wow, first Imperius and now synology. brutal!
can you use Imperius to backup vmware to the synology box?
create a windows net share on the synology and have Imperius backup to that.
then once the data is on the synology box, you can use the synology software to backup to cloud
or use rclone to copy the backups to cloud?
That's what I was hoping to do initially, but every form of ESXI backup inside Imp dies, because it only wants to backup to the local drives on the machine it is installed on. It's installed on a system monitoring machine, that only has a 240gb ssd. The VM disk is hard allocated to 1tb, using about 20 gigs of it. It's a very minimal install of Windows Server 2019. It keeps nagging me about snapshots being enabled, etc when I try to run it. It won't see the mapped network drive W: which is the Synology. So, for now, at least, I'll be happy with the cloud backup I've got rolling thanks to everyone here, and I'll fight to get the good ole 3,2,1 style backups running once I find a software that can do it better. Perhaps Veeam? Does Veeam have to have it's own, dedicated machine to do it's ESXI magic? I don't really care if it does, I can throw together something out of the crap laying around in my work building to get it up to minimal specs if need be. But, I'm not really getting paid to do the data backup, babysit the server, etc, so Veeam being free might give me some extra peace of mind. I might just talk to them, and see if we can swing an external off the esxi machine for redundancy and nothing but esxi images.
I'm pretty open to other suggestions as well.
Honestly, the "free" backup they have now, is better than the "no backup" they had previously, but like anything, I'd like to improve upon it, so, when shat hits the fan, and someone does something stupid and infects the network, I can pull out multiple forms of backup to save the day, and my arse. 
about the vmware vm guests machines, are they windows operating system?
Again, I would like to point out that it would be worth investigating if this is a permissions or namespace issue.
Check that you use --allow-other first of all.
Second, have a thought about what user accounts run Imp and Synology compared to what runs the rclone mounting process. If they are different, this might be a namespace issue. It is a known problem (an artifact of how windows works) that drives mounted as a normal user account (including non-elevated admins) can not be seen from the SYSTEM account. The other way around works though.
I can't say if this is the case or not. Sometimes it's just down to how applications are coded, but it is the first thing I would rule out.
The only VM's on the ESXI server are one Windows Server 2019 install, and one pi-hole. Two VM's total. The Windows Server 2019 is a 1TB hard allocated drive, resting on an internal 8 tb enterprise drive. The Pi-Hole is hard allocated at 240 gigs. It's basically running 24/7 for DNS. Neither are using close to their allocated space. I created a 4 tb drive, in VMware, and shared it out as drive S: for server, hoping to use it for local and esxi backups. Still leaving me roughly 2.6 tb of free room to play with, if and when new VM's need to be spawned. The ESXI server shipped with a 1tb drive, which I used for the Esxi install, and didn't allocate anything else to it.
for that vmware guest windows server 2019, what is it use for?
exchange server, sql server, or what?
It's barebones.
It's used as a file server and for a DC, just for authentication to network shares.
Eventually, it will host a few architectural programs on it, but thus far, very minimal. Email is all handled via google, so no need for exchange, sql, etc.
Keeping it as simple as possible.
since you really need a backup, this will work for sure.
on the guest ws2019, install veeam agent commnunty edition , and back it up to a net share on synology box or to a share on that physical ws2019.
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Thanks. I'll get right on that.
Okay. That all sounded well and good.
But, the Veeam agent refuses to allow me to access the synology.
\\synology\ESXI_BKUP
No dice. Checked permissions, everyone can see it.
So, I went, well, I'll share the 4tb drive and label it ESXI_BKUP.
Can't do a full backup on a local drive.
It's late, and I'm gonna beat my head against this in the morning.
There's a reason people are willing to pay for a product that is simple, and that simply does what they want. I even tried the community version on the server, and all I got were proxy server offline failures.
I'm honestly thinking about uninstalling all the veeam stuff, and just throwing Macrium Reflect Server on it.
well, i know it works since i have used veeam with synology, with qnap and with various window servers.
veeam will backup to any net share, in all the years i have been using it, never had a problem and i have installed it 15+times backing up over 20+ virtual and physical machines.
the community edition is the exact same software as the commercial version, except that some high end features are not enabled and that that community edition is limited to backing up at most 10 virtual machines or 3 physical machines.
if you want to enable those high-end features, you would need a license file, but you would NOT need to re-install veeam, as the community edition is the exact same software as the commerical edition.
you also had issues with imperius accessing a net share, W:
perhaps you might be making a basic mistake in both cases.
Anything is possible at this point.
I'll do some investigation on my end, and see what the issue is.
It's probably something ridiculously stupid.
18 hour work days, with little sleep, and being sick on top of it, can lead to such.
The joys of self employment.
I forgot to click the WS Discovery option in the NAS.
Arrg.
Let's hope this fixes things.
another suggestion, do not backup to mapped drives, such as W:,
that creates all kinds of problems, you might not understand.
instead always use \\servername\sharefolder.
as per my veeam screenshots, i use the \\vserver03\en07.veaamfull and as you can see, i supply the share username and share password.
veeam will connect to the net share on it own
"I forgot to click the WS Discovery option in the NAS."
a workaround for that is to modify the hosts files on the computer that is running veeam.
i always put each computer i deal with inside the hosts file, as i use many vpn to reach my customter's offices remotely
for example,
192.168.62.233 vserver03
192.168.191.90 test02
192.168.62.202 HOMESERVER01
10.0.0.5 v10torrent
10.0.0.4 veeampn-02
I tried that format as well...
I even used the good ole \10.0.1.200\share_name
I ended up, telling it to use the default repository, that the backup and replication program built, which is on the 4tb free local drive, using the hard coded ip, and it took it, without any arguments. I'll have to check the logs tomorrow, to see if it fails, or works. I'm not doing a TB backup on the network, even internally, while people are actively using it.
That way, if it fails spectacularly, and causes network issues and sluggishness at 11:30 pm tonight, nobody will be there to complain about them.
I'll try plugging in those locally on the server, and in the pi-hole. The pi-hole might be the issue, since it does DNS translation.
Well, the job did not run. The machine was also showing no network access this morning. Eek! Thankfully, I wake up a lot earlier, than these guys do, so off to work I went. Thank goodness for my network access box. It still had internet access, so I could log in, and then do some updates.
The pi-hole had to have a good ole sudo apt-get update -y && apt-get upgrade -y applied. For some reason, it got hung up mid update last night, and thus, no DNS translation.
I removed all versions of Veeam. I'll do a fresh install, of the agent only this evening. I think where I mucked up, was installing the 4.5 gig backup and replication deal, that installs SQL and all kinds of other crap I did not need.
For now, the scheduled backups are still working in the cloud. So, the archivesync program is doing its magick in the background.
on which machine did you install the vbar - veeam backup and replication?
on the guest ws2019 or the phyiscal ws2019?
There is no physical WS2019, only a VM, running on the ESXI server.
The current server is under powered and not really capable of hosting another, standalone VM for backups. Which, I have a few old machines I could setup for this role, that would basically be zero cost for me, if needed.
All that being said, the ESXI is running minimum specs, 8 gigs of ram, and it desperately needs more, if they plan on any expansion in the future. I just don't think the little Dell T30 server can really run 3 or more vms, in it's current configuration. Pi-hole is taking up 2 gigs of ram, Windows Server 2019 is using 4 and it's only got 8 gigs total. I've been trying to get them to upgrade to at least 16. But, we all know how that goes. It's not even that expensive, like 50 bucks on Amazon, I believe for another 8 gig chip. But, I'm not paying for it, out of my pocket, since it's just something I am maintaining for a friend, more than my own personal crap.
