We’ll be exhibiting at both TechEd Sydney and SMB Nation Seattle in the next 2 months.

If you’re attending these events, please drop by for a visit.

The dates are:

TechEd - Wednesday 3rd September - Friday 5th September - please visit our booth. Linus will also be attending the SBS2008 pre-day on Tuesday 2nd September.

SMB Nation - Friday 3rd October - Monday 6th October - visit our booth (#115 opposite Microsoft) and attend our presentation.

We’ll be launching v5 of BackupAssist at the SMB Nation event. Be sure to attend Linus’ presentation as well:

Combining Drive Imaging, Data Archiving and Internet Backup to achieve complete data protection… at no extra cost!

The latest drive imaging features in Windows Server 2008 make bare metal recoveries easier than ever. However, gaping holes still remain, meaning that businesses are still vulnerable to data loss.

In his presentation, Linus Chang will talk about the limitations of Server 2008 backup; current methods for imaging, file & application backup and internet replication, and the “sweet spot” that each backup technique provides. You’ll learn why individual techniques provide only partial protection, but how combining them together provides a watertight solution. You’ll be stunned as Linus demonstrates how to do this at no additional cost or complexity to your clients.

Hi all,

There has been a considerable amount of confusion about backing up Exchange 2007 on Windows Server 2008 and whether BackupAssist will support this.

We too have seen a LOT of conflicting information on the Internet. In this blog post, I hope to clarify the situation.

The Short Version:
Windows Server Backup in Windows Server 2008 RTM does not support the backup of Exchange Server.

However, Microsoft are working on a plug-in that will allow Windows Server Backup to properly backup Exchange 2007 on Server 2008.

They report that it will be released in Summer 2008 (Northern Hemisphere). As soon as we find out about its release, we will update this blog entry. As soon as MS supports this, then so will BackupAssist.

Note: Our testing of SBS 2008 RC1 indicates that Windows Server Backup does interface with Exchange.

The Long Version:
Although Windows Server Backup is a VSS-based backup application, and Exchange is VSS-aware, there are “additional requirements for Exchange backups and restores beyond using the VSS Framework; for example, checking the database and log files for corruption during backups is not part of the VSS Framework”

In the initial RTM release of Windows Server 2008, Windows Server Backup did not perform these additional requirements for backing up Exchange 2007. Therefore, Exchange 2007 could not be backed up by Windows Server Backup.

However, it looks like MS ran into huge amounts of criticism over, and a plug-in will be released shortly that addresses it.

Quoting from Scott Schnoll’s blog:

“I announced that sometime this summer, Microsoft will be providing a VSS-based plug-in for Windows Server Backup in Windows Server 2008 that will enable customers to take Exchange-aware, VSS backups on Windows Server 2008. I don’t have a lot of details to share beyond this.”

“In short, NT Backup was replaced with Windows Server Backup (WSB) which unlike NTbackup, did not support ESE streaming backups of exchange. While WSB supports backup/recovery of any application including 3rd party apps using VSS and a plug-in model, for reasons outside the control f the Windows or the Exchange team, the out-of-box-experience of Windows Server 2008 did not include the support for backing up and recovering Exchange. Both the Windows and the Exchange team heard a lot of feedback and criticism over a decision that neither team was responsible for. As a result of the large amount of feedback we received on this issue, we have decided to ship a plug-in for WSB created by Windows and the Small Business Server (SBS) team that enables VSS-based backups of Exchange.”

References:
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/06/18/449031.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/scottschnoll/archive/2008/06/15/back-from-teched-it-pro-north-america-2008.aspx

http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2008/03/05/448338.aspx

Hello,

I’m Michael, one of the BackupAssist Support team

Recently a customer wanted to have a remotely shared Rev drive cartridge to
eject after the backup was complete. Since this was a remote share, the
standard eject check box is not an option.

The solution was to use the freeeject program available at www.freeeject.com.

FreeEject is a free, removable media ejecting utility that can be executed from the command line.

After mapping the Rev drive to G:, we simply defined a post job script and inserted the following command: Freeeject G:

Hello,

I’m Michael, one of the BackupAssist US Support team members.
We get several calls and e-mails a week from customer having problems
verifying their license details when ordering a Version 4 upgrade.

When entering your Version 3 to Version 4 upgrade order, ensure you enter the license details exactly as they appear in the BackupAssist registration details. To view your current license details, select help from the BackupAssist console and select Enter registration details.

Usually an upgrade will fail to validate because a period or comma was inadvertently left out.

For example:

Wilmington City Sch was entered as an organizational name when the actual name was Wilmington City Sch. (There should of been a period after Sch)

The license details are not case sensitive, but leaving out any letter or special character will cause the verification process to fail.

