BackupAssist

Backup and data protection tool that performs automatic, scheduled backups of Microsoft Windows Servers with support for local and internet-based backup.

Fast, reliable backups for Windows Servers. Protect your business continuity with our suite of advanced technologies.

BackupAssist makes backups and data protection simple by performing automatic, scheduled backups of Microsoft Windows Servers. With server backup software solutions for both local and Internet-based backup, the ability to back up everything from individual files to complete servers (including Active Directory, Exchange and SQL Server), both physical and virtual and support for a wide range of backup devices. BackupAssist is designed for small to medium sized organisations.

Key Features:

• NEW: Cloud Backup: BackupAssist has a new backup option called Cloud Backup that's available with the new Cloud Backup add-on and stand-alone license. Cloud Backup allows you to back up data to remote data centers across the internet and supports the Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure cloud services as destinations.
  
• NEW: New Online Help Portal: BackupAssist 10 introduces a new single-sourced Help Portal with modern HTML 5 design and features. All BackupAssist 10 help topics, context-sensitive topics linked to the BackupAssist UI and knowledgebase articles are contained within this Help Portal.
  
• NEW: Improved support for Window Server 2016: BackupAssist 10 supports two important new Hyper-V features: Nested Virtualisation and Shielded VMs.
• Backup: Easy and predictable backup of your servers, apps, data and systems.
  
• Restore: Swiftly and simply restore your data. Includes granular restore tools.
  
• Recover: Customised bare-metal recovery to same or dissimilar hardware.
  
• Remote: Remotely manage backups, restores and more for your sites.
  
• Cloud Backup: Backup your data to public or private cloud. Our software gives you Cloud independence, letting you choose the cloud provider you want to use. Feature-packed with Data Deduplication, Encrypted Containers and Non-Convergent Encryption.
  
• Hyper-V: Restore lost or damaged guests in seconds. Granular data restore.
  
• Exchange: Restore any mail item: e-mails, contacts, attachments and more.
  
• SQL: Near-Continuous Backups let you achieve RPOs as low as five minutes.
  
• Tape: Top-level tape support for popular modern Windows software.

BackupAssist - Features

Features

Scheduling and backup history

BackupAssist makes it easy to set up a secure backup system easily without having to be an expert at backups. Simply use one of our predefined schemes to get business-grade protection with zero learning curve. And power-users can easily customize our schemes to meet advanced requirements.

Predefined schemes - just point and click
The schemes offered in BackupAssist take into account:

• scheduling
• backup history
• onsite / offsite media rotation
• weekly, monthly and yearly archiving

Different strategies for specific hardware types
Each destination type (eg. Tape, HDD, rdx, NAS, etc) has different characteristics that require different strategies. BackupAssist offers schemes that are customized to each hardware type so that you can get the most secure backup strategy possible and maximize your investment.

Customizing the schemes
You can fine-tune the schemes by changing the archiving day for your weekly, monthly and yearly backups. For example, you may choose to do your weekly backups on Fridays, but your monthly backups on the last business day of each month.
You can also customize the mode and method of backup for each day, whether you need to eject or swap media, and also the media labels.

Notifications and reporting

Being notified of the status of each backup is critical to a successful data protection system. Fortunately, BackupAssist covers both of the following aspects for notifications:

• For when human intervention is required - giving clear instructions on what needs to be done
• Clear reporting that keeps you informed and allows you to spot problems before they occur

These notifications can be delivered via email, printer, network broadcasts or integration with other monitoring packages.

• Minimize human error where human interaction is required By providing clear, specific instructions on what to do, BackupAssist will minimize human error.
• Clear reporting that helps you anticipate problems
  One major cause of backup failures is running out of space due to data growth. Our media usage report allows you to track data growth and see when your backup system needs upgrading.
• Reporting that detects human errors
  Another major cause of backup failure is when the user forgets to do something - like swapping tapes or HDDs.
• Reporting that gives you a comprehensive view
  Each backup report will show you details of the backup.
• SBS 2003 Performance Log Integration
  BackupAssist is the only non-Microsoft backup application that reports directly to the SBS 2003 Performance Log. This means that if you already have performance log emails set up, you will automatically be notified of BackupAssist results.
• Easy troubleshooting with our online Knowledge Base
  Any errors that occur are easy to troubleshoot because each error is linked to an online knowledge base article.

Backing up files, folders and open files

For the file based backup engines (File replication, NTBackup, Rsync Internet backup) you can accurately specify the files and directories to backup using our intuitive user interface. You can select and unselect volumes, directories and files at any level.

• Remote (network) files
  You can also backup data from an unlimited number of networked computers. Simply add each network share to the list and select the files and directories on each share to backup.
• Excluding files
  BackupAssist will observe the system file exclusions (such as the page file) and exclude them from the backup. You are also able to specify additional custom exclusions, such as MP3 files
• Open files
  BackupAssist will also backup open files using an open file manager. On Windows XP and later, the Microsoft VSS open file manager is the default. You may also, however, use the BackupAssist Advanced Open Files add-on (32 bit machines only) to backup open files on Windows 2000 or later.

Hardware support

As part of making backups easy, BackupAssist has built-in support for a wide variety of backup hardware. Your setup is simply a matter of point-and-click from the Wizard, and you'll never have to work around device-specific issues.

The approach of rich hardware support also enables us to eliminate many of the pain-points that can plague other backup systems. And although there are subtle differences between different backup technologies (for example, imaging versus file-based backup), BackupAssist presents a common interface between them all.

Case Study: Seamless USB hard drive support
BackupAssist solves the two biggest problems with USB HDD backups:

• Safely removing (ejecting) the hard drive after the backup
• Making sure that the correct drive letter is assigned before the backup. With the media tracking option, BackupAssist will reassign the drive letter if it gets changed by the OS, and when it is safe to do so.

Case Study: eliminate hassles with tape drives and RSM
Problems with the Removable Storage Manager and NTBackup are a thing of the past thanks to our unique tape drive communication techniques.

Case Study: FTP support
The in-built FTP support (including SFTP and FTPS) makes offsite replication easy.

Backup strategy

• Backup retention and management
  Although the in-built scheduling and schemes will provide you with backup history, there are features in BackupAssist go a step further.
  For example, if you backup to a 200GB USB HDD and want to reserve 40GB for other purposes, you can choose to use up to 160GB for your backups, as shown below.
  Another example where this is handy is if you backup 3 servers to a terabyte NAS and want each server to use 300GB of disk space for backups.
• Keeping local copies of backups
  Keeping the last few backups on a local hard drive is extremely handy, as it allows you to restore data quickly and easily without having to retrieve and restore from an external backup device.
• Run scripts before / after the backup
  If you have a requirement to run commands before and after the backup, this can be easily achieved with BackupAssist. You can even run commands conditionally, depending on whether the backup failed or succeeded.

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BackupAssist - System Requirements

System Requirements

Type of Operating System	Supported Operating Systems
Desktop operating systems	- Windows XP Professional - Windows Vista (Business, Enterprise or Ultimate required for imaging)
Windows Server 2000 family	- Windows Server 2000 and all variants (Advanced Server)
Windows Server 2003 family	- Windows Server 2003 (all variants) - Small Business Server 2003 (all variants
Windows Server 2008 family	- Windows Server 2008 (all variants) - Windows Server Core 2008 (all variants) - Small Business Server 2008 (all variants) - Essential Business Server 2008 (all variants)
Virtualization platforms	Host machines: - Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V services - Hyper-V Server Guest machines: - As per the listings above

To view a list of BackupAssist v5 supported backup devices and operating systems, please click here.