Hi all,

I’ve had a few questions recently about BackupAssist running on Windows Server 2008 Core. After some experimentation, I managed to get it all working and it was successfully running image backups and sending me email notifications. (I haven’t yet tested the file replication, SQL or Rsync backups yet.) The only thing I’ve noticed so far is that you can only read the backup reports as plain text, not HTML (because IE isn’t installed on Server Core). The HTML Email notification works just fine.

However, the prerequisite install process is a bit different to normal OSs, and the current installer won’t work… so unfortunately you can’t run it on Server Core just yet.

BUT now that we know that it’s possible, and we know the procedure to get it working, we will be putting together another package. It looks at this stage that it will need to be a separate download, which unfortunately breaks our objective of one download for all products. However, there’s really nothing we can do about that because Server Core is just so different! [To be honest, we're lucky that it worked at all]

I hope to be able to give everyone more good news in the near term future. An installer is on the way! Wouldn’t that be a nice Christmas present?

Regards,

Linus

Hi all,

Today we’re proud to launch our new website, Windows Server Backup Resource Center, ortherwise known as wbadmin.info.

This site contains several articles that I wrote on Windows Server 2008 backup and as I get time, I’ll be contributing more content to the site.

The site also contains a search engine that we developed in-house to index the Microsoft KB and Technet articles, and forum posts, that relate to wbadmin.exe. We did this because it’s notoriously difficult to find information on the Microsoft website as it’s so scattered.

I hope everyone finds it to be a useful service!

Regards,

Linus

There’s much excitement here as we’re about to release our Rsync Engine, which will enable data to be synchronized offsite in a bandwidth efficient manner.

I’ve written up some findings on Rsync in terms of how it performs for typical Windows data, including Exchange Information Store backups and SQL database backups. You can see the results here:

Rsync presentation

[Note - this is actually an excerpt from my full presentation on Server 2008 backup, available here: http://www.backupassist.com/SBS/sbspresentation.html]

To illustrate the point, I created a 100MB uncompressible file (actually a TrueCrypt container). I then Rsynced it across to a data host. I then changed one byte of the file, somewhere in the middle, and then reran the Rsync job. These were the results:

Data backed up: 100.00 MB

Bandwidth efficiency report:
Files transferred: 0
Size of changed files: 0.00 B
Total bytes sent: 2.13 kB
Total bytes received: 26.00 B
Speedup factor: 47468.36

Fantastic - if one byte in the file changes, Rsync will only transmit the relevant changed block.

I then decided to insert 5 bytes at the start of the file. This means that the entire file is shifted right by 5 bytes. Normally, a block level incremental backup algorithm (like those found in drive imaging programs) will actually need to backup the entire file again because of the shift in data (every single block is affected). However, Rsync is correctly able to identify the shift. These are the results:

Data backed up: 100.00 MB

Bandwidth efficiency report:
Files transferred: 1
Size of changed files: 100.00 MB
Total bytes sent: 12.20 kB
Total bytes received: 70.05 kB
Speedup factor: 1245.06

So we see here that 70kB was received, and 12kB was sent. Most of this data would have been checksums to try to detect what part of the file changed. Still an outstanding result! 12kB sent compared to 100MB.

So overall, Rsync is quite simply a sound choice for bandwidth efficient block-level delta incremental data transfers.

We’ll be releasing our Rsync engine for Beta testing in the coming days. Stay tuned!

Hello world,

In our network, we have multiple servers and some of these are Virtual Machines. In order to back these up, we use a Disk-to-Disk and a Disk-to-Disk-to-Tape strategy, using BackupAssist v5.

Let’s look at how we do this.

Windows Server #1: SBS 2003 - This is our main server, domain controller, print and file server. We have three backup jobs:

1. Full backup to USB HDD - backing up the complete system, Exchange Server and mailboxes, file system to USB HDD
2. File Replication of the filesystem to Server 2 (Mirror mode) - to ensure that our file system is also backed up to an additional location
3. Rsync our file system to an offsite location

Windows Server #2: Windows Server 2003 - this is a VM host machine running the free VMware Server, and also has a DLT4 tape drive installed. We have two jobs running here:

1. File replication of our VM guests to a local disk - we do this by using the File Replication job in Mirror mode to mirror the entire directories of our VM guests to a separate internally installed hard drive.
2. Tape backup - backup the system partition, the mirror of the VMs (that were created by the previously described job), the mirror of the file system from Server 1, plus the backups of the VM guests (described later), to tape.

