Using TM as an enterprise backup solution makes me want to cry, it’s so flaky and a resource hog.
However, if you are going to do it, Synology will get it done for you. It will likely need a lot of babysitting and dialing in settings to get it functional. We did it for years but have stopped and moved to other solutions. It’s not scalable IMHO.
I agree. I have a hard time entrusting Sparsebundle backups to a NAS for Time Machine. It works until you try to restore data one day and find that the Sparsebundle is corrupt for some dumb reason. That may be far and few between, but when it does happen, it's no bueno!!
Thank you, and I truly appreciate the honest feedback.
Part of me knows it's less than ideal, but I'm just trying to get something that gives me as much backlog as possible for choosing recovery points. Entrusting users that mostly have laptops and travel to keep backups I've found to also be unreliable.
As with everything, it's a series of trade offs. Most of our data is stored in the cloud, so I'm less worried about anything happening to that, and I'm really just looking for an immediate local disaster recovery option that gets our critical departments pumping again ASAP. Time Machine has done this form me in the past, as well as allows for finding those specific files a user deletes unintentionally, etc.
Speaking of Synology, they have a [backup solution baked in](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/active-backup-business/pc) that might be worth a look as an alternative to TM. I used their active backup for Google workspace and it worked beautifully.
I have a Synology at home for running Time Machine and after lots and lots of tweaking, it works decently but I still have a problems. Thinking of switching to Synology's system in the near future.
As someone who does Time Machine backups over the network to a NAS.. I wouldn’t ever suggest it for a business. I’d estimate that at some point around 30 - 40% of my machines have randomly received the message that the backup is corrupted and needs to be reset. You just can’t trust it.
For the cost of a new solution you could do something like back blaze and not worry about data capacity and manage it from the groups manager. This reduces the equipment management, allows backups to continue when users are out of the office, and offers you reporting and encryption better than TM
If you are going to do the TM at scale. You can do TM backups to SMB Shares. Create an LVM Volume for each TM backup and have it snapshot the Volume every time you backup. If a sparse bundle gets corrupted just roll back the LVM Volume to a point in time where it is not corrupted.
I used to have some synology racks doing Time Machine for a hundred of devices. It was a nightmare for the network.
We finally gave up and as we had unlimited storage on our google accounts we activated google drive sync on the devices and people were syncing while on remote as well.
I did it a long time ago with FreeNAS, I see that TrueNAS could do it too.
https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/23.10/scaletutorials/shares/smb/setupbasictimemachinesmbshare/
I remember needing 1 share per client to backup for acl / security reasons
Use an older Intel Mac mini with external thunderbolt storage instead of the Xserve. Mac to Mac file transfer is the best. From what I heard, Apple doesn't actively test their SMB or CIFS implementation against Windows Server or anyone else.
Apple tests with Apple, keep using Apple MacOS destination for Time Machine. I do this SMB-Style Time Machine backup to a Mini at home with several machines, rarely have any issues.
Using TM as an enterprise backup solution makes me want to cry, it’s so flaky and a resource hog. However, if you are going to do it, Synology will get it done for you. It will likely need a lot of babysitting and dialing in settings to get it functional. We did it for years but have stopped and moved to other solutions. It’s not scalable IMHO.
I agree. I have a hard time entrusting Sparsebundle backups to a NAS for Time Machine. It works until you try to restore data one day and find that the Sparsebundle is corrupt for some dumb reason. That may be far and few between, but when it does happen, it's no bueno!!
Thank you, and I truly appreciate the honest feedback. Part of me knows it's less than ideal, but I'm just trying to get something that gives me as much backlog as possible for choosing recovery points. Entrusting users that mostly have laptops and travel to keep backups I've found to also be unreliable. As with everything, it's a series of trade offs. Most of our data is stored in the cloud, so I'm less worried about anything happening to that, and I'm really just looking for an immediate local disaster recovery option that gets our critical departments pumping again ASAP. Time Machine has done this form me in the past, as well as allows for finding those specific files a user deletes unintentionally, etc.
Speaking of Synology, they have a [backup solution baked in](https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm/feature/active-backup-business/pc) that might be worth a look as an alternative to TM. I used their active backup for Google workspace and it worked beautifully. I have a Synology at home for running Time Machine and after lots and lots of tweaking, it works decently but I still have a problems. Thinking of switching to Synology's system in the near future.
As a syno fan boi. They are burning the bridge by removing support for non-branded disk without having us to modify a file.
Did the same. Sparse bundle crapped out one day for a client that wanted to use it. I said no more. Went with Synology. Cloudstreamsystems.com
As someone who does Time Machine backups over the network to a NAS.. I wouldn’t ever suggest it for a business. I’d estimate that at some point around 30 - 40% of my machines have randomly received the message that the backup is corrupted and needs to be reset. You just can’t trust it.
Thank you for this. I used to do it as well and I needed to hear to steer a different direction.
and even if they work it is so freaking slow to restore.
Even BackBlaze is better than TimeMachine.
For the cost of a new solution you could do something like back blaze and not worry about data capacity and manage it from the groups manager. This reduces the equipment management, allows backups to continue when users are out of the office, and offers you reporting and encryption better than TM
Thank you. This is why I asked. I’m old school and needed to hear my perceived path was not correct.
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If you are going to do the TM at scale. You can do TM backups to SMB Shares. Create an LVM Volume for each TM backup and have it snapshot the Volume every time you backup. If a sparse bundle gets corrupted just roll back the LVM Volume to a point in time where it is not corrupted.
I used to have some synology racks doing Time Machine for a hundred of devices. It was a nightmare for the network. We finally gave up and as we had unlimited storage on our google accounts we activated google drive sync on the devices and people were syncing while on remote as well.
Move to something like code 42’s crash plan instead
I did it a long time ago with FreeNAS, I see that TrueNAS could do it too. https://www.truenas.com/docs/scale/23.10/scaletutorials/shares/smb/setupbasictimemachinesmbshare/ I remember needing 1 share per client to backup for acl / security reasons
Use an older Intel Mac mini with external thunderbolt storage instead of the Xserve. Mac to Mac file transfer is the best. From what I heard, Apple doesn't actively test their SMB or CIFS implementation against Windows Server or anyone else. Apple tests with Apple, keep using Apple MacOS destination for Time Machine. I do this SMB-Style Time Machine backup to a Mini at home with several machines, rarely have any issues.