Need these Synology features in TrueNas. Possible ?

[exus69]

Hello,

After configuring Synology NAS for a client, I was wondering if the following features of the same
can be achieved in TrueNAS smoothly and without any bugs then I would like to set it up at my
home as well.

1) Sync files and folders between Windows computers (7, 10, 11) and TrueNAS and only the TN
Admin can access the TN recycle bin. In case of emergency the TN admin can login to the NAS
and restore the deleted files/folders

2) Create Immutable snapshots. The snapshots should be available to be browsed just in case.

3) Create an image of Windows boot partitions and C drive and restore the same during emergency through network boot. This I've not configured on Synology
but was just wondering if it's possible or not

I don't have any requirement for dockers or containers and all the advanced stuff. I don't even know what they all mean lol

Please help. Thank you.

 

[thewizard]

You can create a SMB share that's compatible with Windows File History (Shadow Copies), that will automatically keep all of the history for every change to every file in every folder you tell Windows to care about. I have this setup on about a half a dozen Windows machines and it works great. You can then right click on any file in a protected folder and go to the Previous Versions tab and restore it. You can restore entire folders too. Very very good feature of Windows and doesn't require any TrueNAS smarts other than an exposed writable share, just make sure you set a good password on whatever backup user account you create in TrueNAS.

Same deal for Windows out of the box Backup and Restore. It supports SMB shares, set the schedule to whatever you like and complete disk images will be taken and preserved on your NAS.

Games are tad trickier, but with Steam or GOG you can create a share that you expost as iSCSI, Windows will attach to it as a drive letter. Unlike a mapped drive to a SMB share an iSCSI share is considered an actual drive by Steam/GOG. You can create a library on said drive and actually install your games there, great for small Indi games that don't require SSD speeds. Also great for 'archiving' those AAA titles to, instead of having to re-download them when you get the itch to play them again, just move them between your libraries... over Gigabit LAN it's great.

For your more advanced requests there are two out of the box Plugins Syncthing (sync's files on any OS) and Asigra Backup. Those would cover you're scenarios like network restore etc. but they do require a bit to configure correctly and you're security would be up to you, yes absolutely possible to restrict it to a single admin type user who can view where the backups are.

 

[winnielinnie]

You can then right click on any file in a protected folder and go to the Previous Versions tab and restore it. You can restore entire folders too.

I never quite understood this feature. It replaces the file (on the SMB share itself) with an older version from a snapshot.

Yet any subsequent backups from your local Windows machine will overwrite this (good) file on the share with the (bad) version from your local machine:

1. You have "MyNotes.docx" on your local computer
2. Over time, it's gone through many revisions. Each revision has been sync'd to TrueNAS and snapshotted
3. You need to restore back to a previous version of "MyNotes.docx"
4. Browsing the SMB network share in Windows Explorer, you right-click "MyNotes.docx" and select a previous version to restore
5. Now on the SMB network share you have brought back a previous version of "MyNotes.docx" (Yay!)
6. Your routine backup task runs overnight, sync'ing from the local Windows client -> TrueNAS server
7. Uh oh! "MyNotes.docx" (from your local client) just overwrote your restored version on the SMB network share!

* Not to mention, using the "Restore" feature happens on the server, not on your local computer. So you'll still have the (unwanted) version of the file on your computer.

 

[thewizard]

Not how that works at all

File History and Backup are totally separate features in Windows.

Your File History share must be different to your Backup share.

If you restore a version of a file you choose what happens on the local computer, you either directly replace the broken one or you restore it to a different location. The File History on the NAS is never altered or lost in any way. You can always get back any version of a file, even the one you just replaced. It's lossless.

Backups are totally different, they take an image of the disk or partition you want protected. Saved in a different format to a different share location on your NAS.

 

[winnielinnie]

File History and Backup are totally separate features in Windows.

That's not the issue. (See my numbered list above, which walks through a common use-case).


If you "restore" MyNotes.docx to a previous version when browsing the network SMB share \\truenas\share\Documents\MyNotes.docx, this doesn't affect your computer's local copy of C:\Users\Winnie\Documents\MyNotes.docx

The next time a sync or backup task runs to transfer from your local Windows computer to your TrueNAS server, MyNotes.docx (on your local computer) will overwrite the (restored) version of MyNotes.docx on the network share.

 

[thewizard]

What you're effectively saying there is two sources of truth. The share doesn't know there is another copy of the file on your local computer. Why would you do this? It's critical you don't also share out your File History SMB share location to anyone or anything other than the service account you setup for TrueNAS to write to it. File History does not equal Cloud Collaboration tool!

If you want to collaborate on things with multiple copies of something kept in sync then look at cloud tools like OneDrive (TrueNAS can sync to it, SpiderOak (Crossclave or ONE backup) for zero trust options. Plenty of others. TrueNAS has built in Cloud Sync Tasks.