On Server 2, there are three VM guests:

1. Linux machine #1 - our source code repository - which is backed up as part of job #1 on the host, Server 2. We also have a scheduled rsync job that syncs the source code repository to an external site.
2. Linux machine #2 - our issue tracking system - which is backed up as part of job #1 on the host, Server 2. We also have a scheduled rsync job that syncs the database to an external site.
3. Windows Server #3 - our CRM system - which runs BackupAssist and does a filesystem backup and a SQL Server backup to the host, Windows Server #2. This is then picked up in the Tape job as previously described.

Notice that the 3 virtual machine guests do not need an internal system backup from within the guest because the host is backing up the entire guests, so a bare-metal restore would simply involve copying back the VM guests to a new server and running them from there.

When backing up the VM guests, we suspend the virtual machine to ensure that all data is flushed to disk. For more information about how to backup VM guests, please refer to this document: BackupAssist Usage Scenarios Guide

The next thing I’m going to investigate is whether it’s possible (and practical) to Rsync our guest VMs offsite. That means to say, as well as backing them up to tape, to have an additional job to sync them to a remote server via the Internet.

I’ll keep everyone posted on how it goes!

Regards,

Linus

Hi all,

To coincide with Microsoft’s worldwide launch of SBS 2008 and EBS 2008, we’d like to formally announce our support for these two latest operating systems.

The current version of BackupAssist (v5.0.5) supports these operating systems with the following features:
- Drive Image backups - building upon the block-level backup features present in Windows Server 2008, while adding extensive scheduling, strategy, hardware support, monitoring and reporting. For more details, visit Drive Imaging Fact Sheet
- File level backups - backup specific files and folders by replicating them to another location. Our Single Instance Store saves space and extends backup history, while intelligent differential backups make it very fast. For more details, visit
File Replication Fact Sheet

In addition, our next version 5.1, due in December, will also support:
- Internet based backups - by Rsyncing your files and folders via the Internet, using a bandwidth efficient transfer method
- EBS Administration Console plug-in - so you can view the results of jobs and perform basic administration through the EBS Administration Console.

Of course, all these features are in keeping with our philosophy of making straightforward backup solutions that are easy to use, manage and monitor, and “just work”.

So download and try BackupAssist today for a great backup experience!

Hi all,

I recently had a case where a client of ours was reporting that the backup was taking over 23 hours to complete, and it looked like it had “hung”.

However, he promptly fixed the issue himself, and discovered that it was due to the USB version setting in bios. I’ve quoted his reply to me below.

I thought it would be of interest to everyone else running HP Proliant servers!

Linus

Linus,

I have fixed the problem. It turns out that HP Proliant servers default to USB 1.1 ports for some LILO legacy stuff. I changed this in the bios of one of the two of my windows server 2008 servers and a 138GB backup now finished in 37 minutes. This is good for us as it is much better than 23 hours.

Hello all,

This is an important message for users of the rdx and REV drives on Server 2008 and the Image Backup (aka Windows Server Backup).

BackupAssist does support the rdx and REV devices as a destination device. [Note that the built-in Windows Server Backup (and the SBS wizards) does not detect these devices as valid backup destinations.]

This means that using BackupAssist, it is possible to backup to these devices for the purposes of doing a bare-metal full restore, or for restoring complete volumes.

However, the operating system sees these devices as “Removable drives” meaning that it will backup to these devices just like it backs up to a DVD drive - by compressing the VHD file.

It turns out that compressed VHD files cannot be mounted, and therefore you cannot restore individual files and directories, or individual applications, from within the standard Windows Server Backup restore wizard.

This is a limitation at the operating system level. We have not yet found a way to work around this limitation (but we’re trying).

Note: when backing up to USB hard drives, or local hard drives, you can restore individual files and folders and also applications.

So in summary:

When backing up to REV/rdx:
- Compression is on
- Can restore from bare metal
- Can restore entire volumes
- Cannot restore individual files and folders
- Cannot restore applications

When backing up to USB HDD:
- Compression is off
- Can restore from bare metal
- Can restore entire volumes
- Can restore individual files and folders
- Can restore applications

There are two workarounds for this scenario:

1. If you need to restore individual files and directories, use a USB or eSata connected removable hard drive as your backup device.

2. As an alternative strategy, use your REV / rdx drives with the File Replication Engine to backup your file system. You can achieve extremely good results with this method - giving you version history on your files that’s far better than can be achieved with drive imaging. Then have another job that will back up your system using the Windows Imaging Engine and enable you to restore quickly from bare metal.

Read more about how you can do this here: http://www.backupassist.com/SBS/sbspresentation.html

I’ll post more about alternative backup strategies in the near future.