Hi. just to start, I have almost no experience in setting up a network folder or compressing via cli, other than a small batch script and one guide on the internet, and I would like to setup a backup solution of some sort over a network share for one or more desktops. For now, a local computer dedicated to this would work, I can deal with doing it over the internet later on. I would also like to compress these backups, either manually by compressing every file, or through a program like veeam’s free edition (although anything that can do incremental backups would work).
I would I would like to know how I could go about setting this backup solution up. Again, I have very little experience with this sort of stuff, so apologies for any bad vocabulary.
Acronis is an easy turn-key solution for home backups.
What would I have to setup on the target system for the backups? Like would I have to install a specific OS, or do I just run acronis on all of the systems and let the program do the rest?
Also, is there any software that could accomplish this besides Acronis? I was looking at some free backup programs, and I’ve found a few, like veeam, AMANDA, or I could do it all manually (although that one would take a long time to setup). What do you think about those?
Thanks for the suggestion
Acronis is nice as a turnkey solution, they also provide cloud storage and have decent support.
As for diy:
There’s restic… or you can roll your own with vssadmin and rclone
Assuming you’re talking about Windows desktops, Veeam is probably the best way to go. Veeam will make the setup easy, I don’t see much reason to explain that process.
For the server side, you just need something that will provide a SMB share for Veeam to output to. This could be a Linux system running Samba, or a Windows server if desired. A different username/password and folder path for each system is advisable.
For backups over the internet (later on), you’d probably want the SMB share going over a VPN (such as Wireguard), rather than exposed directly on the internet.
The company I work for was using Veeam previously but I migrated us to AOMEI Centralized Backupper. I really like Backupper, more than Veeam personally.
What made you like backupper over veeam? I’m curious about what software to choose
And I will be sure to try out those DIY programs and the dedicated backup programs, with hopefully easier setting up of all the smb shares. One thing I would like though is to backup either the entire backup as one super-large file, or as a folder with all the files like they are on the drives. As opposed to having a proprietary file format like veeam does, but I guess that could be solved with one particular program or another.
Additional features, and I really like the GUI and restore process.
The way I maintain my backups is through Proxmox backups + duplicati
duplicati is very easy to use. I recommend taking a look at it.
I would love to use that at the clinic I work at, but all the other IT guys are basically noobs when it comes to linux or FreeBSD anything. Sad 
It does run on Windows btw.
Yea I know but I’m not going to change systems if the underlying stuff is remaining the same. We have an existing system that works, I just like Proxmox lol
Remember you always want your backup to pull from the source if its an actual back up. You do not want to push to it.
Why do people insist on making these push/pull classifications? To me it sounds like BS.
You need some monitoring to keep it going, you need to test the restore process, you need to make sure to not allow bugs/security issues in your current system to corrupt your backup (either latest or some previous generation).
Which box on the network runs the cron/scheduled task, or opens the TCP connection (or whether it uses TCP), doesn’t make backups any easier with respect to security safety or monitoring.
I would disagree, but I dont think its worth arguing about. Its best practice, but you can for sure do it somewhat safely the other way around. Your first Storage server wouldnt matter its the storage server that backs up that storage server.
Thanks OP for starting this thread, I need to research these options. I’ll just come out of the closet for shunning… I have been using syncthings as a… backup (gasps). I need to migrate away from that.
I use Macrium Reflect at home, it does a pretty good job. I found Veeam free to be a bit to simple for what I wanted and then the one of the paid editions that I thought would have worked wanted to install SQL Express, I noped out of that pretty fast.
Macrium should be able to do everything you need, though, you may need to buy a license to do compression (I have the license so I’m not sure if in the free edition or not).