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BackupAssist eNews - January 2011
Linus Chang Cortex I.T. CEO

Welcome to the first edition of the BackupAssist eNews for 2011! I'd like to start off the New Year by wishing you a happy, prosperous and successful 2011 from everyone at BackupAssist!

This month's eNews includes a whitepaper that compares BackupAssist with a major competing backup software product: Symantec's Backup Exec. The whitepaper evaluates both products for their ease of use, functionality and pricing to determine which is most suitable as a backup solution for the Small to Medium Business (SMB) market. This comparison should be particularly useful to BackupAssist Resellers attempting to explain the benefits of BackupAssist to their clients, so make sure you download it. There's also an article about a feature we added in BackupAssist v6.1.0, SBS 2008 Report Integration, which allows System Administrators to see the status of the latest BackupAssist backup in the SBS 2008 Report summary.

Running BackupAssist on a Hyper-V Host machine and want to back up Exchange mailboxes from a different machine? This month's Tips and Tricks article outlines the steps required to back up Exchange mailboxes from a Hyper-V Host machine that is not a member of the same domain as the Exchange Server.

Remember to check out our new Backup anecdotes section to read an interesting backup story shared with us by one of our Resellers. And if you have a similar experience, please tell us.

Regards,

Linus Chang, Cortex I.T. CEO

In this Email

Articles and Whitepapers

BackupAssist and Backup Exec Comparison

SBS 2008 Integration.

Tips and Tricks

How to run Exchange Server mailbox backups from a Hyper-V Host machine.

What else is new?

Important release: BackupAssist v6.1.2

V6 Upgrade Promotion finished.

End of Life for BackupAssist v4.

Backup anecdotes

The thankless job of the I.T. Admin.

Just for fun

 

Articles and Whitepapers

Whitepaper: BackupAssist and Backup Exec 2010
product comparison.

In this whitepaper we examine how well BackupAssist stacks up against one of the major competing backup software products on the market: Symantec's Backup Exec. The comparison considers the usability, feature set, functionality and pricing of both products to determine which is most suitable to fulfil the backup requirements of a typical business in the SMB market. Resellers will find this document especially useful for explaining the merits of BackupAssist to their clients. You can download a copy of the comparison here.

Article: SBS 2008 Report Integration for even easier
backup monitoring.

We released BackupAssist v6.1.0 late last year and it included an exciting new feature: SBS 2008 Report Integration. Backup reports created by BackupAssist are integrated into the SBS 2008 Performance Report Logs so System Administrators can easily see the status of the latest backup in the SBS 2008 Report summary. Read more about how to setup SBS 2008 Report Integration here.

Tips and Tricks

How to run Exchange Server mailbox backups from a Hyper-V Host machine.

BackupAssist can be configured to perform mailbox backups of an Exchange Server from an instance of BackupAssist running on a Hyper-V Host machine. If the Hyper-V Host is not a member of the domain that the Exchange Server is a part of, a few additional steps are required to run mailbox backups successfully. This article outlines the required steps. Click here to read it.

What else is new?

Important release: BackupAssist v6.1.2 maintenance release.

Last month we released BackupAssist v6.1.2, which was a maintenance release with a number of important fixes. If you haven't already upgraded to this version, we strongly recommend that you do as soon as possible as there has been a lot of work completed since our last maintenance release in October 2010. The upgrade is especially important for anyone using the following features of BackupAssist:

Full release notes are available here. To upgrade to v6.1.2, click here.

V6 Upgrade Promotion finished.

The 25% discount offer on upgrades to BackupAssist v6 ended as of the 14th January 2011. We hope you were able to take advantage of this special offer. All paid upgrades to BackupAssist v6 must now be purchased at the full upgrade price.

If you need any help upgrading your clients' software to BackupAssist v6 please visit http://www.backupassist.com/upgrade/upgrades.html.

End of Life for BackupAssist v4.

We will be discontinuing all support services and upgrade paths for BackupAssist v4 on 28th February 2011. While you can continue using BackupAssist v4 after this date, no further technical support will be provided after this time and you will not be able to upgrade your version 4 license. You can find out more about our End of Life policy here.

Backup anecdotes

Ron Donovan from Edge Consultants was kind enough to submit the following story for our backup anecdotes section this month. If you have an interesting or amusing experience you'd like to share with us about data backup please let us know at http://www.backupassist.com/surveys/backupanecdotes.php

The thankless job of the I.T. Admin.

Some 5 years ago one of our remote offices rang up in a panic: they had lost some vital CAD files that were needed for a meeting with clients at 10am the next morning. The local administrator who was also the boss of the local branch could not get the current backup tape to eject, nor could he get the software to read what was on the tape. So not wanting to upset this important person, I promised him I would be at his office at 7:30am the next day with a new drive and his off-site backup tapes.

At this point I have to mention this all happened in the dead of winter, so at 5:15am I go out to my car only to find that it will not start. I have a motorbike, so I get all my cold weather gear on and set off towards Leeds; with 108 miles to travel in sub zero temperatures I was not looking forward to the journey. I arrive at my destination at 8:15am and get a roasting for being late. I explain that I had to follow the gritting lorry due to the snow; he tells me to get on with the job and he will listen to my sob story later.

At 8:45am I sit down by the server. The tape software will not eject the tape, so I press the eject button on the drive and out pops the tape, much to the surprise of the boss who storms off to his office. I restored the data and was back on my way home before 10am. The boss of the office never thanked me or spoke to me again. They won the contract - £11.5 million (about $20 million at the time) - and he was promoted to a new office in the States.

Just for fun


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