One last point, make sure your organization type is also correct. This can be viewed by selecting the BackupAssist Navigator from the BackupAssist console and pressing the information button. The organizational type is listed by the License type field.

Hello everyone,

Did you know - you can set up your managed platform or server monitoring system to recognize BackupAssist’s events to accurately report on the backup status?

There are 3 events that BackupAssist may log to the Windows Event Log:

ID 5633 (Information) on success, or success with minor warnings
ID 5634 (Error) on failure
ID 5635 (Warning) on success but with major warnings (eg. wrong external HDD connected).

For all the events:
- Source: BackupAssist
- Category: None

All this functionality is in Version 4 of BackupAssist.

Enhancements for v5 of BackupAssist

We are currently working with the major Managed Platform vendors to integrate the BackupAssist events into their software. We hope that this will be all complete for the release of v5 of BackupAssist.

We’ll also be adding another event to signify the start of a backup job, so people using the event log will have more information about their backup.

Hi All,

This is Raj from the BackupAssist support team .

As you may already know, the latest release of BackupAssist (Version 4.1) was officially released last week.

While this latest update received the stamp of approval from the majority of our client base, there were 4 clients who encountered some issues.

Looking into their issues, it was basically clear that we had a minor bug in the latest release that affected clients running on 64-bit machines, who were specifically backing up their data to a CD / DVD device or external hard disks.

Jason and Justin from our development team looked into the issue and they found that the cause of this problem was a faulty .dll file.

To address this issue, we uploaded an updated copy of Version 4.1 on our website today that contains the correct .dll.

However, if you are running BackupAssist V4.1 on a 64-bit machine and you encounter any similar issues, please follow the steps below to troubleshoot the error:-

- The easiest step is to email our support team and we’ll reply back with the correct .dll file as an email attachment. You can then copy this .dll to the BackupAssist install directory.

- The other option is to un-install the software completely, ensuring that the BackupAssist install directory (for example:- C:\Program Files\BackupAssist V4) is also deleted from the machine. Once all the traces of BackupAssist have been removed from your machine, you can visit: http://www.backupassist.com/BackupAssist/download.php and download Version 4.1 once again.

I hope the above suggestions help to fix any issues you may encounter.

On behalf of the BackupAssist team, I’d like to apologise to all our clients who encountered this issue.

Until my next post….. Good Bye!!!!!

Yesterday, an unfortunate thing happened. After a reboot of our server (that was combined with the installation of some Windows updates), our Exchange Information Store became corrupt.

(Note: In our company, we use Exchange for internal company emails. All emails that go to our backupassist.com email addresses are hosted externally, so thankfully this Exchange corruption didn’t affect our helpdesk and tech support team.)

To compound matters, our staff member who is also our system administrator has been sick for nearly 3 months, so it was left to me (a developer!) to get our Exchange Server going again.

It took a few attempts, but thankfully having a good backup (made by BackupAssist!) saved the day.

The symptoms were these:

Every minute, this event is logged:

- Event ID 9175, Source MSExchangeSA, Category MAPI Session, Message: The MAPI call ‘OpenMsgStore’ failed with the following error:
The Microsoft Exchange Server computer is not available. Either there are network problems or the Microsoft Exchange Server computer is down for maintenance.

When the Exchange Information Store service is started, this is logged:

- Event ID 9518, Source MSExchangeIS, Gategory General, Message: Error Read verification error starting Storage Group /DC=local/DC=CortexIT/CN=Configuration/CN=Services/CN=Microsoft Exchange/CN=CORTEXIT/CN=Administrative Groups/CN=first administrative group/CN=Servers/CN=GERSHWIN/CN=InformationStore/CN=First Storage Group on the Microsoft Exchange Information Store.
Storage Group - Initialization of Jet failed.
- Event ID 419, Source ESE, Category: Logging/Recovery, Message: Information Store (1220) First Storage Group: Unable to read page 457774 of database G:\ExchSvr\MDBDATA\priv1.edb. Error -1018.
- Event ID 454, Source ESE, Category: Logging/Recovery, Message: Information Store (1220) First Storage Group: Database recovery/restore failed with unexpected error -1018.

[And several more such logs]

And from within Exchange System Manager, the stores simply wouldn’t mount. There was no real error message.

The first thing I did was to make a copy of the MDBDATA directory. When doing any work to the Exchange database files, ALWAYS MAKE A COPY BEFORE YOU START!

Then I found some instructions on using eseutil to repair the databases - and I ran through them and ESEUTIL claimed it had fixed the problem. The instructions are found here: http://www.mike-tech.com/article.php?gif=exchange2k3&article=304

However, the mount of the database still wouldn’t work, with more of the same errors.

After more Googling and trying other things, I found this article: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/264228/en-us

Okay, so it points to missing database files, where the solution is to put them back where they belong. mmmmmm… Or the other solution is to run eseutil /r. Which I did - and it didn’t work either.

A similar article is also found here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb498209(EXCHG.80).aspx

Then I took another copy of the MDBDATA directory, and decided to do a full restore from the last full backup - which was done the night before. So in the worst case scenario, we’d lose one day of emails - which for us, is fine. I could then look at the log files later.

So after doing a full restore, and following the brilliant instructions in our white paper which I’d written a few years prior (available here http://www.backupassist.com/downloads/whitepapers/ExchangeMailboxBackup_WP.pdf), I was all set! Or so I thought…

The blasted Information Store still wouldn’t mount!

Argh - how could this be??? A full backup wouldn’t mount?

After some thought, I deduced that the problem was that when the Information Store service starts, it automatically tries to use the log files to bring the database “up to date”. And it’s most likely that the log files were corrupt.

So I deleted the two *.log files [E00.log and E00xxxxxx.log] and did another full restore.

And hey presto! The mailbox store mounted successfully!

Now, did we lose any emails, given that we restored from the previous night’s backup? Well, in actual fact, no. We use Outlook in Cached Exchange mode so all the emails sent and received during the day were cached. And to my surprise, when we connected Outlook back to the Exchange Server and it synchronised, it did NOT delete the emails that were only in the OST file but not on Exchange. Having said that, those emails weren’t pushed back to the Exchange Server either. For us, this situation was acceptable.

So the total time taken to do this was about 1 hr 30 mins. Of that time, about 1 hr 15 mins was spent pursuing the eseutil database repair options… another 10 minutes figuring out that I had to delete the *.log files, and 5 minutes actually doing the restore.

The magic is knowing what to do… so I hope this information will be of benefit to other poor souls who suffer the same fate!

And remember – always backup! Thanks BackupAssist!

Hi all,

This is Raj from the BackupAssist Support team with my first post on our blogs - I hope you find my post useful.

Yesterday I had this very interesting task of assisting one of our clients who was looking to backup a remote SQL server, which was on a different domain and a different subnet.

While my initial gut feeling was to tell him ’sorry, not possible’, I thought of giving it a shot just in case.

The scenario was (example):-

Backup Server
Ip address - 192.168.1.x
Domain - Test

SQL server
Ip address - 192.168.4.x
Domain - Sample

Initially the backup server was able to detect the SQL databases, but the backup always failed in the ‘Checking Destination’ phase within our software.

We tried changing the backup destination from being the ‘backup server’ to the ’sql server’, but the same issues persisted.

Finally, with the help of Jason (our SQL expert from the Development team), we got around this issue by using a simple ‘pre-backup’ script within BackupAssist.

Example:- net use \\192.168.4.x\sqlbackup\sql\ /user:admin password,

where,
\\192.168.4.x\sqlbackup\sql\ - is the backup destination where the SQL backups are stored
admin and password - is the user name and password of the administrator user account in the ‘Sample’ domain.

Phew, all’s well that end’s well .

A long time ago, in April 04, we released v3 of BackupAssist. And we have enjoyed providing you support for v3 since then! When we released v4 last year, we said that we would discontinue support for v3 at the end of 2007. But since we love working with our users so much, we continued to answer questions, provide support and facilitate license key changes.

Now that v4 has been out for over a year, and with version 5 planned, we will be officially ceasing support for BackupAssist v3.x at the end of June 2008.

To help spread the word, please inform your system administrators or clients who are using BackupAssist v3.x of this notice.

We strongly encourage you to upgrade your version of BackupAssist as doing so will future-proof your backup system against new operating systems and environments.

If you’d like more information about the pricing for version 4, please visit: http://www.backupassist.com/purchasing/upgrade.php.

For more information about our EOL Policy and Announcement, visit http://www.backupassist.com/support/EndOfLife.html

After receiving many requests from our family of BackupAssist users, we
are pleased to announce that we have officially launched the BackupAssist
US Support office.

The US Support team members, Michael Farqhuar and myself, Sally Chamness, spent
the month of March at our Headquarters in Melbourne, Australia undergoing intense training
to ensure that we could provide our clients with the best support available.

Michael and I are located near Louisville, KY and are available during the
following hours of operation:
Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm (EST).

You can email us at: support@backupassist.com
with any Sales or Support questions you may have.

Additionally you can discuss any questions you have with us and fellow
BackupAssist users at our support forum: http://backupassist.com/phpBB3/

Cheers
Sally Chamness
US Support Team!