Hi
Looking to possibly set up Rockstor for a small office NAS which we’re hoping to use for file backups also.
The area I am uncertain of is how to automate a file backup on Windows and Mac (and Linux although that is less important) ?
I.e can I trigger a backup via the rockstor server or is it on a per client basis?
Are there tools to do this or would it be a matter of setting a scheduled task/cron job ,etc on client computers?
Also, do you have an ETA for Virtio support within KVM?
@morgancox Welcome to the Rockstor community. I’ll leave the Rockstor triggered backup question to others that know more on such things but could I ask what issues you are having with virtio disk support as this is currently supported for data disks, I believe the install is smoother when the system disk is first established as a sata type but virtio data disks should work just fine. Apologies if I’ve gotten the wrong end of the stick.
@morgancox Just wanted to add that it is important to allocate a stable and unique serial number to your virtio disks though as Rockstor tracks disks by their serial and take care not to change these serial numbers once they are established as this will likely break things. Real drives can’t change their serial so it’s a good unique reference that is used internally to track each disk.
Hope that helps.
Hi @morgancox welcome on board!
Try to give some answers:
Virtio disks under KVM, try this Fake sata disk for Rockstor over Proxmox / KVM .
I had the same problem and the solution was to add x+1 disks (1 “fake sata”, 1 Virtio for Rockstor install, 2 Virtio for Btrfs): Rockstor on install detect a sata so doesn’t stop, you change installation device to your Virtio and, once installation is finished, shutdown VM, destroy sata disk and happy reboot 
(just remember the part of serial numbers!)
Backup on rockstor: you can use Rockstor as a nas via a samba share, taking snapshots to have files history, but snapshots don’t mean backup (backup is a copy of your data, btrfs+snapshots let you versioning your files)
Possible solution? Rockstor as central data storage (btrfs raid 1 + snapshots) + backup (rsync) to another local/remote disk
Flyer
P.S.: For every disk matter ask @phillxnet disk and smart troubles ninja 
Thanks for getting back to me.
The issue I was having with virtio was using it for the main (root) disk, it complained about not being able to find /dev/sda when booting the install CD.
Thank you for confirming I can use it for data disks (in the end I used SATA for the first disk and that worked fine), its odd as Centos/RHEL7 does work using virtio as the main/root disk.
Regarding the backups I can see you could use time-machine for Mac users i.e
http://rockstor.com/blog/tutorials/time-machine-backups-with-rockstor/
For linux users it would be easy to use rsync, however Windows users I am concerned with… To get rsync on Windows do you still need to install cygwin ?
Cheers !
My suggestion: ROBOCOPY Robocopy on Wikipedia that is similar to rsync (if i remember well it uses file diffs with deltas too, like rsync)
It’s a system tool so you don’t have to go through external software
Flyer
What about Windows Backup? I think it needs a samba mount and does the rest.
@suman When i arrived in my office ten years ago they were used to win bkup like that: changed it in a few weeks, win backup is horrible, believe me
Hi @suman , i think robocopy is still the free prod (directly from MS) that better acts like rsync (incremental, etc etc):
Reference from MS
You can use robocopy, plus a snap right after which will support the changes/revisions of each robocopy along the way.I know veaam just released a free version that should be able to backup to a windows share.