don't want to backup 30GB all the time for a VM (Proxy) that really only uses 1-2GB where the other space is reserved just in case...
I want the long rable version of this video, and all other videos :D
Is there are good pull base backup solution of synology itself. I am really interested in that, and is the biggest problem I have with synology
xud6 what are you using to do pull backups now with other systems?
@@jsnjyn I currently pull backup my virtualized nas with veeam. But i want to move it to bare metal as my storage grows.
I believe a lot of solution is avaliable on windows but i haven't really looked into it yet.
I just want an honest opinion looking at the best NAS that Qnap or Synology provide, witch one would last the longest features and hardware vies?
Ok back to the video bbl
Is there an equivalent for HyperV ?
Rambling about rambling, I'd listen to that podcast if it had Wendell
It exists and it certainly is rambling about rambling, only on patreon though.
Soo... I could us Xpenology, inside of ESXi, and have Xpenology backing itself up.
I will attempt this.
Vmware is like Windows Server: you you only do things their way and no other way.
Hm, I might want to exchange my rsync setup for this. Interesting!
You can join the VMware user group and get full licenses for a reasonable fee.. I think 300 a year.. If you really want to play with vsphere
Is this still working?
Any info on the NVME adapter?
Nevermind, Gigabyte CMT4034
But we love the tangents and little details...
Hmmm, do they take a snapshot before they start the backup? What voodoo is this.... ;)
Tried this, and it immediately corrupted my VM. This shows in the ESXi console: "The redo log of 'Debian Buster-000001.vmdk' is corrupted." The condition is not recoverable, the VM is lost. Did you do as suggested and enabled "Changed Block Tracking"? This - along with snapshots - seems to corrupt the virtual disk. Since Synology explicitly asks to enable this it's kinda also their fault... I created a fresh VM and enabled CBT even before installing Debian, but the error came back right away.
Actually it has nothing to do with Snapshots. Simply performing the backup corrupts the VM.
Also NOT doing a backup, but instead making a snapshot triggers the problem. I think ESXi is not meant for me... Luckily there are other hypervisors out there.
i switched from proxmox to esxi because of opengl. i wanted 1 gpu shared between the vms, and not 10+ gpus being pass through.
Those people on the active backup site look really ominous ;)
That is a nice selling feature for Synology (particularly the incremental backup). However if I'm not using Synology NAS, can anyone recommend a good (agentless) backup solution for free ESXi? Non-free is OK. For a free option maybe you could just SSH into ESXi and run custom shell scripts (invoking dd) to backup full VM images to your NAS? I'm considering switching from Xen to free ESXi for my next home server & I'll appreciate any sage advice here.
vonkruel ESXi free has all the backup APIs disabled so that eliminates almost all the normal players that do agentless backups, unfortunately. Maybe Nakivo has something? I can’t remember but they might be one to look at.
@@jsnjyn Thanks, I did find a KB article on Nakivo's site that talks about limitations when using their software to backup VMs hosted on free-licensed ESXi. Based on that article, Naviko backup does look usable for me. I'll look into other options too, and yes those options are quite limited without that vStorage API.
keep the tangents and ramblings in
Well basically you get Veeam, nice.
Hyper-V aint too shabby either¡
So it's rsnapshot? Neat
I used to be a VMware person, but these days, I find Nutanix much, fairer. Maybe it's just the money? IDK, I wonder if Wendell had played with it or not. /s
If you could get free EXSi hosts to shutdown on UPS events without a license, you would have a really good and cheap setup. AFAIK that's not possible. Anyone? I have an Essentials license for backup and UPS only. It's worth it imo, but a dollar saved ...
yeah, company does not have 2 cents to spend on backups, yet the ceo owns a yacht and a tesla.
Veeam VM Backup Community Edition.
I looked into that, and it seems it doesn't work with free ESXi.
It can, but it's a pain to.actually get working. And its interface is rough.
Maybe I'm just being a pedantic ass, but it really Grinds My Gears when folks refer to ESXi as "VMware" or talk about "VMware" being a good product. ESXi is great (and expensive), but VMware makes so much more (granted, most of the "more" is all stuff for ESXi, and I totally get it when folks call ESXi VMware... but... grrr)! Good video though!
one word XCP-NG
I want KVM to work better ..
linux should have mainlined xen instead but red hat bought kvm so linux had to to go with KVM lol.
Mouth: 3rd time
Face: 6th time
Not nearly as advanced as PowerVM.
i see potplayer
Prapaayateaary
whats that 4x m.2 adapter partnumber ? cant find It in my region