Mine is 25+ characters, upper, lower, and numbers. Let your password manager create and store it. This is important, as it will encrypt the data stored on Backblaze so that in the event your data is compromised, it’s still secure.

Select a backup schedule and integrity check that suits your needs.

Enable transfer encryption so that your connection between your Synology and Backblaze is secure.

Enable Compress backup data if you want to reduce your cloud footprint at the price of some processing power (I enable this).

Choose if you would like to be notified.

On the next page there are several options: Click Next and select any applications that you would like to back up. Drill down into each volume to select sub-folders if the need arises. Add in a directory where you want all your data to go (I left it as the default) and click Next.Īt this point you can select which volumes you want to back up. If everything works you’ll get results when you select the Bucket Name dropdown. Change the Signature Version to v4, leave the Request Style at Virtual Hosted-Style, paste in your Access Key (keyID) and your Secret Key (applicationKey). This URL is defined by the endpoint URL in your Backblaze bucket. When you click Next you’ll want to select Custom Server URL. Give it a name, allow it access to the bucket you just created, allow it to read and write, and allow it to list all the bucket names. I went with 32 days, as my data shouldn’t be changing that much and I hope I would detect an encrypted NAS in that amount of time. The downside to only keeping the latest version is in the event of a ransomare attack on your network you’ll write over your good backup.

Update the Lifecycle Settings by determining how long you want to keep old files around, keeping in mind there’s a cost to keeping files longer.

As the Synology is handling all the data via its packaging, it didn’t seem to make sense. You could consider this a belt-and-suspenders approach, but I didn’t see much value in it.

I disabled default encryption as we’re going to let the Synology encrypt everything.

Mark it Private, because you don’t need everyone seeing your lolcat collection.

The name has to be unique, not to just your account, but all of Backblaze.

Create an account, set up a profile, billing, etc.

If you like Backblaze for your cloud provider, the set up is fairly simple and straight forward: There are a lot of cloud providers out there that want your business, and many of them have S3 capabilities or out-of-the-box integrations with Synology. With their introduction of S3 buckets, Backblaze made it very simple to backup folders on your Synology to their cloud. There are a lot of cloud providers out there, but after doing some research I ended up on Backblaze B2 (this isn’t sponsored in any way, just a happy, paying customer).

The local backup helps in the event my primary Synology blows up, and the cloud is there in the event a flood or a fire wipes out both. In general, putting data into the cloud is free (or cheap), and getting it out is expensive.

One of the main drawbacks to backing up to the cloud is the cost of getting the data back if you lose it all locally. I’ve modified the rule to allow for the NAS (production), an on-site backup to an older Synology, and a backup to the cloud. With the introduction of the cloud, things have gotten a bit simpler.

Back in the day that would mean a production copy and two backup copies, with two different media (hard drive and tape), and one being off-site. Maintain 3 copies of your data, on 2 different types of media, with one of them being offsite. There is a tried and true strategy for managing backups: the 3–2–1 rule.

However, I’ve recently seen the light, and for a few bucks a month I’ve grown to love backing up to the cloud, and Synology makes it really simple to do so. I personally ignored it for years, rotating an off-site backup every couple of months. Everyone knows that they should back up their data, however it is likely the last thing to work on, and not the most fun. On the other hand, now you have all of your eggs in one basket. Dump all your data there, serve it up to all of your devices, and spend hours, days, or weeks getting it just right. If you’re like me, and the title interested you, you have a local NAS in your home office to run your own private cloud.

Backblaze local backup