Time Machine back up FROM a networked server?

R_55a wrote:

Despite having three decades experience with Macintoshes, I still find that I have much to learn. In this context, what is a "client"?

Computers are roughly lumped into “clients” and “servers”, where some computers are dependent on other computers for storage or data or calculations or other services.

Those computers are known as clients and servers.

Similarly, a web browser is a client app, and a web server is a server app.

Clients lack some service or resource or hardware or data locally, and a server has that.

For backups here, you could choose to have multiple client computers dependent on another computer—a server—for backup storage. That server could be the Windows Server, or could be an added NAS. For specific tasks, a computer can be both clients and server, too. You might have the Windows Server continue as a server for your Mac clients, and also have the Mac clients and the Windows Server itself be clients of the NAS for backup storage.

A NAS is a server for Network Attached Storage. That’s a computer built and dedicated to provide services, and particularly storage, to other computers—clients—on the local network. Many NAS computers can also provide other network services, well beyond storage.

When configuring a NAS for backups, you want enough storage for all of the clients’ usage, plus some storage for depth of backups, and some for growth of requirements.

What’s depth of backups? Time Machine keeps some depth of backups; keeps multiple backups of changes made to file for instance, so you can revert to an earlier revision if needed.

And from another reply, Time Machine does not and cannot back up other computers. Time Machine cannot back up and cannot restore a Windows Server. Only the local Mac can be backed up or restored, and storage directly connected to it. The Time Machine backup archives can be on locally-attached storage, or can be to another Mac on the local network, or to a server (NAS or otherwise) with Time Machine support.

And for the Microsoft response… That response is correct, for the questions you seemingly asked. I am, however, unclear why you asked Microsoft for how to back up Mac, and not for how to back up Windows. The questions you will want to ask Microsoft or a Microsoft forum is “How do I back up Windows?” and “How do I then restore a backup?”. Mac has nothing to do with that. Time Machine has nothing to do with that, too. It’s all over on Windows.

Given your seeming confusion over IT and networking (and understandable, as IT can get arcane), you’re potentially headed for some IT and networking and administration discussions or classes (if you are taking on the role), or acquiring some local (probably part time) IT help tailored to your particular situation and requirements (if you’d prefer to outsource IT). IT staff doesn’t appear from anywhere strange, after all.

I don't believe TM can backup a wireless drive. And that drive would have to be formatted either APFS or OS X Extended (journaled). It won't backup any other type of format.

Time Machine will only work with a drive that is formatted APFS or OS X Extended (journaled) depending on the system you're running on your Mac. And it needs to be connected directly by cable to the Mac.

Additionally, if you backup a Photos library to any drive formatted other than the two I mentioned above it will probably be damaged as other formats are not compatible with the library's complex ecosystem of files, databases and hard links.

For other types of files other drive formats are not that critical. You could try to use Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper . I know that CCC can be set to backup on a schedule, i.e. every hour or once a day, as desired. Don't know about SuperDuper.

Before relying entirely on your particular setup I'm make sure you can retrieve files in working order from the backup before getting rid of your current backup scheme.

You’ll likely want to back up the Windows Server configuration and its data using Windows tools. I would doubt you can get a consistent and restorable backup of Windows via macOS. A selection of your particular and most important Windows documents transferred from the server via macOS (whether manually or via script with or without rsync or otherwise), sure. But that gets messy, and fragile.

Rather than the path this and your previously-linked thread have taken, I would look at installing a Synology NAS—preferably with maybe three or four times your total aggregate storage across all clients configured—and then use backup tools from Windows Server to that NAS, and use macOS Time Machine to back up the Macs to that NAS.

As for a different approach, you can potentially replace the Windows Server with NAS entirely, if the features of the NAS support everything you currently need the Windows Server for. (Here is the list of Synology packages.)

Whatever backup strategy you decide upon, test the restore. Restorations are where these things tend to go wrong.

And for completeness, the Apple community forums probably aren’t the best source of wisdom for Windows Server information, nor for Windows backups and alternatives.

I'm fairly certain Time Machine doesn't back up non-Mac file systems, just as Microsoft Backup doesn't back up macOS file systems.

With the Share mounted, you could look in the Time Machine options and see if that share is in the exclusion list. If it is, and not disabled, you could try removing it from the list and see what happens.

Restoring will likely be quite the chore.

There are two ways Time Machine works its magic. The legacy method uses File System Events to track changes. Non-Mac file systems do not support FSEvents.

The new Time Machine scheme makes an APFS snapshot of the source. Again, non-Mac file systems do not support APFS snapshots.

To back up a non-Mac file system would require using the ancient, "scan the entire drive and compare to the current backup," which is too slow. Using the FSEvents database that is created as changes happen was used to know immediately what needed to be backed up when Time Machine ran. The only time needed was to write the files.

I have not found a way, but if you have enough room on your system you can use the rsync program to to keep a local copy of the files on the share synchronized. This might not work for you if the local and the remote version can be changed at the same time.

Here's what Apple has to say about it: Back up your Mac with Time Machine - Apple Support

Note the link to: Backup disks you can use with Time Machine - Apple Support