Info Active Backup for Business 2.5.0 beta with macOS support

[Rusty]

Well Active Backup for Business 2.5.0 is here so let’s see how well it does with macOS backups as opposed to Time Machine.

Let the testing begin!

 

[Rusty]

Install, config, all good, backup failed:

Error,"Error code -1: Failed to run asr (Apple Software Restore) on Macintosh HD - Data, Macintosh HD.",2022-11-25 00:14:52
Error,"Failed to read and upload the volume content of Macintosh HD - Data, Macintosh HD.",2022-11-25 00:14:52

Passed it on and reported it. Waiting on Syno support

 

[ilbarone87]

Any chance to know if this update supports linux kernel >5.10 (basically ubuntu 22.04)?

 

[glenj]

Don't know if I should have but I gave full disk access to ABB on my Mac under the privacy & security settings and now ABB seems to be backing up my Macs.

 

[Rusty]

Don't know if I should have but I gave full disk access to ABB on my Mac under the privacy & security settings and now ABB seems to be backing up my Macs.

That is the way to do it. Otherwise backups will not kick in.

 

[fredbert]

Full disk access is needed by all backup and cloning applications, otherwise they can't access stuff to back it up.

I finally got round to installing the ABB 2.5 beta on the DS218+, that was fairly painless since I already had ABB installed and authorised. Installed the ABB Agent 2.5.0-2612 on two Macs (Mini 2012 and ..Book Air 2014) which also went well enough. The MBA on Big Sur needed the reboot in addition to full disk access. The ABB Agent is now by far my biggest application on both Macs, at 1.3 GB!! Why does it have to be this huge?

ABB is telling me that the agents have an update available, but of course this could be due to it being beta and not downloaded via normal channels. So I'm ignoring that for now.

This has also allowed me to test out creating a new Shared Folder and then creating ABB tasks to it and enabling compression. The default ActiveBackupforBusiness shared folder doesn't have compression enabled, and cannot have it added. I always wondered is it would be worth doing, so now I can see.

So far I'm only testing backups and portal access. I would normally rebuild a Mac from a CCC clone, but if this can do it in someway then that may be a useful option.

I've a new Mac Mini M1 16GB 1TB 10GbE coming from Santa, so just occupying myself until then

 

[Gerard]

This has also allowed me to test out creating a new Shared Folder and then creating ABB tasks to it and enabling compression. The default ActiveBackupforBusiness shared folder doesn't have compression enabled, and cannot have it added. I always wondered is it would be worth doing, so now I can see.

From what I can recall folder permissions were different on the built in ABB folder vs new shared folder you can make. I can’t recall exactly, I know I posed the question here unanswered in the past (link below). Abb folder permissions has admin group as read only, or I think it was no permissions vs if you make the shared folder you can only limit so much. Take a look at the difference with folder permissions between the two though.

Post in thread 'Active backup how to turn on compression and encryption?'
Active backup how to turn on compression and encryption?

 

[Rusty]

new Mac Mini M1 16GB 1TB 10GbE coming from Santa, so just occupying myself until then

Getting an M machine as well (soon), but so far I have to say abb works awesome.

bare metal restore should use the Migration Assistant but guess we will have to wait and see

 

[fredbert]

From what I can recall folder permissions were different on the built in ABB folder vs new shared folder you can make

You’re right. The ABB shared folder that is made during installation has admin group with read-only access. But when you create a shared folder the admin group can either be no access or read+write access, but read-only permission is greyed out.

To enable ABB won’t use a shared folder that has compression enabled by Control Panel. Instead create one without and then the first ABB task or template that uses it will give you the option to assign compression and encryption. After that you don’t get the options if you decided not.

bare metal restore should use the Migration Assistant but guess we will have to wait and see

Ok. That’s something I don’t think I’ve used on Mac. I must be using something on my Mac Mini that I’ve just cloned over and over since starting OS X on 10.1 with a PowerMac G4.

 

[Gerard]

To enable ABB won’t use a shared folder that has compression enabled by Control Panel. Instead create one without and then the first ABB task or template that uses it will give you the option to assign compression and encryption. After that you don’t get the options if you decided not

I’m not following this, so create a shared folder (not Abb system created) then create a ABB task/template for that shared folder that I create. You will get options to compress and encrypt, but then the permissions are still read/write for admin group.

In other words is there no way to use Abb compress/encryption while having admin groups as read only?

 

[fredbert]

I’m not following this, so create a shared folder (not Abb system created) then create a ABB task/template for that shared folder that I create. You will get options to compress and encrypt, but then the permissions are still read/write for admin group.

In other words is there no way to use Abb compress/encryption while having admin groups as read only?

Bingo! I guess the question might be "does the admin group need to have access at all?". You could add admin group access as and when you need it. Most work with the backup data will be done via the ABB package: its system internal account, ActiveBackup, has read+write access already (I forgot to mention this needs to be added for shared folders you create for ABB use).

