Synology Active Backup for Business

What is Synology Active Backup?

Synology Active Backup for Business is free backup software running on Synology NAS servers. Protects workstations, physical servers, virtual machines and Microsoft 365 services - all from one console.

Key advantage: No license fees - you only pay for NAS hardware.

Backup is now primarily a question of ransomware resilience. What matters is not whether a copy was created, but whether the attacker could encrypt it alongside the production data — we return to this below.

What you can protect:

• PC/Mac - workstation backup
• Servers - Windows Server, Linux
• VM - Hyper-V
• SaaS - Microsoft 365, Google Workspace

Key Features

Who is it for?

Requirements

Parameter	Value
NAS	Synology with DSM 7.0+ (x64)
RAM	Min. 8 GB (16 GB recommended)
PC Agent	Windows 7+, macOS 10.13+
Server Agent	Windows Server 2008 R2+, major Linux distros
Hyper-V	Windows Server 2008 R2+

Backup as the last line of defence against ransomware

Backup has stopped being a purely “disaster” topic. In most ransomware incidents we handle, the scale of the loss is decided not at the moment of encryption, but by the answer to one question: is there a copy the attacker could not reach?

Worth settling regardless of the tool you choose:

• A copy outside the domain. If the NAS sits in the same Active Directory domain as the encrypted servers, a compromised domain admin account reaches the backups too. Separate credentials for the backup layer are the minimum.
• Immutability. A snapshot that can be deleted with the same account as production data protects against user error, not against ransomware. Those are two different risks.
• The 3-2-1-1-0 rule. Three copies, two media types, one off-site, one immutable or offline, zero errors in the restore test.
• Microsoft 365 backup. The shared responsibility model means the customer owns the data in Exchange Online, OneDrive and SharePoint. Microsoft’s retention is not a backup.
• Test the restore, not the job. A green job status tells you a copy was created. It does not tell you how many hours it takes to rebuild a domain controller.

To check how your copies behave in a realistic attack scenario, see our security audits and backup services.

FAQ

Is Active Backup really free? Yes. No license fees - only cost is purchasing a Synology NAS server. All features available without limits.

How many devices can I backup? Limit depends on NAS performance. Practically: Plus/XS models handle hundreds of PCs and dozens of VMs. Large environments require high-performance NAS.

Does nFlo deploy Synology? Yes. As a Synology partner, we select the appropriate NAS model, configure Active Backup and integrate with customer infrastructure. We also offer support and monitoring.