Submitted by Cindy Su

EASEUS Todo Backup Free is free for home and business users and offers many features that usually only commercial backup solutions have. The easy-to-use backup program doesn’t come with spyware or the need to install a browser toolbar.

Main features

• Restore or deploy system images to dissimilar hardware configuration for hardware replacement
• Windows PE and Linux based bootable disk for backup & recovery
• Incremental disk/file backup for saving disk space
• Network shared file backup
• Automated schedule backup

Additional features

• Back up system state and files, including the operating system, installed applications on-the-fly, and specified file types under Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Windows 7
• Clone hard drive disk or transfer data onto another to upgrade hard drive without the time consuming reinstalling of operating systems and applications
• Explore, copy and recover files directly from backup image in Windows Explorer
• Automatically delete old images to save disk space according to one’s own time-setting

EASEUS Todo Backup Free

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• My 4 golden backup rules – Part 1: Don’t schedule backups and don’t configure backup jobs (16)

If you are using any of the snapshot-based backup solutions for your virtualized machines—Veeam Backup & Replication and vRanger being the two most popular—then from time to time you are probably going to see a failed backup. This is a common occurrence even with traditional backup solutions, but in this situation it can have a drastic effect on your production environment.

While I can only directly speak for the effect with Veeam, as it is the only one I’ve used, the situation described here as I understand it is common to all of the VMware-centric backup systems. What happens is specific to situations where bandwidth is constrained, like when you are replicating over the WAN to off site. Backup job A runs and successfully completes. The last stage of the backup process is removing the temporary snapshot that is used to create the backup; this can be a time-intensive process depending on how large the backup (and thus the snapshot) is. During this process, backup job B attempts to create a snapshot and begins backing up the same virtual machine. When this happens, the VMware helper that was trying to merge the original snapshot (<disk>-delta.vmdk) back into the disk file (.vmdk) becomes orphaned. Furthermore, VMware still believes the snapshot to be locked by the original process.

In my experience, there are four steps to troubleshooting this issue and getting the delta files to roll back up into the disk files. You hopefully will not have to complete all four, as they are steps for “this fix isn’t working.” The first two can be done on a running VM, so you incur no downtime; the second two require you to take down the VM.

Step 1: Unlock the snapshot

The first step is to get the snapshot unlocked. The trick to this is to migrate the VM from the host it is on to another and then back again. Those of you using a vCenter-based infrastructure should know all about this. Just vMotion the machine, not the datastore, from one host to another.

It is important to vMotion the machine back to the original host. If you don’t, you get introduced to another error. Once the process is finished, you should be able to go into Snapshot Manager and click the “Delete All” button to clear them all out. Don’t be alarmed if the process of “Remove all snapshots” seems to hang on 95%; this is normal operation and, depending on the size and quantity of the snapshots, this process can take many, many hours.

Step 2: Trick vCenter

In some cases, after you perform the migration and you open Snapshot Manager, it appears that the VM has magically gotten rid of all of its snapshots. If you browse the datastore where the VM resides, using either the GUI VI Client or the CLI via SSH, you will still see the delta files there. If this is the case, you can trick vCenter into showing you the snapshots again by creating another snapshot manually (right-click VM, choose snapshot, “Take Snapshot”). When done, all of your Consolidate Helpers will reappear. After that, try to Delete All from the Snapshot Manager again.

Step 3: Migrate the datastore

If you have gotten to this point, I hate to tell you but you are now looking at some down time from here on out. If the snapshots still haven’t moved, the next step in my process is to shut down the virtual machine and migrate the datastore. Yes, I know, you are probably screaming at the screen about the fact that, with ESX 4, you don’t have to shut down to migrate the data any more. However, if you have reached this step, there are most likely more delta files than the VI client could handle before reaching the timeout limit, and shutting down makes the process faster and more robust. Migrating the datastore will have the effect of rolling the deltas back up if the process completes successfully.

Step 4: Convert the virtual machine

This step is for those of you (myself included) who ignore the problem too long. ESX is only capable of handling 32 snapshots for any given VM. Beyond that, trying to Delete All will not work. Neither will migrating the datastore. In this case, you need to install VMware’s standalone Converter tool on the VM and perform what’s referred to as a v2v, or virtual to virtual, conversion. I’ve seen reference to just using the VI client to clone the VM, but this process was defined to me by VMware support, so I’ll trust their judgment.

I have only reached this step once, and I hope to avoid it from here on. Current Windows activation will not survive this process, so at the least you will have to reactivate. At worst, you might actually have to call Microsoft and have them manually activate your server.

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When responses were correlated with the total number of employees, it turned out that the smaller the organization, the less likely it was to have implemented an email archiving solution, while larger companies were more likely to have done so.

While the results indicated almost 2 in three of respondents had not implemented an email archiving solution, the survey also revealed that only 33.2% of respondents were familiar with the regulatory and compliance standards in the US that imply the need for email archiving. As before, the larger the business, the more likely the respondent was to have knowledge of email archiving and compliance.

Of particular interest is the fact that more than half of all respondents indicated that they have found it necessary to search for and/or restore deleted emails in response to an end user request, to meet an audit or compliance issue, or in response to a lawsuit. A third of all respondents have to do this on at least a monthly basis. This means that a good amount of the participants know the headache they need to go through if they don’t use an email archiving solution, and yet 38% of respondents have neither an email archiving solution, nor even a backup solution in place. For more than one of every three participants, a server failure could directly lead to a catastrophic loss of data.

The results show that more awareness on the benefits of having an email archiving solution is needed. Organizations need to understand that the benefits are numerous for systems admins, end users, and the business as a whole. While the business will be protected through its ability to meet compliance requirements and reduce the risk of data loss, systems admins, as well as the users themselves, will be able to search for any email, and to have a copy of all emails stored separately from their email system – reducing the load on email systems and on local machines. End users will also benefit from having mailboxes of virtually unlimited size, and being able to find any old email without having to request a restore from the systems administrators.

Email archiving solves many problems, protects companies from data loss, enhances the user experience, and is a critical add on to any email system. If you don’t already have an email archiving solution in place, add it to your road map now. You’ll be glad you did.

This guest post was provided by Ed Fisher on behalf of GFI Software Ltd. GFI is a software developer that provides a single source for network administrators to address their network security, content security and messaging needs..

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DHCP is one of those essential services that can knock out a network if problems come up. That is why it is important to back up the DHCP server regularly and—even more important—to know how to restore a DHCP server.

Every Windows system backup contains a backup of the DHCP server with the database DHCP leases and the DHCP settings. However, many backup solutions only allow you to restore the complete system state but not specific system data such as those of the DHCP server. If you only have problems with the DHCP server, restoring a complete system state is usually not what you would want because it might affect other services.

You have to follow a different procedure to back up a Windows DHCP server. Windows stores the DHCP data in a database located at %SystemRoot%\System32\backup. The most important file is dhcp.mdb, which can’t just be copied with backup software because it is open while the DHCP server is running. Using the Volume Shadow Copy Service to secure the data is usually not a good idea for any kind of database system.

Automatic DHCP server backup

However, Windows automatically creates a backup of the DHCP database in %SystemRoot%\System32\dhcp\backup every 60 minutes; this backup can be copied by your backup software. The backup time interval can be changed in the Windows Registry in HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\DHCPServer\Parameters through the BackupInterval parameter. Sixty minutes is usually sufficient, but if you use a CDP backup solution to secure your server, you might want to configure a shorter backup interval.

Manual DHCP server backup

You can also run backups manually through the DHCP management console. This feature can be useful if you intend to make major changes to your DHCP settings. You can back up the database to a location other than the default folder. Note that this won’t change the location of the regular automatic backups. This setting can only be changed in the Windows Registry with the BackupDatabasePath parameter.

DHCP restore

To restore the DHCP server, you have to first restore the DHCP backup folder %SystemRoot%\System32\dhcp\backup with your backup software, and then restore the DHCP database with the DHCP management console. This will restore all DHCP leases, reserved IP addresses, and configured DHCP options. I wouldn’t use the RSAT DHCP management console for this purpose. It is safer to log on to the server to do this kind of work.

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In my last post, I explained why I am strictly against scheduling backups. However, when it comes to restores I am a big fan of schedules. Another golden rule that belongs in every backup strategy is the backup of backups rule.

Schedule restores

Now before you check whether your backup software has a feature for scheduling restores, read on to see what I mean by “scheduling restores.” Most backup experts recommend verifying regularly that backups are working properly. However, in my view, this is not enough. Just like manual backups are not a professional way to secure data, checking every now and then if the backed up data is really on the disks or tapes is certainly insufficient.

First of all, it is not very likely that you will really do it regularly. Be honest. When did you check your backups the last time? Second, it is not enough to check if the data was backed up. You really have to test the restored data in an environment that you prepared for this purpose.

The statistical data of failed restore attempts vary depending on who hired the analysts, but, I think, 50% is a reasonable working hypothesis. One thing is for sure—the main reason for failed restore attempts is because restores haven’t been tested regularly.

Thus, my advice is to schedule a disaster recovery day in your IT department every two months, or at least every six months depending on the importance of your data. On this disaster recovery day, you can simulate a worst case scenario where a virus or a fire wipes out all your data. Try to restore your Active Directory, your Exchange servers, your databases, and user files in a virtual test environment. Just like a fire department needs regular training with real fires, an IT department needs to practice restoring data on real virtual servers. You will be surprised how you burn your fingers when you try this the first time.

Such a disaster recovery day has a nice side effect. Your management will realize that your IT department has more work to do than resetting user passwords. And if someone from management asks if this is really necessary, you can ask back if anyone has ever calculated the chances for the company to survive a full data loss because of a virus outbreak.

Offsite backups

Please don’t think that I am paranoid, but backing up backups is indeed essential. Of course, I don’t recommend installing a second backup solution that secures the data for your regular backup system. What I mean are offsite backups. While big companies have always done this by storing tapes at secure places far away from the company site, small organizations often neglect the risk of data loss as a result of a fire.

Offsite backups has become a new trend for two reasons. Firstly, the rise of CDP solutions has increased the likelihood that a virus not only destroys the data on all live systems but also the backups on storage systems. Erasing data in a tape library is much more difficult for malware than manipulating the disks on a server or storage system. Perhaps this is the main downside of CDP compared to traditional tape backups.

Secondly, new online backup solutions made offsite backups affordable for small companies. However, I don’t recommend replacing your on-premises backup system with a cloud backup solution. I wouldn’t hand over control of such a vital component of your company. But backing up backups in the cloud is an easy and affordable way to secure your backups from fires. And since special software is required to access the cloud storage, it is highly unlikely that a virus would be able to take this hurdle.

The good news is that CDP (contrary to tape backups) is perfectly suitable for offsite backups via online backups. Since your CDP solutions already collected all the data in your network at your central storage system, it is the ideal source for your second-level backup.

And just in case you worry about handing over all your organization’s data to a third party, encryption technology can perfectly protect your data before it leaves your company site. You can use the encryption feature of the cloud backup software, or you can use your on-premises backup software to encrypt your data before the cloud backup software touches it.

What about using tapes for offsite backups? To be honest, in my opinion, working with tape backups is another no-no. I had so many troubles in my IT career with the reliability of backup tapes and tape libraries that I now think that tape backups are not even a good solution for offsite backups. But I know that this point is highly disputed, and so I had better wait another year or two until “Don’t use tape backups” becomes my fifth golden backup rule.

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Data backups are one of the most important tasks for any IT department. In my view, they are even more important than security. It can get nasty if a virus knocks down your network for a few hours. However, if you lose essential data, it could knock down your whole company forever. If you need some more motivation to read on, check out these statistics according to which 60% of companies that have lost their data will shut down within 6 months.

The problem is that admins are often busy with keeping the network running or meeting project deadlines. Backup management is often the first task that is neglected when admins are under time pressure because daily operations are usually not affected by a faulty backup strategy. But this is only true until a backup is really needed.

