NAS Backup: Supporting the Shared Environment

Network-Attached Storage (NAS) allows access to storage drives via a network. While some organizations treat NAS as a form of data backup, in reality, this is not what it is intended for. To securely protect your data, implement a 3-2-1 backup strategy: keep 3 copies of your data (the original plus 2 backups), on 2 different media types, with 1 copy kept offsite.

To ensure your data is protected, and that you can restore it in case of a disaster, it is important to have an adequate backup strategy alongside your NAS system. In the following, we cover the basics of NAS, including the different types of NAS devices, and how it compares to the cloud. We then explain why you need a dedicated backup solution to complement your NAS, and describe the different approaches to achieving it.

Keep a local second copy for fast recovery:

• Secondary NAS: deploy a second NAS on the same network and run incremental, encrypted backups across it.
  
• On-premises object storage: set up a local S3-compatible object storage system to and schedule regular syncs to secure your backups with high scalability and robust data immutability.
• Direct USB drive: for smaller datasets, you can even connect an external drive to the NAS and schedule regular syncs with the built-in backup tools.

Keep an offsite third copy for disaster protection:

• Cloud storage: use native NAS integrations to send automated backups to a cloud provider for cost-effective offsite protection.
• Object storage nodes at other data centers: replicate your backups to S3-compatible nodes in a separate physical facility for enterprise-grade offsite protection.
• Drive rotation: manually sync to external drives and rotate one offsite to a secure remote location.

In this article:

• What is NAS?
• What is NAS with cloud backup
• The need for NAS backup solutions
• NAS backup approaches
• Securing your NAS backup
• Data management with Cloudian

This is part of a series of articles about Data Backup.

What Is NAS?

Network-Attached Storage (NAS) is a dedicated file storage system containing one or more storage drives that enable multiple users to collaborate and share data. This shared storage is accessed by users on a Local Area Network (LAN) via an Ethernet connection. NAS is designed primarily for handling unstructured data, such as audio, video, websites, text files, and Microsoft Office documents.

NAS Device Categories 

There are three categories of NAS devices, based on drive capacity, drive support and scalability. Each category is suitable for different business sizes:

• Enterprise NAS: This is the high-end category. It is designed for enterprises that need to store large quantities of file data. Enterprise NAS provides rapid access and NAS clustering capabilities.
• Midmarket NAS: The NAS midmarket category is suitable for businesses that require several hundred terabytes (TB) of data. Midmarket NAS devices cannot be clustered.
• Desktop NAS: The low-end NAS device is for small businesses and home users that require local shared storage. This market is shifting toward a cloud NAS model.

What Is NAS with Cloud Backup?

NAS file storage can be backed up by cloud-based file storage or replaced entirely by cloud storage. There are three main factors to consider when you have to choose between them. These factors are cost, security and storage limitations:

• Cost: The cost of a NAS for small business varies, from about $500 to $1000 and more, depending on the features and storage space your business needs. When more storage is needed, you’ll have to pay for additional hard drives. On the other hand, cloud file storage solutions are based on a monthly fee. The more storage space you need, the more you’ll pay. 1TB of storage typically costs about $95 per month. The cloud solution avoids the initial investment purchasing a NAS requires and the costs associated with buying more hard drives, but you’ll pay a monthly storage fee.
• Security: When NAS is used, the fact that you host the files on your own hardware, gives you full control over data security. NAS offers data redundancy and protection options, along with data encryption and user access controls. When you use a cloud service, the cloud provider is responsible for your data security. Using the cloud, you relieve yourself of data security, but when giving control of your data security to another party, there’s always a chance your data may be stolen or damaged. Several NAS vendors offer the option of backing up your data to the cloud for added redundancy and protection.
• Storage limitations: NAS devices have storage limitations, which are determined by their architecture. When more storage is needed, the hard drives can be replaced. Using cloud storage, there is no need to worry about running out of storage space. You would upgrade your plan with your cloud provider when more storage space is needed.

Why You Need NAS Backup Solutions

The data NAS devices store is essential to the daily operations of your business. NAS devices need to be protected in order to ensure that the data is safe and can be retrieved in any situation such as device failure, human error, and natural disasters. Here are the 4 reasons why you should use NAS backup solutions:

• You cannot lose critical data━NAS devices hold valuable business assets. Permanent data loss can be very risky for your business. By backing up the data on your NAS device, you’ll be able to recover it quickly and with the least financial impact.
• NAS cannot be your only backup solution━NAS devices are intended as storage devices, but some businesses mistakenly use them as backup solutions. NAS devices should never be the only backup a business relies on. This is because they are vulnerable to threats including flood, fire, device failure, and physical damage. Off-site cloud backup is the most recommended backup solution. By backing up your NAS device to an off-site location that can be accessed via the cloud, you’ll be able to access your data and will allow your staff to minimize downtime due to data loss.
• Bounce back from collaboration & syncing errors━when documents and files are shared company-wide and multiple users have access to them, file changes are bound to get overwritten. NAS backup solution provides unlimited file version histories, and your team will be able to search your backup to find the exact version of any document you need. In the case where your NAS device is infected by a ransomware virus that encrypts all of your data, your work can be restored from the previous file versions held within your backup.

