This article describes how to back up data between a remote server and a ReadyNAS OS 6 system using Rsync over SSH.
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Note: This article only applies to ReadyNAS OS 6.3.5 and earlier.
This process should work with any remote system as long as it supports Rsync and SSH. If you want to backup data securely between two ReadyNAS OS 6 systems, you can use ReadyNAS Replicate. See How do I back up data between two ReadyNAS OS 6 systems (using ReadyNAS Replicate)? for more information.
In this example, we are pulling data from the remote server to the ReadyNAS. If you want to push data from the ReadyNAS to the remote server, you can use the same process but reverse the source and destination in the backup job configuration.
- On the ReadyNAS admin page, go to Backup - Backups and click Add Backup:
- Enter a name for the backup job:
- In the left-hand side of the backup configuration settings, click Remote.
- In the Host field, enter the hostname or IP address of the remote server.
- In the Protocol field, select remote: Rsync over Remote SSH.
- In the Share field, enter the path to the share you want to back up (remember to add the slash at the end of the path).
- In the Login field, enter the username of the account you use on the remote server.
Note: The Password field is not required.
- In the right-hand side of the backup configuration settings, click Local and then click Browse:
- Navigate through the directory structure of the ReadyNAS and select the folder that you want to back up to. Click Select:
- Press Next.
- Set the schedule as needed:
Some common scheduling examples:- To run the backup job Monday to Friday after 7PM, the required configuration is:
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- Perform backup every: 24 hours
- between: 19:05 and 20:05
- On days: Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri
- To run the backup job every Saturday night after midnight, the required configuration is:
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- Perform backup every: 24 hours
- between: 00:05 and 01:05
- On days: Sat
Note: The time that the job is scheduled to run between is used only to specify the time window in which the job is allowed to begin. It does not mean that the job will be stopped if it is still running when that time window expires. Once the job begins, it will continue to run until it is successful or interrupted.
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Set the remaining options as needed:
- Schedule full backup: How often do you want a full backup to run? Other backups will be incremental.
- On completion send: Determines what alerts you want the ReadyNAS to send to you for this job.
- Remove the contents of the backup destination before performing a full backup: This is self-explanatory but should be used with extreme caution because it will delete data from the backup destination that no longer exists on the source ReadyNAS.
- After a backup is complete, change ownership of files in the backup destination: Enable this option to prevent any permission problems with access to the data inside the share later.
- Click Finish.
- Click on the newly created backup job and click Settings:
- Go to the Advanced tab and click Download SSH key file. Then click OK.
- Add this public key file to your remote server. In this example, we open the key in notepad, copy it and then append it to the authorized_keys file on the remote server. On a Linux server, this file is usually located in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys by default.
- The backup is now configured. To run the backup job, you can either wait for the defined schedule time to arrive or you can run it manually by clicking the job and clicking Start:
