Here at the BackupAgent labs we are currently considering improving our software for a particular use case, for which we have decided to reach out to the community to test our ideas. Over the years we’ve seen some backup scenarios where users will store lots of files coming from a single folder on our backup systems. Now if we mean lots of files, we mean at least 25.000 files up to 300.000 files in a single folder, which is actually too much to handle for Windows Explorer even. Notably it requires our backup servers to keep track of all metadata and changes of these files and we think this is in most cases unnecessary overhead.

This is the case, because most of the time these scenarios are not caused by our users, but by third party software with a certain storage algorithm for its data. In some cases it is even temporary data, with no value. If this would be true then we can consider to archive all those files in a single zip file container and forget about storing metadata of those files as it has no value. This approach will yield to much faster backups and saving possibly 100.000’s of metadata records and storage space in the user account. The downside is that you cannot restore a single file in case you need to.

As much of our discussions require actual day-to-day usage we would like to involve you in our discussion to test our hypotheses:

• Is it indeed true that in most cases a folder with over 25.000 files in it is created by software and not users?
• Will it be ok to put those files in a container and forget about all the required metadata of each single file?
• Would 25.000 files be a nice threshold for this feature to kick in?

You can let us know if you agree or disagree with this by going here and voting for the feature and commenting on it.

We are currently working on a next major release of BackupAgent software, version 4.0. This release will contain important functional changes and improvements. Here are some highlights:

• Data will be stored based on retention policies, instead of versions. Our server software will perform maintenance and purge old data based on these policy settings.
• Management Console dashboard will provide more and faster insight to backups of customers.
• Useless folders (e.g. ‘Temporary Internet Files’) will be filtered by default, preventing service providers from storing large amounts of data that do not hold any significant value.
• Advanced logging to Windows Event Viewer. This allows resellers to integrate their existing monitoring systems with BackupAgent. An example of this integration will be introduced by Kaseya.

We expect to have a release candidate of this version ready in July. We are looking for partners who which to volunteer to test a ‘Community Technology Preview’ of the software at that time. Here’s what we expect from volunteers:

• Test our software and stability and report bugs
• Provide feedback on new features and improvements
• Provide feedback on backwards compatibility

We plan to support a scenario where v3 online backup clients can connect to v4 servers. We will not support any scenarios where v4 online backup clients can connect to v3 servers.

BackupAgent Partners who wish to volunteer for our CTP program can contact their partner account managers. We will select partners who we consider to be eligible out of the list of volunteers. Please understand that participating in this program only serves our mutual goal to improve the final product. No other rights or obligations can be derived from receiving an early release of our software. The CTP program might be subject to a separate NDA.

In this blog post I want to make a strong case for agile development methodology when working with a technology partner on a joint product. Last quarter I worked closely with the development team for Parallels Automation to accomplish integration of BackupAgent in POA. I had the pleasure to visit their development center in Moscow, which I enjoyed really well. Aside from the courtesy and hospitality I received, the project was a clear case for agile development practices. This particularly applied to pair programming, which is probably one of the most controversial parts of agile and extreme programming.

Pair programming

During my five day visit I was paired with a developer from Parallels. We worked together as a team. The developer would write code in PHP, while I would nail down impediments on-the-fly or craft better specs when needed. Ironically, I don’t even know PHP very well, but I was still able to help him produce code effectively. My main goal was to keep his fingers tapping on the keyboard.

Coding is only a small part of the project

The nice aspect of this project is that the work fitted nicely into a single sprint. It might even have been one user story sticking as a post-it note on the internal Kanban board of the team I worked with. Also, the team members had detailed specifications, which were cross-checked with our mutual customers. Looking back at the project we spent most time on specifications and testing. During my 5 day visit 95% of the code was produced, but we deployed the solution to the first customer at least one month later (in March) due to all required testing and preparation for deployment. Most of the work was executed by the Parallels engineers, so I do not have a clear-cut insight on time spent.

The project and visit inspired me and made me realize how important it is to know the productivity and effectiveness of your coding process. It also demonstrated that effective coding depends on a lot more than putting a smart developer on the job.

