For many businesses starting out, especially those experiencing waves of rapid growth, it’s easy to develop a backup strategy with little thought about the best way to protect a burgeoning network.
At this stage in a business, backup strategy can develop organically often consisting of a mish-mash of consumer, freeware, open source and trial products, which aren’t suitable for protecting the data on your network.
It’s completely understandable. You’ve got a business, it’s on the rise. Network backup is likely something far from your mind. You know that you don’t want to lose work or suffer downtime but backup is probably a to-do list project that keeps getting pushed into the limitless future.
In this article we’ll bring backing up your network to the top of your list; showing you how to quickly analyze requirements and then find the right solutions for small network backups. Read the rest of this entry »
Our US support team will not be in the office on Monday 27 May due to the Memorial Day public holiday. Australian support will be operating as per usual.
If you have an urgent inquiry please contact the Australian support team or email us at support@backupassist.com
Our May newsletter started hitting inboxes today As usual, it’s got all the usual stuff: interesting news, handy support tips and funny articles. May’s contents include
Our New Exchange Backup and Restore
BackupAssist v7.0.2 Release
Our New Video on Using Central Administration
And the Infamous Backup News
All of this in a ton more detail when you read our May newsletter and sign up to get it each month, if you aren’t already.
A few days ago we penned an article about the new direction we are taking for Exchange backups and the concept behind it. Concepts are all well and good but without definition they are little more than hot air.
That’s what today’s article is about; looking at the benefits of integrating Exchange backups with existing tools and how this can make your backups and restores simpler.
Merging backup tools
The idea we are promoting is that Exchange backups should be integrated with existing backup technologies like System Protection or File Archiving.
We believe this will not only improve the backup tools themselves but it will also lead to a more unified backup strategy. Merging backups into the current backups tools has some obvious pay offs:
Simpler user experience: when setting up there is no need to perform an initial export of mailboxes or configure settings
Less time backing up and more time running business critical processes: no need to export hundreds of mailboxes in addition to your regular server backup – saving processor cycles and energy
Cuts storage space requirements: no need to double up by storing PST files as well as whole Exchange databases
Uses VSS, a Microsoft standardized technology: standardization is no mere label; it brings with it the benefits of increased backup speed and decreased interference with the processes running Exchange
Avoids PST size limitation issues: inboxes of any size can be backed up
What do you think?
As before, we really want to hear what you think about this new approach so please comment below to share your thoughts.
We’ve been looking at Exchange and thinking about ways we can streamline backups for everybody’s favorite email server. We want to make the backups work harder, with less input from you. Of course, the goal is always to keep your systems and data better protected.
The path we’re going down diverges from Exchange “mailbox” level backups to a system that provides you with granular restore capability from your regular Exchange database backups.
We’d love your input on the ideas below, on how integration can improve the backup tools themselves and how it can lead to a more unified backup strategy.
Changing Methods
At the moment, BackupAssist takes regular backups of the whole Exchange server, generally as part of a System Protection imaging backup. A second Exchange “mailbox” level backup scans the Exchange Server and exports new mail items into their respective user PSTs or “mailboxes”.
This new approach moves away from daily Exchange “mailbox” level backups and uses the whole Exchange server backup as the basis for restoring individual mail items.
It also brings the capacity to export items, such as emails, notes or contacts, directly from your regular Exchange backup to a PST file or choose to inject the items(s) back to the live exchange server.
Your Thoughts?
We’d love to hear your feedback on these ideas so please comment below to share your thoughts. After all, BackupAssist works best when we hear what customers like you need.
You never know what’s around the corner. Fire, flood or even good old fashioned malfunctions can bring your servers offline. Sometimes it’s a slog getting your boss to see this.
IT infrastructure sits in a bubble in the minds of some senior managers: never in need of replacement, invulnerable to damage and with no need for protection. Today you’re going to pop that bubble and we’d like to help.
We’ve got three real life stories of companies suffering from corruptions, accidents and angry ex-employees. Some of them get out alright, some of them, well, they aren’t around anymore. If you think your boss needs shocking into upgrading or, heaven forbid initially investing in backup, read on.
If you’re one of those whose boss has seen the light and recognizes the power of data and systems and their need for protection you could stop reading now but, well, you’d miss out on a great article and a decent serving of self-congratulation. Read the rest of this entry »
We have just released BackupAssist v7.0.2 which has lots of new updates and fixes to further improve on BackupAssist v7. Some of these new features include:
Improvements to Central Administration
Allow historical restore reports to be viewed (Restore Console)
Report warning when no SQL databases are backed up (SQL Add-on)
This is now the most stable release of BackupAssist v7 and we recommend that you download and install it straight away. If you already own a BackupAssist v7 license then you can download and update for free.
I grew up in a small town towards the north of Australia. Every few years or so, the wide river that snaked through our town would swell with monsoonal rains and break its banks, spilling across the two bridges that brought the town together. Kids like me would be cut off from school – which of course we didn’t mind – but business owners would find their offices and staff scattered and divided.
Thinking on the hypothetical of how we’d deal with being cut off from our office or threatened with disaster brought me around to the reality of how we and many of our customers protect their businesses: remote backups. Read the rest of this entry »
If you have many copies of BackupAssist installed on many machines, Central Administration is a new feature in BackupAssist v7 that will let you easily control every copy. This video shows you how to set up and use Central Administration with BackupAssist.
