Best Remote Backup Solution

Hi Everyone,

I was speaking with my brother over the weekend and we discussed backing up a copy of our data to each other’s NAS devices. He has a Synology 1522 and I have a Dell Poweredge R730 running the latest version of Truenas Scale.

Just wondering what would be the absolute easiest way to add a backup from my brother’s Synology and vice versa? Can anyone direct me to a good video or article? Eventually, in total, there could be up to 7 or more family members backing up to my server.

my brother is technically illiterate and I have limited knowledge, but I do currently have a Wireguard setup via a Docker container (WGEasy) that I use to connect to my server from other devices (phone, laptop, etc). I use Wireguard because it is a free option as Tailscale only allows for up to 3 users on a free account.

Also, would it be better to create a separate pool for him with separate drives or just create a new backup dataset on my existing pool?

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thank you

Wireguard’s a free option, but then you need to figure out how to handle all the IPs, port forwarding, etc. Tailscale (and ZeroTier, and Netbird, and the like) abstract all that away. Besides, I thought it was possible to connect a different user to your Tailnet–or more specifically, to a particular device on your Tailnet.

With all of that said, the simplest way to handle this would probably be via Syncthing, presuming it can be run on the Synology.

Hi Dan,

Thanks for the reply.

It seems that with this docker container called WGEasy, adding users is actually “Easy”. No pun intended. The port forwarding also wasn’t that bad. I am interested in the idea of things being easier with Tailscale, but I’m just limited by the 3 user quota and even if I wanted to pay a monthly fee the next tier is 6 users which would not likely be enough and the next tier after that is business class which is ridiculous for a home environment, in my opinion.

That being said, I imagine if my brother and his wife were to use the same user account on Tailscale, it would only make for a scrambled mess of both their files, if it’s even possible. I’ll take a look at the other options you listed Zerotier, Nertbird, etc.

I will look into weather Syncthing is available for Synology. Do you know if Syncthing does encrypted backups? We both would like to keep our backup files private.

Do you have any input on weather it would be better to create a separate pool for my brother and his family, using drives he provides me or just keep everything on the current storage pool? The reason I’m asking is because in the event that this who shared backup thing goes sideways I could always pull his drives and return them. Also, he would have his own backup pool that he could add drives to as required. Not really sure about what would be best or an ideal situation, or if this is even something that I should be concerned about?

Thanks

Honestly i didn’t find a proper way to use Wireguard/Wg-easy for my remote replication… But i admit, i’m not so comfortable on that argument. After have struggled a bit, using tailscale i have setup everything in literally 10 minutes. Now my Nas and the one at my parents home backup each other every night.

I’m still using Wg-easy for manage users on my VPN, no need a lot of users for tailscale. and every night a cronjob start the tailscale container > the scheduled pull replica start > cronjob stop tailscale container.

Yes.

I generally wouldn’t. It’s generally best to keep your storage in a single pool; you can assign quotas as desired.