Last September we were on the road with our technology partner Parallels. In several EMEA cities we promoted our backup service integration module for the Parallels Automation platform. On the road show in Amsterdam, Roland met the WHIR tv film crew and they were very interested in the this module. See the interview below where Roland explains the benefits of control panel integration, the downsides of tape backup, and our seed-load technology.

We've launched a major release of our client software for Windows last month (version 3.13.2.1). The most important new features and functionality are listed below:

• The new major release of the Online Backup Client for Windows officially introduces the support for 64-bit operating systems, including the newly released Windows 2008 R2.
• Logging and error reporting has been greatly improved to make it more informative and understandable for the user.
• Finally, small files cannot only be backed up in a batch, but restored in a batch as well! This will save our customers lots of time and increases the usability of this new Client.

Support for Windows 7 and MS SQL 2008

Currently we are performing internal tests to officially support Windows 7 and MS SQL 2008. The Windows Client has already successfully past the Microsoft certification process, so soon there will be more to announce!

First feedback from our customers

Today the new Windows Client generates alot of positive feedback! This encourages us to introduce a new generation of our software in 2010.

It’s finally coming; the long awaited support for Windows Server 2008 will come. We decided to include support for Windows Server 2008 R2 right away, since it was recently released by Microsoft as the successor of Windows Server 2008.

What took us so long?

To tell you the truth: we rock on Windows Server 2003. Over the years, BackupAgent Provider (our server software) really proved to be highly stable. In fact it was such a success that we decided to be absolutely sure we could build on that reputation regarding Windows Server 2008. Therefore, we turned the new Microsoft platform inside out.

More power out of the same hardware

Many of our hosting partners have become highly enthusiastic about Windows Server 2008. They especially refer to IIS7, which is significantly more efficient then IIS6. Also, the SMB2 protocol is a better network storage protocol then the original SMB protocol on Windows 2003; it allows hosters to drain more power from of their existing hardware. For BackupAgent it is yet another step in maintaining our position as most scalable and high-available solution in the market.

Easy installation

We’ll launch a demonstration movie soon to demonstrate how to install our product on a new Windows Server 2008 instance!

It’s finally there! The long awaited support for MySQL databases. Our customers can backup their MySQL databases with this brand new Online Backup Client.

But there are more benefits; from now on, customers have the ability to run pre and post scripts before and after backups and restores. Furthermore, our developers have added support for unlimited account to this Client.

The last three months we've completely revisited the functionality for logging (certain messages have been revisited to make them more informative and new messages have been added) and our core backup process. The backup process has been improved to execute operations concurrently, where they were executed in a sequence before. As a result, the amount of memory use has decreased for backups of large sets of files, plus such backups run faster!

We hope that these new features, and of course several fixes for issues that were reported by our customers, will accelerate your daily back up tasks!

Support for Snow Leopard
Recently some of our customers asked us if we support the new Mac operating system Snow Leopard with this new Client. Currently, we are running tests to ensure that our Client supports Snow Leopard soon. Please follow our blogs because in a little while there will be an announcement concerning the formal support of Snow Leopard by BackupAgent!

At BackupAgent we find it very important to nurture the relationships we have with our partners. Lately we are noticing that some partners are benefiting from this, because they’ve listened to our advices. They’re obtaining more and more positive press and it mainly concerns the price/quality ratio for online backup services they provide.

Things that matter

• Usability:
  This is by far the most important requirement when it comes to obtaining significant numbers of customers. You must assume your SME customers will be trying multiple tools and if they feel comfortable using the application, they will go with it.

• Total cost of service:
  Our partners’ selling price and margins really matter, because they can beat competitors on price, while your sales staff is highly rewarded. At BackupAgent we specialize in keeping all costs low. This involves hardware investments, datacenter costs, project overhead etc. Our software allows you to be competitive with a minimal investment. Our approach to reach this goal is to advise our partners to be ready using a scalable and high-available environment from the start.

• Provisioning (either directly or through resellers):
  Allowing customers to buy services easily is one of the most critical success factors when it comes to providing online backup services. Offering a similar experience to resellers proofs to be even more valuable.

Things that do not matter

• License costs of the BackupAgent software:
  Whether you buy from us or from one of our competitors, the license costs of the software will be at highest 30% of the total costs of service. This means it is far more valuable to focus on lowering costs of the remaining 70%, in which we specialize.

• Branding features:
  We have partners that rebrand the services and we have partners that decided to go with our brand. We can’t see any difference in success or pickup ratio amongst these partners.

• Data traffic and peak load:
  Our partners all show a data load graph which looks like a normal distribution. Peak loads will not be too high and hit at night.

These shortlists are extracted from our experiences with successful partners. Using our software they provide best bargains for online backup.

BackupAgent will release an update (3.13.2.1) for the Windows backup client next month. In this update we will support the possibility to connect to an Exchange Server running in the domain from a different machine. This feature has been designed to support mailbox level backup of Exchange 2007.

Microsoft’s indecisive behavior regarding MAPI
BackupAgent uses MAPI to extract mailbox-specific data from Exchange information stores. MAPI is Microsoft’s standard for mail traffic between mail clients (read: Outlook) and an Exchange Server. Microsoft is already struggling for years on the subject of allowing third-party access to MAPI for extensibility of Exchange. In Exchange 2007 they attempted to change this, when they published a public webservice API. On the other hand they also still allowed ISV’s to access MAPI, although they provide no official support for backup/restore purposes. As a result of this indecisive behavior it was better for BackupAgent only to support remote access to Exchange 2007 servers for performing mailbox backups. This is related to the limitations we faced when we wanted to support the 64-bits architecture.

How it works
BackupAgent will add a setting to its ‘Folder level backup’ option to access an Exchange 2007 server in the domain. This feature can only be used on 32 bits machines. Here is a screenshot:


To enable the feature, the following prerequisites will apply:

• 32 bits edition of Windows, which does not have a local instance of Exchange Server installed and is part of the domain
• Exchange System Management Tools should be installed
• The OnlineBackupService.exe should run as a user which is Domain Administrator and Exchange Administrator

The speed of a hard disk can be quite deceptive. At first, when the drive is clean and there no applications writing data to it at all, it seems to be quite fast. But after a while, when the drives fill up (i.e. more backups are running simultaneously) the whole system performance slowly degrades. It is then quite easy to overlook the storage system as a cause for this.

Here is an example of what happens with the performance, as data fills up the drive:


You can also see that not only throughput degrades, but also the access time increases a lot! A rule of thumb has always been that you should not use your disks more than 85%, but deriving from this chart you can almost conclude that your shouldn't let your disks become more than 40% or 50% occupied.

Why are disks slower when they get filled with more and more data?
Actually, that's quite logical: as data ends up more to the outer edge of the platters, the heads that read and writes data need more time to move themselves to the correct location of the platter, thus causing an increase of access time. Advanced RAID systems, using multiple disks, can apply complex algorithms to avoid a performance degradation as disks get filled with data.

The following links shows some charts of other disk drives, albeit a bit out dated, but you'll get the general idea.

3.5" SAS Data Transfer Diagrams
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sas-storage,1239-23.html

3.5" SATA Data Transfer Diagrams
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/round,1132-28.html

Measuring Disk performance
At our Support Desk we generally use the simple tool called Nbench, which can write multiple streams simultaneous to a storage location.

You can download NBench from our support site at (login required):
http://support.backupagent.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=142

BackupAgent
BackupAgent Provider server software has a built-in check for the free disk space of every storage location. When the free space is lower than 20% a warning message is being sent to the administrator. This features appeared to have some 'collateral gain', not only is the administrator warned so he can expand his storage in time, now he also knows that his performance is degrading unacceptable.


After all: poor storage performance = poor backup performance = poor user experience

We have come to the last video in our series of 10 demonstration movies about the functionalities of the client software.

This video focuses on the Restore of MS SQL Server databases. It shows how to conduct a disaster recovery with the remotely backed up SQL Server data.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. This time we'll focus on Part 9: SQL Server Backup. The online backup client contains a plugin for making backups of Microsoft SQL Server databases. This movie explains how to configure these kinds of backups in just a few simple steps.

In our engineering lab we have been actively testing working with the release candidate of Windows 7. As a result of that our 3.12.5.5 client has been tested and found compatible with Windows 7.

