Using Amazon S3 to Backup a Synology DS110j

One of the most important features of the Synology DS110j NAS is the ability to let it backup itself. This is actually a new feature in V2.3 of the DiskStation firmware. Here are my first impressions.

There is one thing that bothers me; I could not re-use the old bucket which I created when using Jungle Disk, at least what I could tell. When selecting the existing bucket, the DiskStation does not accept it because of its long name. The Jungle disk also create strange directory layout with something that looks like a tree map. This is in normal cases hidden for the user; Jungle fixes to mount a network drive. The network drive looks like a normal directory. If I remember correctly this is something that I choose when creating the original bucket. Anyway I tested and created a new bucket. I then started a backup of a small amount of files to test how it worked. The DiskStation solution is much simpler than Jungle Disk. One must consider that the Amazon backup is a new feature of the DiskStation software, while Jungle Disk has been around for some time. For example, you could not encrypt the content. You only use an encrypted transfer, that is you are using HTTPS for transfer. Another thing that I miss is a progress bar or similar. As it is today, you only see the status like this:

You only see that the backup is going on. I think I need to file a feature request for this. Notice that the backup type is a little bit misleading. As I wrote earlier, it is only the transfer that is encrypted.

The Jungle Disk desktop software discovered the new bucket I created for the DiskStation server. It informed that the bucket was compatible with Jungle Disk. I was then a little bit surprised when I could not discover any contents there. I decided to get another Amazon S3 browser. I found the CyberDuck browser. It has the capability to browse an Amazon S3 account, as well as a multitude of other servers like FTP, Samba etc. The FTP browser could come in handy when connecting to the FTP server in the DiskStation. (I have actually tested it and it worked without any problems.)

The CyberDuck browser works like a charm with all my buckets, see the picture below.

This shows the directory layout for the DiskStation and the Jungle Disk buckets. Notice that I have decided to do no incremental backup for the DiskStation. This is because I want to be able to restore my data, even if my DiskStation crashes. I could for example use CyberDuck to download all the contents. I think that I have configured the Jungle Disk to do incremental backup, which is like comparing apples and oranges. Anyway I am a little bit wiser than I was when I configured Jungle Disk from the beginning. The drawback is of course that is uses a lot of more space on the server. My opinion is that it is worth the extra money to be on the safe side. It is going to take some days to backup the pictures once more, but the DiskStation could work 24/7 without affecting my daily work. Meantime I could test other DiskStation features. There seems not to be any performance problems using other services while doing the backup. But this is only a problem during the first backup. When the initial backup has been performed, I have scheduled the backup to run at night every.

All in all I think that this solution is much better than the old one. All of our media files are now stored on the DiskStation and the backup is done as described. On my Mac I run TimeMachine to backup my laptop automatically. I will be able to go to sleep each night being sure that the things that I have added are safely transferred to my Amazon S3 account.