 

[Gerard]

Bingo! I guess the question might be "does the admin group need to have access at all?". You could add admin group access as and when you need it. Most work with the backup data will be done via the ABB package: its system internal account, ActiveBackup, has read+write access already (I forgot to mention this needs to be added for shared folders you create for ABB use).

OK got it. The only think is if a system is wiped out, and you need to do a restore, you open the ABB portal or app to do the restore, I'd imagine you need credentials to authenticate. Is the access to the backup data not tied to the user account doing the backup? Or is ABB just a man in the middle handling it; user authenticates to ABB restore portal (as long as they have the permission) then ABB authenticates to the data folder where the ABB data lives (in which only ABB can access)?

 

[fredbert]

I'm not that advanced. I'm only interested in recovering some files and folders, and that can be done with the portal by the user or an admin. For Mac my full recovery has always been via clone drives. The limited use with PC hasn't needed a full recovery, indeed a couple of years ago my son had a new PC and just copied his Synology Drive backup task's folder onto his C:/Users/<his account> and got it working ... rather a bold approach while I was reading up on what to do, and only after we had done a new ABB backup of the new one.

 

[Rusty]

Is the access to the backup data not tied to the user account doing the backup?

It is. But also, admins can see all as well. So if the ABB backup task was created with a non admin account (on the client side), and you use that same non-admin account, opening the portal you will see only "your" backups, as opposed to when you log in an admin you will see all the tasks.

 

[Bill Wilder]

I too have been using this of late: two M1 laptops and one Intel iMacPro. I am impressed with the backup performance - overnight backups complete much more quickly than equivalent Time Machine backups to Synology. Data reduction due to de-duplication is good - saving about 26% across the three Macs. Have done some trial downloads and trial restores. I did NOT have compression enabled on the shared folder used for storage.

One thing I've noted - is restoring a large folder is extremely slow (much slower than the backup). As a test I was curious to restore an entire Data volume to a fast external SSD to see if it could then be used as a recovery volume for data migration. I aborted the restore attempt due to the very slow speeds of the restore. I would be interested to know if anyone else attempts something similar or would be interested for Synology to comment on how they see this facility helping when a disk recovery is actually needed.

Another note - I have overnight backups scheduled. This seems to be working OK but at least one such backup failed with: Error code -3: Failed to run asr (Apple Software Restore). This despite full disk access being enabled and previous backups completing. I will continue to monitor overnight backups..

For now, though, it looks like a tool with good potential and might prove helpful for occasional file restores.

 

[fredbert]

I have my tasks mimicking Time Machine‘s every hour backup, but I will ease back on this. Using the shared folder that I created and ABB can use compression I am seeing much slower backups for the old Mac Mini than I think were happening yesterday with the default uncompressed shared folder.

I’m going to do some tests to see if the compression is worth any backup lag. In my experience of using this with PC then it’s best to get the backup done. I think the elapse time to suspend a task and still allow it to finish is now 3 days, longer and it used to do a full backup again (in bandwidth and time at least).

 

[Gerard]

I think the permissions of the shared folder are independent of permissions for ABB. I just checked my one site and saw that all users have no access on the shared folder permission. Yet if I open ABB restore portal my standard user account can browse, restore and download the Active Backup. So I guess the permissions that really matter is that your user account is given permission to the ABB app & ABB restore portal APP in order to complete the tasks. Whereas the permissions on the shared folder is for the user to browse (SMB or File Station) to the shared folder directory. Sounds like best practice is no user should have permission to the ABB shared folder (reduces risk of ransomware thru SMB attack), but will still have access only through the ABB app.

 

[Rusty]

but will still have access only through the ABB app

In recent versions of ABB there are also delegation options that allow for fine-tuning permissions in terms of backup, restore and access to restore portal.

 

[Bill Wilder]

I too have been using this of late: two M1 laptops and one Intel iMacPro. I am impressed with the backup performance - overnight backups complete much more quickly than equivalent Time Machine backups to Synology. Data reduction due to de-duplication is good - saving about 26% across the three Macs. Have done some trial downloads and trial restores. I did NOT have compression enabled on the shared folder used for storage.

One thing I've noted - is restoring a large folder is extremely slow (much slower than the backup). As a test I was curious to restore an entire Data volume to a fast external SSD to see if it could then be used as a recovery volume for data migration. I aborted the restore attempt due to the very slow speeds of the restore. I would be interested to know if anyone else attempts something similar or would be interested for Synology to comment on how they see this facility helping when a disk recovery is actually needed.

Another note - I have overnight backups scheduled. This seems to be working OK but at least one such backup failed with: Error code -3: Failed to run asr (Apple Software Restore). This despite full disk access being enabled and previous backups completing. I will continue to monitor overnight backups..

For now, though, it looks like a tool with good potential and might prove helpful for occasional file restores.

I had previously noted that restores were extremely slow. I've redone these tests and no longer see them same issue so suspect there must have been something else at play during the attempt I ran where the speed was very slow. Sorry about that. I believe, for some use cases, that ABB is much better than Time Machine to a Synology server.

 

[Rusty]

I’m really satisfied with it so far.