For BackupAgent, the basic required compatibility test by Microsoft is only the starting point for full support of a new operating system. In our labs we have over 200 tests which we will fire off to our software running on this new platform. Based on those results we will work on full support for Windows 7 in the next months for planned releases of our Online Backup Client. Once we have established full support, our partners can benefit from the fact that it matches Microsoft’s own requirements for compatibility, just as it does for Windows Vista and XP.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. This time we'll focus on Part 8: Configuring an Exchange Server Backup on Folder Level. The Folder Level backup allows full and incremental backups of specific folders (e.g. inbox, contacts and calendar) of the MS Exchange mailstores. This movie explains how this backup can be set up in just a few simple steps.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. This time we'll focus on Part 7: Configuring an Exchange Server Backup on Store Level. The Store Level backup allows full and incremental backups of MS Exchange mailstores. This movie explains how this backup can be set up in just a few simple steps.

A while ago I visited an Agile Software conference, The XP Days, together with one of our developers, Stephane. Stephane attended a session where they played a game called The Business Value Game. When discussing it we thought it would be very useful to play the game within BackupAgent to increase the mutual understanding between departments, teach everybody on the important concept of business value, and…to have some fun.

The game’s purpose is to learn how to prioritize new features in a way that maximizes business value. There is always so much more features to implement that we have time for. So we have to choose. But how do you choose what to release when? How do you select one important feature over the other? How do you deal with the fact that some features have a dependency on other features? Does it make sense to release individual features as soon as possible, or should you group them together? How do you deal with the fact that making one customer happy might actually disappoint another?
These questions will haunt any software development company. The approach we take is that we look at the relative value a feature has for us over other features. And the Business Value Game helps in using this concept effectively.

We played the game within the company. I won’t go into too much detail on the game itself. If you want to know more, you can read all about it here. But the core is: Per team you ‘play’ a software company. You get feature requests from your customers that have a certain cost to implement but will also provide a certain value once fully released. And you will get more requests than you can handle. So you have to take decisions on what to implement in which order. When to release something? The winner is the team that after several rounds has earned the most money, or put in another way: that has maximized business value.

It was very informative to play the game. It was a chance to introduce our way of working to everybody in the company in a fun way. But most of all it gave everybody some very valuable insight in the challenging art of prioritization.

It was particularly fun to see the different strategies of the teams. We had three teams, roughly divided into: our Support department, our Development department, and our Sales department. The strategies of Support and Development were very close. But the sales strategy differed a lot and seemed quite typical: Ruthlessly select features that seem to make most money at first sight, and release them as soon as possible. They learned some valuable lessons: In the real world it is not as simple as you think; you have to balance cost and profit; you have to balance short term and long term interests.
Needless to say…they lost…but as real sales people they were very creative in finding reasons why this was not their fault…

We have recently released a new version of our Online Backup Client for Windows. In this version you can now backup and restore Exact administrations with the push of a button.

This module is an example of our plans regarding further support and integration of BackupAgent with third-party applications that serve specific line-of-business or niches. With this initiative BackupAgent wants to strengthen his position towards small and midsize businesses.


Future releases will contain a plug-in architecture to allow software vendors and our partners to develop plug-ins for BackupAgent. This enables our partners to provide consistent and reliable backups and restores for specific application data. In the example of Exact Globe, customers can rest assure that their administration data is backed up securely and can be restored easily. We hereby invite our partners to submit candidate applications for additional plug-ins. Please contact your partner account manager if you see a business case for a specific application.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. This time we'll focus on Part 6: Pre and Postscript in the Online Backup Client. The scripting options allow more advanced users to take automatic backup to the next level. Scripts can for instance be used to start and stop services on the computer. This video is an introduction to these scripts.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. This time we'll focus on Part 5: Options in the Online Backup Client. The client contains a lot of options to configure its behavior to your needs. In this short video, you will learn all about these options.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. This time we'll focus on Part 4: Restoring data with the Online Backup Client. In case of a calamity with your computer, the Online Backup Client can restore your data quick and easy. This video shows how simple a data restore is.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. This time we'll focus on Part 3: Filtering in the Online Backup Client. The Online Backup Client has extensive filtering options to optimize your data backups. Filtering unimportant data saves time and backup space, in this short video you see how easy backup filtering is.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. This time we'll focus on Part 2: Define and start a task in the Online Backup Client. This movie covers all aspacts for making a normal task for backup of computer data. In a few minutes you know exactly how to secure computer data using the Online Backup Client.