I have quite some experience with backup strategies and different kinds of backup software. While it is impossible to cover all relevant topics in two blog posts, I’ve outlined my four golden backup strategy rules. You’ll notice that some of them are perhaps a bit uncommon.

Don’t schedule backups

If you open a book about data backup, the first thing you usually read is that it is essential to not run backups manually and, therefore, it is essential that you schedule backup tasks. While the antecedent in this sentence is true, the conclusion is wrong.

It is true that backups should always run automatically without the need for human intervention. However, if you are still working with a backup strategy where terms such as full, incremental, or differential backups appear, then you missed an important technological development of the last years. I am talking about Continuous Data Protection (CDP).

With CDP, you don’t schedule backup because the data is secured at the moment it is created. The important difference from conventional backups is that you don’t lose the data that has been created between the last backup and the time when you need to restore the data.

While it might have been sufficient to run backups once per day, ten years ago, it is, in my opinion, grossly negligent to continue to pursue such a backup strategy. Most businesses now depend a lot more on digitally stored data, and any kind of data loss is no longer acceptable. A backup strategy that allows for possible data loss is what I call a “data loss strategy.”

I think, CDP is now ready for prime time. The teething troubles of the first years have been solved. Thus I see no reason why anyone would still need to schedule backups.

Don’t configure backup jobs

Backup software that relies on scheduled backups has another important downside. Depending on the size of your organization, managing backup jobs can be quite complicated. Backup solutions of major vendors have become quite bloated over the years with myriad features that appear to be quite useful at first but, if not properly configured, only increase the likelihood that restores will fail.

While I am in general a fan of bloated, feature-rich software, backup software is an exception. The difference from other software is that you can usually easily verify whether your setup works properly or not. However, with backups you often only realize that something must have been wrong with your configuration once you try to restore data.

Of course, you also have to configure CDP software. However, the configuration of CDP software is much simpler than that of conventional backup solutions because you essentially only have to configure which servers or clients you want to back up and some general settings such as retention periods. This leaves less room for mistakes and increases the probability that restores really work when you need them.

Some vendors of conventional backup software have added CDP features because they don’t want to miss the trend. However, they still need to sell the legacy code of their old software; since CDP and scheduled backups don’t really fit together well, things often get even more complicated if you use a conventional backup tool for CDP. Hence, I recommend moving to a CDP specialist and saying goodbye to your beloved backup software that you have been using for the last ten years or so.

In my next post I will discuss offsite backups and disaster recovery.

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Comodo recognized the shortcomings of an easy-to-use system restore utility in the Windows world and released a system restore tool with a nice user interface. Named after the Apple pendant Time Machine, Comodo’s Time Machine tool is simple to use. The only configuration task you have to do during installation is specify the hard drives for which you want to enable Time Machine.

When you launch Time Machine, you see a window with six tabs (View Snapshots, Take Snapshots, Scheduled Tasks, Restore System, Recover Files, and Reset Baseline), a link to the application settings, and a link to update the software.

The View Snapshots tab shows a history of all snapshots; this history represents the time line in which you can go back to a certain point in your computer’s past. When you want to “travel in time,” you can restore the whole system or just single files. You can create these points in time by either taking a snapshot manually or by scheduling a snapshot task. This gives you all the flexibility you need. This system restore utility has a lot more features, such as a CLI interface, but there are just too many to cover all of them in this article.

When you take many snapshots and make a lot of changes to your computer’s data, you will sooner or later run into storage and performance problems because Time Machine logs every change on your computer. To avoid having more and more space consumed by the snapshots, you can define a new baseline, which means that a new snapshot is taken and all previous snapshots are deleted.

These snapshots do not dissolve the need to back up your data, though. The snapshots are stored on the same hard disk as your data; in case of a hard disk failure, not only is your data destroyed but also the snapshots. The solution to this might be the Comodo Time Machine Enterprise Server, but it isn’t available yet.

All in all, Time Machine is a very nice system restore utility. It has only one major drawback: It doesn’t work together with TrueCrypt. This is no issue if you don’t use TrueCrypt, but for me TrueCrypt is an essential tool that is installed on every computer I own.

