Apple Time Machine - not being found by Mac

Does anyone have any experience using the Apple Time Machine function, as I can’t get it to work. I’m not sure if I need to do some config to enable it?

DS5100 is running WS2012R2E - stock image and freshly reinstalled
Mac is running OS X 10.12 - so I can’t use the 2012R2 connector on it

My machine has the WD AFP and Bonjour services running. I’m not sure if the connector is actually required - I would have thought the AFP service would present the share to the Mac as a Time Machine option. I don’t get ANY AFP shares available to my Mac, just standard Windows shares.

I’ve found this website blog: Loading... which provides a little bit of info. I did a search in my registry and it couldn’t find “TimeMachine” anywhere, which is making me wonder if my WD AFP service actually installed correctly, or is configured correctly in order to serve a TM share. I’m suspecting that it’s not configured correctly.

I know there are work arounds to get TimeMachine working on a Windows share, but I would much rather get the actual AFP protocol working as intended.

I did use the Extremez-IP installer in the WD AFP package, but upon installation the Extremez-IP application says it’s trial period has expired. Not quite sure why they include it.

I know zero about MAC’s. All I know is the DEV’s said it could be a destination for time Machine. The connector does support some versions of IOS

More info

Time Machine uses its own backup file format that SBSe isn’t going to monitor for de-dupe. The Mac backup “support” in Essentials is so minimal it hardly justifies being mentioned. There’s not even official documentation from Microsoft as to how to tweak Time Machine to back up to Essentials, because it requires making some “under the hood” changes to how Time Machine operates.

If you assume that the PC backup and Mac backup in Essentials have absolutely nothing to do with each other in any way shape or form, you’re on your way to understanding how it really works. :slight_smile:

And:

Cheers for that Gramps. A standard Windows Server will not support Time Machine without doing the hacky stuff you’ve linked to. It’s functional, but it does have limitations (namely that you must have a finite upper limit).

WD added some software to the Sentinel which adds “standard” Apple Time Machine functionality by adding the ability to host AFP shares (rather than just SMB) which Macs can utilise for Time Machine natively.

I’ve got the AFP support package from WD installed but can’t see any AFP shares. I don’t know if any extra config is required as there’s so little information out about this and I’m guessing it wasn’t a common usage case.

I’ve managed to resolve this, so though I’d add a few comments in case anyone needs it in future.

So you need to make sure you have the WDAFPSupport package installed first (my disk fresh from WD didn’t have it installed for some reason). Gramps’s install kit will take care of that if you don’t already have it installed.

To trigger the actual AFP protocol, you DO need to install the Mac Essentials Connector and configure it. Once that’s done, you just open time machine settings, select a disk and a new AFP share should show up.
One note on this: The current version of OS X (10.12) does NOT support the current Mac connector. I had to use an external SSD, install an older version of OS X (10.10 in my case) to that and boot to it. Once on the external drive, I installed the connector as you normally would. This then triggered the AFP protocol to become active. A quick reboot of the Mac to the internal hard drive and the AFP share showed in the Time Machine setup and I can start using Time Machine natively.

There’s a new shared folder created dedicated for TM backups.

Since I’m experiencing this same issue, I’m going to post here rather than open a new thread. But let me know if I should open a new thread instead.

My DX4000 crashed pretty badly a couple weeks ago, and I had to restore it. I didn’t have any issues during the restore, I have now a fresh install of the OS up and running and I’m trying to re-configure my Time Machine backup.

I’m running macOS 10.13.3 and as you mentioned, and I confirm, the Mac Essentials Connector doesn’t work. Unfortunately, I don’t have access to an earlier version of macOS. Do you know a way to install and enable the AFS support on the DX4000 without going through the connector?

Thank you so much.