The Reporting Service has been a part of the BackupAgent Provider server for a long time now, but it has never been easy to configure. This will change in release 3.10.1.1 of the server as we add configuration of the Reporting Service via the Management Console.

The Reporting Service is a daily running process that performs several reporting and maintenance tasks in the background. The new configuration page for the Reporting Service provides an overview of all the tasks and explains their purpose. The administrator can configure for each task if it should run at all, on which server (in case of more than one server in a load balanced infrastructure) the task must run, and what the schedule is.


You can schedule the tasks at different times to better spread the impact on the load on the server. The ‘Recalculate Account Size’ task especially is CPU intensive so it is better to run it at non peak hours.

Please note that some tasks cannot be disabled and/or always run on all the servers.

BackupAgent has launched 10 demonstration movies to explain all functionalities of the client software even easier. These movies can be used by our resellers and service providers; so that the most frequently asked questions about the backup application will be answered simply by watching the movie. On this page, all movies can be found.

On this blog, we’ll show you all the 10 videos. Part 1: Install and configure the Online Backup Client. This movie will explain how to install and configure the Online Backup Client in just a few simple steps. In a few minutes you know exactly how to get started with our online backup software.

In the previous blog about our upcoming replication solution I discussed the purpose of replication. In this post I will provide a sneak preview of the actual implementation.

We put a lot of effort in creating a solution that is both flexible and easy to use and configure. All configuration and monitoring can be done centrally on the server’s Management Console. Even the software components that run on you storage locations and replication destinations can be configured centrally.
Still the solution is very flexible: it supports a wide array of setups of both local and remote storage locations, and onsite and offsite replication destinations. You can replicate all your storage locations to the same destination, or you can have a different replication destination for each storage location.


We provide a smart replication scheme: replication is continuous per storage location (even per account), allowing for efficient but controllable replication schemes. You can define a replication window: the start time and end time between which replication is allowed to run. When the end time of the window is reached, the software will finish the account it is replicating, and then suspend the replication. At the start time replication will resume where it left off. We even allow you to define the maximum used bandwidth per replication task.

And of course we also considered the unfortunate case that you actually need your replicated data: In case a storage location goes down because of a harddisk failure for example, you can easily configure the corresponding replication destination to temporarily act as storage location while you are working on the problem. And when you have the original storage up again, you can use a provided tool that automatically copies the data back and directs backups to the new/repaired storage location again.

At the moment I am writing this we have entered the testing phase of the replication functionality. Replication will be an optional offering as part of our next server release 3.10.1.1, expected to be released in April. For BackupAgent partners who want to know more, please contact your Partner Account Manager.

The Backupagent blog is very suitable to provide you with some inside information on what our R&D team is working on. This time I would like to give you a preview of the Replication functionality we are developing at the moment. In this first part (of two) I will discuss the purpose of our replication solution.

The new replication functionality allows our customers to effectively create a backup of a backup. It allows to replicate data that resides on the server’s storage locations to another, possibly offsite, location. In the case of a hardware failure on a storage location for example, the data is still available on the remote location. So basically, replication is part of a failover setup of our customer’s online backup service.

The second opportunity for replication is for what we call local appliances. This setup combines LAN speed diskbased backup with failover remote backup. Let’s assume you want to backup the servers and potentially workstations in your company. You want to run backups and restores at fast LAN speed, using your local network. But you also want to keep the backups at a safe offsite location.
The local appliance setup provides the solution for this: our server software will be deployed on a server in the local network, so all backups are at LAN speed. The replication option then allows the backup data to be automatically replicated to a safe offsite location.

If you are a BackupAgent partner you now have an exciting new offering for your customers: to provide them with a local/LAN backup solution, combined with offsite replication of the backup data to your datacenter.

At the moment I am writing this we have entered the testing phase of the replication functionality. Replication will be an optional offering as part of our next server release 3.10.1.1, expected to be released in April. For BackupAgent partners who want to know more, please contact your Partner Account Manager.

