I am now Using Tailscale with Synology Hyper Backup. Before this, I was using Synology Hyper Backup with Portforwarding.
Before that, what is Tailscale and what is Synology Hyper Backup ?
What is Tailscale and What is Synology Hyper Backup
Tailscale VPN is a zero-configuration VPN service that makes it easy to connect devices directly. It leverages WireGuard’s protocol to establish secure connections between your computers, servers, and cloud instances, no matter where they are located. Tailscale is known for its simplicity, security, and ease of use, allowing users to create a mesh network that connects all their devices without having to manually configure port forwarding or deal with complex firewall settings.
Synology Hyper Backup is a comprehensive backup solution offered by Synology for their Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. It allows users to back up data from their Synology NAS to various destinations, including other NAS devices, cloud services, and external drives.
Hyper Backup supports multiple backup methods, including incremental backups, cross-version deduplication, and encryption, ensuring data safety and efficient use of storage space. It’s designed to provide a reliable way to protect data against hardware failure, accidental deletion, or disaster recovery.
How am I using Tailscale so far
In my article on Jellyfin Media Server, I did mentioned that I am starting to be using Tailscale. I am very into it now. I am running almost all my self hosted applications (Paperless NGX, FreshRSS, Uptime Kuma and even a suite of PDF tools, known as Stirling PDF).
All the self hosted applications are running on my Synology and are “exposed” to the internet via Tailscale VPN, rather than portforwarding or Cloudflare Tunnel. I still continue to use Synology QuickConnect for the family members.
I am continuing to learn about Tailscale and how to use it even further.
How I am using Hyper Backup so far
For Synology Hyper Backup, I am using it to backup a Synology server in my parents’ place (where it contains very precious photos of their grand children and family etc) to my Synology at my place.
In other words, I am backing up the Photos in Location A (my parents’ place) to Location B (my place). So it is from Location A’s Synology (a very old DS1813+) to Location B’s Synology (my DS1520+).
Portforwarding Set Up
To make the above work, previously I have to set up Port Forwarding on my Ubiquiti EdgeRouter X.
Then with that set up, I can set up my Hyper Backup of DS1813+ (my parents’ place) to “talk” to my DS1520+ (my place). The server name or IP address was my “Synology.me” which is a FREE DDNS provided by Synology.
I use it in place of a IP address (although I do have a static IP address from ViewQWest).
This works pretty well and every night at 2am, the Synology in my parents’ place will quietly start the Hyper Backup and do its backup to my Synology. One end of Singapore to another end 🙂
Like this.
Using Tailscale with Synology Hyper Backup with NO PORT FORWARDING
Now that I have set up Tailscale in my Synology, I can also set up Tailscale on my parents’ Synology.
The steps to achieve the set up is here on this excellent forum post by SpaceRex. If you like Synology, do watch his YouTube videos 🙂
Anyhow, I set up Tailscale on my parents’ DS1813+. It is running DSM6.0 (not the latest DSM7.0) so I don’t have to worry about increased security in DSM 7 Synology. That would require additional steps as stated in Tailscale web site.
Now instead of the set up above, I can replace the DDNS address on the Hyper Backup from Synology.me to the IP address given by Tailscale for my DS1520+
The 100.119.x.x is the IP address internal to my Tailscale network and is specific to my DS1520+.
You still need to keep the port number but you don’t need any port forwarding rules anymore ! So I removed my Port Forwarding Rules in my Router too. In fact Tailscale allowed me to remove more than the Hyper Backup Port Forwarding rules.
Before I removed Hyper Backup port forwarding rule, I had these three rules too. These include port forwarding rules for DS Drive (Synology Drive) and FTP too (not shown here).
With Tailscale, I removed everything.
Success of Hyper Backup with Tailscale
And yes, the next run was successful !
Using Tailscale with Synology Hyper Backup : Conclusion
It was a simple change to be using Tailscale with Synology Hyper Backup. The change was easy once you have Tailscale set up in both DSM of the Synology NAS. Depending on whether you run DSM6 or DSM7, there are some more steps to do.
After that, it was just simply to replace the original IP address (or DDNS) with the Tailscale address. And remove your port forwarding.
Smooth and easy to be running Tailscale with Synology Hyper Backup without the need for port forwarding.
Which is super great.
And if you do use Tailscale on your Synology, you might want to make sure it can be updated automatically and regularly. Check out this article on How to Update Tailscale in Synology Automatically.