NAS Off-Site vs On-Site Backup

One approach to back up NAS systems is to use offline backup storage to retain a copy of the NAS file system. Another approach is to create a remote copy in an off-site location – this is much more resilient to disaster scenarios, but also increases the Recovery Time Objective (RTO), because of the time needed to retrieve data back to the local environment.

NAS appliances run proprietary operating systems optimized for storage performance. You cannot install and use the usual backup software agents on a NAS device. Here are four common NAS backup strategies:

Applying the 3-2-1 rule to NAS backup

A practical way to structure NAS backup is the 3-2-1 rule: keep 3 copies of your data (the original plus 2 backups), on 2 different media types, with 1 copy kept offsite. In a shared NAS environment this usually means one local second copy for fast recovery and one offsite third copy for disaster protection.

Local backups (your second copy)

For fast recovery in the event of a primary NAS failure or accidental deletion, back up to a separate on-site medium. You can connect an external USB drive directly to the NAS and schedule regular syncs (though this is not suited for large amounts of data), deploy a secondary NAS and run incremental, encrypted backups across the network, or set up an on-premises S3-compatible object storage system for a highly scalable, immutable local copy.

Offsite backups (your third copy)

To protect against localized disasters such as fire, theft, or flood, store a copy offsite. Native NAS tools integrate easily with cloud providers for cost-effective, automated offsite protection, or you can replicate backups to object storage nodes at other data centers. Alternatively, you can manually sync to external drives and rotate one to a secure remote location. Because ransomware increasingly targets connected backups, modern practice extends the rule to 3-2-1-1-0 by keeping at least one immutable or air-gapped offsite copy that cannot be altered or deleted.

Native and third-party backup tools

Most modern NAS devices include free, built-in packages to automate these jobs. Synology offers Hyper Backup for versioned system backups and Cloud Sync to tie into services like Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive, while QNAP provides HBS 3 (Hybrid Backup Sync) to centralize multi-destination backup jobs. For backing up PCs and servers to a NAS, reliable software such as Veeam or Acronis Cyber Protect adds scheduling and recovery features.

Securing Your NAS Backup

In many cases, your NAS backup storage will be an additional NAS server, deployed as a NAS offsite backup or on-premises. It is crucial to apply security best practices to your backup NAS, as well as the primary, because it holds the same sensitive data, and if compromised, it will undermine your disaster recovery strategy.

Be diligent about updates

One of the easiest ways to improve the security of your NAS backups is to ensure that you keep your server up to date. Updates can help improve NAS performance and eliminate vulnerabilities before issues can be exploited.

Periodically check for updates or set an alert for whenever new updates are released. This can help ensure that you apply the updates as soon as possible. Likewise, make sure that any supporting software you are using is being regularly updated as well.

Enable two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication uses a combination of username and password along with another identification method. For example, sending a pin to a user’s mobile device.

Two-factor authentication can help you ensure that only authorized users are allowed to access your backup memory, data, and systems. It can help eliminate the risk of shared credentials and reduce the chance that stolen credentials can grant illegitimate access.

Use HTTPS

When accessing your NAS remotely, make sure you are using a HTTPS connection. This secures your connection with encryption to ensure that data and requests cannot be intercepted or modified during transfer. If you have not purposely enabled HTTPS you are likely using an unencrypted HTTP connection.

To enable HTTPS, you need to first install an SSL certificate and link it to a domain name that is tied to the IP address of your NAS. There are several free services you can use to get this certificate or you can pay for one that you only have to renew once a year.

Set up a firewall

A firewall is a standard part of any security strategy. It enables you to monitor and filter traffic to your NAS, ensuring that only approved connections are allowed. You should periodically make sure that your firewalls are enabled and that filtering policies match your security protocols.

When setting up your policies, if possible, try to use whitelisting over blacklisting. Whitelisting only allows in approved traffic while blacklisting only blocks traffic known to be malicious. This means that blacklisting may let in attackers from unknown addresses while whitelisting does not.

Read more in our detailed guide to data protection.

Data Management with Cloudian

One of the biggest challenges in data storage is unstructured data management. Typically, over 60% of NAS data is “cold” – it hasn’t been accessed in the past year. Cold data consumes expensive capacity and data backup resources.

Cloudian integrates with data lifecycle management solutions that let you immediately reclaim that space by moving cold data to on-premises Cloudian storage. Users see no change in data access. When a migrated file is requested, the data is automatically returned to the appliance for transparent user access.

The Cloudian solution is completely transparent to users. Throughout the data lifecycle, your users see no change in data access. When a migrated file is requested, the data is automatically returned to the NAS device for transparent user access. The Cloudian solution benefits include:

• Immediately free up NAS capacity
• Delay costly capacity expansions
• Reduce NAS costs by 50% or more
• Reduce backup times by 60%
• Transparent to users, both when data is archived and when retrieved
• Fast data retrieval

Learn how to lower your storage total cost of ownership with our TCO calculator