In the second part of this blog post I will discuss the actual implementation of our replication solution.

In our R&D department at BackupAgent we use an Agile Software Development approach. Agile software development basically means that you cannot expect everything to go according to plan in the real world: priorities can change, estimates might prove to be wrong, a piece of functionality might turn to be more complex than anticipated, a emergency hotfix has to be provided, an employee is ill…all of these events can and will happen. Plan for uncertainty, expect the unexpected, and deal with it.

Part of any development method is Estimates. When we plan for new functionality we of course want to have estimates first: how long do we expect it will take to design, develop, and test the new functionality? And of course we want the estimates to be good: taking into account all the knowledge and expertise of the team, and be independent of which developer eventually will implement the functionality.

We use an fun and effective method for this called Planning Poker. In Planning Poker the entire team gathers for estimating a bunch of new functions. Each person is provided with a set of cards. Each card in the set represents a possible estimate. We use a scale of 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc so for each of these numbers there is a card. This might sound cryptic, but bear with me.


A new function is described, questions are asked, and then all the team members individually think of the effort they think the function will take. Each developer selects a card representing the effort they estimate for the function and when the meeting facilitator calls the cards, they all simultaneously show their selected cards.
Now at this point the estimates will most likely differ considerably. The person with the highest and lowest estimates are invited to explain their estimates. The idea behind this is that this can provide new insights for the others. Maybe someone is an expert on some specific technology and he has good reasons to think that the function is harder to implement than the others might think.

Now a second run is played. Most of the times the estimates are much closer this time. We repeat this until there is consensus.

What do we get out of this? Our estimates are balanced and based on consensus; they take the opinion and expertise into account of everybody involved; they are independent on the developer that will eventually develop the function. And…it’s fun…

I recently wrote a whitepaper on mass deployment of hundreds to thousands of laptops using Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager. This whitepaper is the result of several cooperative initiatives we deployed with our partners.

We frequently get the question from our partners on how to deploy BackupAgent clients on large numbers of laptops and desktops. A lot of those questions also involved Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM). As a result we now support this mass deployment scenario by a whitepaper explaining every detailed step on how to accomplish this.

The whitepaper does not apply on SCCM in particular. Our description for packaging our software for silent remote installation can also work within other software distribution environments.

We also created tools to do mass provisioning of accounts based on a comma-separated values file (*.csv). It even allows us to pre-generate encryption keys, since system administrators do not like to be dependent on user- chosen encryption keys for recovery of lost data.

In case you’re a BackupAgent partner and you’re interested in this whitepaper and/or the tools for mass provisioning, you can obtain this by requesting it from your Partner Account Manager.

Recently there has been some commotion regarding vulnerabilities in SSL. Apparently SSL certificates that are encrypted using MD5 can be counterfeited by hackers. MD5 was known to be vulnerable to this for almost 2 years, but it had to take a couple of Dutch scientists to prove the point.

Here’s a schematic view on how this works:


They took 200 PlayStation3’s to do all the calculations for three days long, since a PlayStation has 40 times more CPU power than an average PC. Apart from the fact that I find it weird that these powerful CPU’s are not in normal PC’s, it is quite a remarkable accomplishment.

Fortunately, not all certificates are encrypted using MD5. Several suppliers use SHA1 or higher to sign certificates. Although SHA1 is allegedly doomed as well, for now this seems to be the secure alternative to MD5. BackupAgent’s preferred CA, Comodo, works with SHA1.

I strongly recommend all our partners to check the encryption type of the SSL certificate. Here is how to do that: http://blogs.technet.com/swi/archive/2008/12/30/information-regarding-md5-collisions-problem.aspx

This week we’ve released our latest client software update, version 3.12.5.3. It will be our last update for 2008. The most important highlights of this update are:

• Full support for both store level and folder level backup of Exchange 2007
• Improvements for configuring backups of Exchange 2000 and 2003
• During restore, the original creation date and modification date are now always restored as well

All our partners have received a technical bulletin containing their private label versions of this update. It gives them the opportunity to release this last update before the holidays.

