BackupAssist
Stay ahead of the game

BackupAssist v6. Stay ahead of the game.


Introduction

At BackupAssist, our mission is to provide you with brilliantly simple, cost-effective backup solutions for the full range of Windows Business Server Products. We aim to facilitate world's best practice backup standards and keep you ahead of the game with developing technology and data protection issues.

Maintaining these values is an ongoing challenge. To achieve these goals we work closely with you and your requests, comments and day-to-day issues form the basis of our development program.

Read on to discover how the latest BackupAssist v6 update can be of benefit to you.

Contents

Operating System & Environment Updates
General improvements

  • VSS Application backup and restore
  • Easily include VSS applications to backup as part of Imaging jobs
  • System State backup and restore in ZIP and File Replication jobs
  • System State backup within Imaging jobs for Server 2008 R2
  • BackupAssist ZIP Engine improvements

BackupAssist Restore Console additions

BackupAssist add-on product improvements

  • BackupAssist for Rsync Add-on - now fully 'cloud' ready
  • BackupAssist Exchange Mailbox Add-on - faster, easier restores
  • BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console Add-on - double the value!

Eliminate more hassles than ever before with new BackupAssist v6.

There are three main reasons why you should upgrade to BackupAssist v6:

  1. To keep up with the latest best practice backup standards and techniques on both new and older Windows Server products.
  2. To increase the ease and reliability of the backup and restore tasks you perform.
  3. To ensure the time and cost effectiveness of your backup strategy program.

You'll find that new BackupAssist v6 helps you achieve all this and more. Because it includes more features and that means more ways to eliminate hassles that waste your time and your company's resources.

Operating System & Environment Updates

New BackupAssist Operating System & Environment Updates include:

  • Exchange Server 2010 - including Information Store (complete) and Mailbox levels (granular).
  • SQL 2008 and SQL 2008 R2
  • Server 2008 R2 - including support for the latest Imaging features.

General improvements

BackupAssist v6 includes some general improvements important to maintaining best practice backup standards.

VSS Application backup and restore

In previous versions of BackupAssist, it was possible to backup your VSS applications but it was largely a manual process as the files needed to be select individually. BackupAssist v6 now allows you to select entire applications to back up from the files and folders tree view.

BackupAssist v6 includes fully integrated support for VSS application backup and restore using the BackupAssist File Replication, ZIP and Rsync Engines. Microsoft applications such as Exchange Server, SQL Server, and Hyper-V are now fully supported as well as any other VSS-aware application that uses standard VSS restore methods.

You can also select individual components to backup - for example, specific storage groups in Exchange Server. This makes the process of backing up your VSS applications much easier, faster to set up and gives you greater control.

Fast, easy restores can now be performed via the BackupAssist Restore Console (see BackupAssist Restore Console improvements for more details).

Easily include VSS applications to backup as part of Imaging jobs

With BackupAssist v6, you can also select which VSS applications you need to include in an Image backup with a click of a button. In the past, no VSS writers were notified of the backup on most Windows Servers by default when an Image backup was run, meaning a system administrator would have to go to the registry, enter the registry keys and manually activate the different VSS writers to backup VSS applications.

For Imaging jobs running on Windows Server 2008 or jobs that backup up to a REV, rdx drive, or NAS destination, VSS applications can be backed up as part of a full volume snapshot. (You cannot select individual components if you are performing an Image backup on Server 2008, but it can be done on Server 2008 R2 where the destination is not rdx/REV, NAS).

System State backup and restore

BackupAssist v6 allows you to schedule System State only backups across all modern operating systems and with a much smaller footprint than a full Image backup. A System State backup includes important Windows systems settings, such as the Registry. It is crucial for system recovery scenarios. BackupAssist v6 makes it fast and easy.

BackupAssist v6 also gives you the choice of running your System State backups via the BackupAssist File Replication Engine or the BackupAssist ZIP Engine, which gives you the added advantages of compression and encryption. You can then FTP it offsite, or even copy it to a USB Flash stick so it's easy to restore it to new hardware.

Again, general restore operations are easy using the BackupAssist Restore Console.

Add System State backup within Imaging jobs for Server 2008 R2

BackupAssist v6 also allows you to backup the System State within an Imaging job on Server 2008 R2 (excluding backups to REV/rdx, NAS). It allows all System State files to be selected automatically, instead of using a manual process of choosing individual files and folders, or backing up the entire volume(s).

BackupAssist ZIP Engine improvements

BackupAssist v6 includes improvements to the BackupAssist ZIP Engine that makes it a much more effective replacement for NTBackup, particularly useful on Windows Server 2008 and later products where NTBackup is not included. In addition to compressed and encrypted full backups, BackupAssist v6 can now be used to perform incremental, differential and copy backups as well. (It should be noted that BackupAssist ZIP backups to tape require the BackupAssist Zip-To-Tape Add-on).

All restores are fast and easy using the BackupAssist Restore Console.

BackupAssist Restore Console additions

The BackupAssist v6 Restore Console has been significantly expanded to provide you with a faster, easier way to restore data from many more kinds of backups than ever before. It eliminates manual processing and searching through catalogues to find the specific backups you need. It also saves you from having to copy files back to their original location and automates your restore processes. The BackupAssist v6 Restore Console allows you to choose from two ways of restoring data:

Restoring from a particular backup - where you specify the backup job and date and can recover files, folders and VSS applications.

Free search - where you can search all your backups for particular files, see what version history you have for each file, and restore one or more versions of the files you choose.

The BackupAssist v6 Restore Console will now allow you to perform restores created with the:

  • BackupAssist Rsync Engine, including backups created with the BackupAssist for Rsync Add-on.
  • BackupAssist Drive Imaging Engine, including entire files, entire VSS applications or specific components.
  • BackupAssist Exchange Mailbox Add-on,  including two different restore options:
    1. Restore to the same server
    2. Restore to a different server
    And it also offers two different mail box restore parameters:
    1. Which mailboxes to restore
    2. What date range to restore.
  • BackupAssist Zip Engine, including full, incremental, differential and copy backups, as well as backups created using the BackupAssist Zip-To-Tape Add-on .
  • BackupAssist File Replication Engine.

BackupAssist Add-on product improvements

Upgrades and improvements to BackupAssist add-on products are available free of charge. 

Note: any BackupAssist Add-on product that is being used as a standalone product (like BackupAssist for Rsync, for example) will require a current BackupCare or Upgrade Protection subscription to be eligible for an upgrade to BackupAssist v6.

BackupAssist for Rsync Add-on - now fully 'cloud' ready.

Best practice backup standards now include offsite backups via internet. More and more businesses are taking advantage of this new method of performing backups as effective protection against total system loss caused by scenarios like natural disasters and hardware theft.

Previous versions of BackupAssist for Rsync were only recommended for use with a few data hosts. This was because BackupAssist for Rsync used to have only limited capabilities for encrypting data, leaving the possibility that data was accessible to prying eyes. The BackupAssist v6 upgrade to BackupAssist for Rsync has provided significantly improved, military grade encryption capabilities, allowing us to declare it fully cloud ready and suitable for use with any data host you choose.

This updated version of BackupAssist for Rsync allows you to encrypt data at the Server using AES-256 bit encryption in an Rsync friendly format. Filenames and directory names are obscured so that anyone looking at the data on the data host cannot read or determine what the data is in any way.

Additionally, BackupAssist for Rsync can now be set to backup all NTFS data, ensuring that your data security settings can be restored. Data can also be compressed - which will help you save on data hosting fees, where costs are measured by the 'bucket'.

Restores are also much easier now that they can be performed with the BackupAssist Restore Console. You'll find both the encryption/de-encryption and compression/decompression processes are completely transparent, simple to manage and fast and easy to perform.

BackupAssist Exchange Mailbox Add-on - faster, easier restores.

With BackupAssist v6, the BackupAssist Exchange Mailbox Add-on will be fully compatible with Exchange Server 2010 as well as previous Microsoft Exchange Server Products. A new, automated restore process has also been included in the BackupAssist Restore Console.

You'll now have two different restore options:

  1. Restore to the same server
  2. Restore to a different server.

There are also different restore parameters that cut down time and effort. The new updates allow you to choose:

  1. Which mailboxes to restore.
  2. What date range to restore.

BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console Add-on - now double the value for Windows Hyper-V users!

The BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console Add-on now offers double the value with the inclusion of a great new tool that addresses another major frustration factor associated with performing Hyper-V backups. The new Hyper-V Config Reporter takes on the niggly, time-consuming manual documentation tasks associated with the configuration of Windows Hyper-V Servers, eliminating the need for Powershell scripting and for documenting your settings manually or by using messy screen grabs.

With just a click of a button, you can generate a neat HTML report and either print it out for your records or even load it on a Flash stick so you can always have it handy. It will save you heaps of time and makes it much easier when you need to perform restores. You also get a much easier way to migrate a VM from one server to another using a backup.

Restore guest files from a backup of the host, when the backup is stored on a NAS

Microsoft APIs made it impossible to mount a VHD that resides on a NAS, which in turn made it impossible to perform a granular restore from a NAS backup of a Hyper-V host.

The new BackupAssist v6 upgrade to the BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console Add-on has now overcome this problem inherent in Windows. You can now mount guest hard disks from a NAS backup of the host and perform granular restores. This is a significant improvement for those attempting to use NAS with Hyper-V.

Export VHD files from a backup to a guest

Exporting VHD files from a backup to a guest VM allows you to easily rebuild a virtual machine in the event of a major disaster scenario. Performing this task manually is very time consuming and requires Powershell scripting - which is complicated.

Using the updated BackupAssist VM Granular Restore Console Add-on, you can now perform this process in one easy operation. It's much faster because it requires no scripting, and more reliable because it eliminates the possibility of human error.

For more information about the new features in v6, please refer to the BackupAssist v6 quickstart guide.