Backup Windows Server 2012 (R2) to Synology NAS

About Synology NAS

Generally, a Synology you buy is a standalone device with a few empty drive bays. It is recommended to install two same hard drives in order to set it up as a network attached storage (NAS) device. Synology NAS has been largely used as the backup center by companies and home users. It supports most of the backup tools that come with Windows and third party backup programs.

Can you backup Windows Server 2012 to Synology NAS?

The common backup tool for Windows Server 2012 (R2) is Windows Server Backup. Unfortunately, it cannot back up data to Synology NAS directly, because Windows Server 2012 doesn't use Samba 2 installed on Synology system. It won't work even if you map the Synology NAS as a network drive.

So can you really backup Windows Server to NAS like Synology? Well, the answer is YES.

Generally, you can try creating a VHD or iSCSI Target on your NAS drive before backing up Windows Server, then select the created volume as the backup destination in Windows Server Backup. But the steps are quite complicated and I personally prefer to use other effective backup software.

Windows Server Backup Software for Synology

Synology actually provides a Windows Server backup utility - Active Backup for Business. It can backup Windows physical server, PC, rsync/SMB file server, and VMware vSphere/Microsoft Hyper-V virtual machine to Synology NAS, you can find its detailed description here.

In addition to this, you can also choose a reliable third-party backup program, AOMEI Backupper Server for example. It can not only backup Windows Server 2012 to Synology NAS, but also supports other NAS like QNAP and Seagate, and works with all Windows Servers including 2016, 2019, 2022, etc.

With its intuitive interface and design, you can easily:
✪ Configure a backup to NAS, network drive, or other storage devices like CD/DVD, external hard drive, local disk, and so on.
✪ Create system backup and hard drive backup that allows you to transfer Windows installation and programs to dissimilar hardware machine without reinstalling. 
✪ Set an automatic backup to run the backup at a specific time in a day, a week, or a monthly, event triggers and USB plug in, you can also let the backup run on different occasions like system startup, shutdown, and user log-off or log-in.
✪ Perform differential backup and incremental backup to save disk space and reduce backup running time, which is the default configuration.

How to backup Server 2012 to Synology NAS

No matter you are using Windows Server 2008/2012/2016 or newer versions like Windows Server 2019 and 2022, you can use AOMEI Backupper Server to backup data to Synology NAS system. It provides a 30-day trail, and you can free download it now to have a try.

To backup to Synology NAS in Windows Server 2012:

1. At the Home screen, click “Backup” to begin with. It allows you to choose from system backup, disk backup, partition backup, or file backup. Here, “System Backup” is selected as an example.

2. The program will automatically include partitions required for a system restore in the backup, so you just need to click on the select box to specify a destination location.

3. In a pop-out window, which is like Windows File Explorer, click “Share/NAS” and then “Add Share or NAS Devices” at the bottom of the next screen. Then you can enter the path of the NAS to set up the Synology as the backup destination location.

4. If you want to run the backup automatically, just click the “Schedule” option to set a scheduled backup, and click “Options” to see more options like Encryption, Email Notification, Compression, etc. After that, click Start Backup to run the task.

Flexible Settings for You to Backup Windows Server 2012 to Synology

To automatically backup Windows Server 2012 to Synology NAS or other locations, you could enable Schedule option easily backup. And there are six options provided:

1. Daily/Weekly/Monthly: Set the backup running daily, weekly, monthly to backup your Windows Server 2012 automatic just in case you forget to backup.
2. Event Triggers: It enables you to trigger the backup event by the following events: User logon, User logoff, System startup, System shutdown.
3. USB plug in: Once setting up, AOMEI Backupper will automatically back up the data on the USB or backup local data to USB device once the USB device of the task is plugged in.
4. Real-time Sync: This option will help you to backup files immediately after they changed, and make all your backup files stay up to date.

Besides, you could enable Backup Scheme to delete old backup images while exceeding the backup number to maintain to free up space: click Scheme -> Enable Bakcup Scheme, choose a backup scheme and specify the backup number to retain.

There are five options for you: Full Backup Scheme, Incremental Backup Scheme, Differential Backup Scheme, Space Management Scheme, Other Backup Scheme.

Conclusion

As you can see, it is very easy to backup Windows Server 2012 to Synology NAS with AOMEI Backupper. After the backup is done, you can create a bootable media so you can restore when your Windows Server 2012 not working. And you can use this software to recover files saved on Synology NAS. Try it now!