Plans for 2009

For next year we have planned a lot new features, including:

• Support for Oracle
• Support for SharePoint
• Extensions for Windows Explorer
• Improved GUI in the Management Console to manage all backup accounts

Also, we will continue to support the latest versions of published operating systems and applications, such as Windows 2008, Mac OS-X Snow Leopard, SQL Server 2008 and the planned Windows 7 release.

I have just completed an information document which shows how to request, install and test an SSL certificate. This certificate is important to companies who sell our backup service to securely backup and restore (business) data, as well as access their website.

BackupAgent requires a certified SSL connection between its clients and servers. Certificates that serve this purpose can only be purchased at Certificate Authorities. In the past, some of our partners tried to use self-signed certificates, but this is not secure. The basic idea behind SSL is that some authority grants a combination of public and private keys, which prevents hackers from posing as a company that provides online backup services.

A user can be certain he or she connects to a server that is owned by the company he or she does business with. This can only be true if some independent authority matches a private request of that company with a unique public key based on the master key of the CA. This is basis for PKI. Some technicians might argue that there is no technical difference between a self-signed certificate and one of a CA. Although this is true, I think they underestimate the legal role of CA’s which provides more certainty that a company is legitimate. The CA’s have to qualify to stringent legal standards to obtain their status. That’s why BackupAgent only works with official SSL certificates.

Last week one of our partners was in urgent need of support since one of his clients was recovering from an apocalyptic disaster. Because of the nature of business it was crystal clear that the customer would go bankrupt if critical data could not be recovered. We had to make sure all data was restored in a consistent state.

The partner addressed our tech support, because not all data seemed to be restored correctly. After some hours of thorough analysis of the data by our CTO and me, we discovered that the partner apparently was using the wrong encryption key. This rang a bell at the side of the partner and after checking their administration they retrieved the correct encryption key for restoring. Now all relevant data was restored correctly and the customer was back in business.

The example shows that in some cases good software must be complemented by adequate and responsive support. The customer was under great pressure to get back to business within a reasonable timeframe. This - yet another - satisfied customer also shows that our partner model allows us to prevent bankruptcy in case of data loss.

We deliver white label solutions to our partners. This is part of our standard offering and also required by most of our partners. At BackupAgent, we go one step beyond the standard white label options that most vendors supply. Of course we adopt the logo and contact information in the client software, but we also provide the partner very extensive rebranding options on the server side and the ability to have fully rebranded communication with its customers.

On the server side, each partner can customize the management console to display its own brand. Style sheets can be adjusted to change the common look and feel of the management console, including settings of colors, fonts etc. Next to that, individual resellers of partners can apply their look and feel to the management console. This way our partners can offer their resellers the possibility to resell a rebranded backup service.

Since status reporting is a very important part of online backup, the server software generates a lot of e-mails to inform end-users. For instance when a backup or restore has been performed, but also when you forgot your password or when you create a new account. Our management console allows each partner, and again also each reseller of the partner, to change these emails in HMTL. This way, emails can be personalized by adding logo’s, references to FAQs, the partner website etc.

Lastly, each partner or reseller can ‘push’ messages to the client software. On the dashboard of the client software a message and a link can be displayed. For example for maintenance announcements, special offers or just a link to the partner webpage.

Our solution adapts to its customers like a chameleon to its environment. All these options go far beyond the standard white label solution that many vendors offer, and that is exactly what we want to offer…. more than the standard!

Every now and then I have discussions with partners regarding compliance. In most cases, these discussions regard regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and HIPAA. Also, other general regulations involve obligations to store information for a certain number of years. Although there is a distinct connection between data backup and compliance, I sometimes think that people are confused about the purpose of compliance.

You cannot become compliant by applying the right backup procedure. Companies can only backup in the wrong way (or not at all) and if they do, they bear a larger risk of not being compliant. This is because regulations like SOX are supposed to prevent people from committing fraud. One part of SOX involves responsibility for information. Executives should make sure that important information is always available and that access is secured. This prevents them from being able to purge information which proves mismanagement. Missing information is just as bad as compromising information regarding fraud.

So proper backup is no guarantee for compliance. If executives deliberately hide or destroy information and data, there is no way any backup service can recover it. Having a proper backup and recovery strategy does not assure that you are compliant, in case information is allegedly missing. This is why there are no compliance certifications for backup software.

