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Guest Review: Syncing data between on-prem locations and public cloud has become a very common practice for many organisations, and sometimes even for home users.

I have seen organisations using solutions from storage providers to sync data to Azure Storage Accounts and other cloud providers. Personally, in order to prevent hardware failure, and being able to access my files while Im away from home, Ive also been wanting to migrate some of my data from my NAS to Microsoft OneDrive and Azure Storage Accounts.

A few weeks ago,Synologyreached out to me and asked me if Id be interested to review their freeCloud Syncsolution with Azure Storage. Since Ive been thinking about replacing two 6-year old NAS devices at home and wanting to move some files to Azure and OneDrive, I have accepted the offer. Although Synology supplied me with the NAS device (DS920+), this is not a sponsored post, Im only sharing my opinion based on my own experience.

Synology Cloud Sync is extremely easy to configure. Once youve logged in to the web portal of your Synology NAS, it can be found in the Package Center, you can install it with one click (and follow the wizard).

Once installed, we can start creating sync jobs. Cloud Sync supports many public cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure, OneDrive, OneDrive for Business, AWS S3, GCP Cloud Storage, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. Ill cover Azure Storage Accounts and Microsoft OneDrive (personal) in this post.

Firstly, I have created an Azure Storage Account in the Australia Southeast region since its the closest region to my home. I connected the storage account to a VNet and added my home broadbands IP address to the firewall rule so the NAS device can reach it (as shown below). This restricts access to the storage account only from the VNet it connects to, my home IP, and other Azure services (Since Ive ticked Allow trusted Microsoft services to access this storage account).

I then created a blob container in the storage account

Then on the Synology NAS web portal, I created a sync job with the following information:

Then I can choose the local path (a share on the NAS), and the remote path (in Azure storage blob), I can also select the sync direction. In this case, Ive chosen bi-directional so changes from both ends will be replicated to each other.

I can also specify a schedule, i.e. stop sync during busy hours to save network bandwidth.

I can still modify the settings after the jobs are created. For example, I can configure the polling interval, set network throttling, folder exclusions, file filter (based on file extensions), add/remove/modify sync folders etc.

Depending on the size of the folder and your Internet link speed, the initial synchronisation can take a while. Once completed, youll see the status as Up to date

At this stage, any changes on the NAS folder or the blob container will be replicated. Ive done some tests (as shown below):

With Microsoft OneDrive, I have 2 real use cases:

Setting up sync jobs for OneDrive is super easier. All you need is to sign in to your Microsoft Account when prompted, and give user consent:

You will be prompted to be redirected to the Synology NAS web portal (a typical oAuth workflow):

All the other settings are the same as the Azure Storage, you can choose sync direction, scheduling settings, pulling interval, network bandwidth throttling, etc.

For the OneDrive connection, I performed similar sets of tests that I previously performed for the Storage Account, the behaviour is very similar locally initiated changes trigger synchronisation which gets replicated to OneDrive as soon as the changes are made. However, changes on the OneDrive dont seem to get replicated to the local folder as quickly as when syncing with Azure Storage Account. the default polling interval for OneDrive is 600 seconds (every 10 minutes), I tried to decrease it to 15 seconds, but it doesnt seem like Cloud Sync is polling OneDrive every 15 seconds as configured. the files did appear on the NAS share after around 10 minutes though. This is not a big deal, I can live with it.

Overall, Im pretty happy with the feature Cloud Sync offers.

For Microsoft OneDrive, although the polling interval is a little bit too long in my opinion, it is perfect for what I need to achieve. Moving forward, I can definitely see myself setting up more and more folders to sync, store a local copy of my OneDrive folders on the NAS so I dont have to keep cleaning up spaces from the SSDs on my PCs because once youve accessed a file via OneDrive client, the file gets downloaded and stored on your PC permanently.

With Azure Storage Accounts, in my opinion, since Synology NAS devices are generally used by home users and small to medium businesses, it offers a very cost-effective way to migrate/synchronize files to cloud platforms. The configuration is pretty easy and the synchronization is pretty effective based on my testing. However, for large enterprises, I believe its missing some features:

The documentation for the Synology Cloud Sync can be found here:https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/help/CloudSync/cloudsync.

Lastly, Id like to thank Synology for offering me this great device to work with. Ive already loaded it with 4x12GB HDDs and Im currently in the process of migrating my files to and from other NAS devices and various cloud storage.

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Moving my data to Azure and Office 365 using Synology Cloud Sync - iTWire