7 hours ago
Your current approach using mapped shares and rsync from the Synology side is actually the correct method under the current UniFi limitations. Since UniFi will not support installing rsync server-side, and since it does not expose an rsync daemon or Hyper Backup style endpoint, the backup process has to be initiated by the Synology.
A few notes that might help refine what you already have:
Running parallel rsync tasks is the right call for large datasets. A single rsync stream hitting a remote SMB share will always be slow, but splitting into folders and running them in parallel gives a noticeable improvement. Your use of exclude rules is also exactly what you want.
If you want to speed things up even more, you can switch to using Synology’s built in Hyper Backup with an external SMB target. Hyper Backup will still use SMB under the hood, but it manages versioning and compression more efficiently than direct rsync. You lose the rsync granularity, but you gain reliability and easier restores.
Alternatively, you can mount the UNAS share using NFS instead of SMB if the UNAS firmware allows it. NFS removes a lot of overhead and rsync performs much faster over NFS. It depends on your UNAS firmware version, but if NFS is available it is worth switching.
A few notes that might help refine what you already have:
Running parallel rsync tasks is the right call for large datasets. A single rsync stream hitting a remote SMB share will always be slow, but splitting into folders and running them in parallel gives a noticeable improvement. Your use of exclude rules is also exactly what you want.
If you want to speed things up even more, you can switch to using Synology’s built in Hyper Backup with an external SMB target. Hyper Backup will still use SMB under the hood, but it manages versioning and compression more efficiently than direct rsync. You lose the rsync granularity, but you gain reliability and easier restores.
Alternatively, you can mount the UNAS share using NFS instead of SMB if the UNAS firmware allows it. NFS removes a lot of overhead and rsync performs much faster over NFS. It depends on your UNAS firmware version, but if NFS is available it is worth switching.