Also, compliance does not apply on all data. Financial statements and contracts are far more relevant regarding compliance than any other kind of data, but they form only a fraction of all data of a business. The practical damage of data loss will outweigh a compliance issue most of the time.

Summarizing this, I do recommend you to make secure, encrypted online backups so you can avoid incompliance, but please do not assume compliance by choosing the right backup method.

In my twelve years of experience as a system administrator I faced the challenge of restoring MS Exchange Servers several times during my professional career. Although the Online Backup Client in combination with the recovery tool from BackupAgent makes it relatively easy, the restore of an Exchange environment is, and will always be a difficult task.

The store level backup is the most common backup, and even the preferred backup method of Microsoft. This is the only correct way to do a full disaster recovery of an Exchange Server. The examples and experiences I write about, are mainly about store level backup and restore.

An alternative is folder level backup (also known as ‘brick-level backup’) where you can backup the mailboxes of a user on folder level. The third way is a combination of the two, where you perform a store level backup and run a folder level backup of the important mailboxes or calendars.

To share my knowledge about Exchange backup and restore, I created a best practice for the backup and restore of an Exchange environment using our BackupAgent software which can be downloaded here. This whitepaper can be very helpful in case you want to work out a backup strategy with BackupAgent, or if you need to do a full disaster recovery.

At BackupAgent we train our new partners on a regular basis. Sometimes during a training we have highly experienced backup professionals in the room, who compare our software with ‘traditional’ backup software, such as Backup Exec and ArcServe. This is always a nice exercise, because BackupAgent always proofs to be easier to use and to be more reliable.

Last Friday we had two engineers at our training who worked for a hosting company. Although they had lots of engineering experience, they were quite young and fitted the perfect profile for our training. These people know about backup and since they are so young they are very open to learn about new technologies and ideas, such as online backup.

Our trainees had the power to apply their knowledge of BackupExec and ArcServe on what they got from BackupAgent. Also, they already used our software and were well prepared for the training. These kinds of trainings are very fruitful, since our ‘students’ actually brought up good and useful feature requests, while they were sucking in all there is to know about BackupAgent.

The catch of online backup is to offer only the most important functionality for 99% of the market and to leave the highly complex or exotic backup challenges to the ‘enterprise vendors’. Even so, our software takes many protective measures to prevent our customers from screwing up their Exchange and SQL Server backup, since we know and acknowledge that our software can and will be used by lesser experienced people.

One of our most appreciated and valued product features is our possibility to perform full Exchange backup and recovery. Many of our customers are small and midsize businesses and for many of these companies the Microsoft Exchange Server represents the most mission-critical business application.

(Un)fortunately Microsoft implemented a rather complicated architecture for backup and recovery. This offers BackupAgent both a challenge and opportunity to deliver online backup services for MS Exchange. The opportunity for BackupAgent is not only to backup the complete Exchange server, but also to protect novice users from the likely possibility of data loss due to a configuration error in the backup strategy. Unlike most other popular online backup products, BackupAgent detects broken log sequences, which it requires to perform fast and complete incremental backups without having the risk of data loss. Somehow our friends at Microsoft assume that the responsibility of backing up Exchange is always in the hands of well-trained technical experts. For our customers this often not the case.


Another challenge is the average size of the Exchange mail stores. Many mail stores become rather large, running into 50 GB in size or even larger. It is hard to perform an online backup of these stores, since limited bandwidth can cause backup windows of several days to perform backups. Also, for fast and full recovery of a Microsoft Exchange Server it is simply not enough to restore the files that represent all the mail stores. BackupAgent offers the possibility to deliver the critical data on a portable hard disk to avoid a long upload or download period for first backup and recovery. Alternatively, BackupAgent can automatically restore critical mail stores in an Exchange recovery environment in the data center.

One of the most interesting new trends regarding fast restore is to combine online backup with Hosted Exchange. BackupAgent becomes an easy migration tool to migrate Exchange mail stores from the on-premise server(s) to the hosted environment in the data center. A hosting company can use a (possible) crash of Exchange to convert the customer to Hosted Exchange subscriptions. Obviously, all important data of the customer is already available in the secure data centers and a restore will be very fast, since there will be no bandwidth issues.