Comodo Time Machine

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Continuous data protection for Active Directory

If you require a more recent backup, you want to determine the point in time of the backup more precisely. In most cases, you will just need the last available state; with real-time CDP, this is the state right before the corresponding directory objects have been modified.

To enable CDP you will need to deploy a data handler to every domain controller to capture all of the changes from a continuous change log to rollback unwanted changes.

Blackbird auditor is one of the modules of the Blackbird Management Suite. This module is not included when you buy Blackbird recovery. However, the free version, Blackbird auditor express, is probably sufficient for backups in most environments. The main limitation of auditor express is that you can only audit object changes of the last two days and 100 events. For restores that are older than two days, you can use scheduled backups.

Scheduled backups

CDP allows you to rollback unwanted changes or deletions but you may want to revert to previous point in time, say if a scripted update has done a large update with incorrect data.

To configure a scheduled backup job, you have to create a so-called Collector. Here you specify the domain, the naming context (Default, Configuration, Schema), and the scope (for instance, object only or object and child objects). You also have to schedule when the collector has to run. You can configure hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly backups. Because of Blackbird recovery’s efficient architecture it is no problem to run hourly backups in most environments. That way, Blackbird’s Collectors offer what is usually called near CDP.

Collectors are comparable to incremental backups in conventional backup tools. This backup method is fast because it only stores changes since the last backup. But restores are usually slow because the data has to be rebuilt from multiple backup jobs. However, since Blackbird recovery leverages the speed of SQL Server, restores are quick anyhow.

In my next post, I will show you how you can restore Active Directory objects with Blackbird recovery.

To participate in the competition for a chance to win a Blackbird recovery license, worth $1,800 USD, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

Blackbird recovery.

You can also use this contact form.

The deadline of this contest is August 31, 2010.

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Data handler

The diagram above gives you an overview of Blackbird recovery’s architecture. As you can see, you have to install an agent, the Blackbird Data Handler, on all your domain controllers to enable the collection of a continuous change log. This agent is not only for Blackbird continuous recovery but for all the other modules of the Blackbird Management Suite. The agent collects the data and directly stores it into a Microsoft SQL Server (or SQL Server Express) database.

Backup data storage

It is important to note that Blackbird recovery leverages a very efficient gather and store mechanism. Objects are stored in binary format in the database requiring very little space. The first scheduled collection gathers every object that is configured as part of the collection. On subsequent scheduled collections only objects that have changed are gathered and stored minimizing the traffic on the wire and the backend storage requirements.

This allows for the recovery of Active directory objects and the continuous coverage allows the rollback of any unwanted change without losing all of the changes since the last backup as with other solutions. Moreover, Blackbird recovery is able to restore Active Directory objects very quickly because it doesn’t store the backup in a flat file like conventional backup tools, no need to find what file or files have the correct information and waiting for them to uncompress before you can perform the recovery.

The SQL Server doesn’t have to be on the same physical server as the Blackbird Server, the core of the Blackbird Management Suite, but it also doesn’t hurt if you run them on the same machine.

Backup data objects

Blackbird recovery supports backups of domain-specific data such as users, groups, OUs, DNS data, and GPOs. You can back up forest-wide data including Active Directory Sites and Services data and schema classes and attributes.

Please note that rollback of GPOs and certain DNS deletions can’t be undone with continuous data protection (CDP) they will need to utilize scheduled backups. I will discuss the difference between CDP and scheduled backups in my next post.

Also notice that only schema changes can be restored, but not schema extensions. The reason for this is that removing schema extensions is not supported by Microsoft. So, for example, if you install Exchange in your domain you wouldn’t be able to roll back the corresponding Active Directory schema extensions.

User interface

The Blackbird client in the diagram is the front end of the suite. It is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in which allows you run the Blackbird’s user interface together with Microsoft’s own management tools in one console. In addition, some of the Blackbird features are integrated in Microsoft’s RSAT tools.

For instance, you can restore objects directly from the Active Directory User and Computer (ADUC) interface. (I will explain this in more detail in another post.) This also means that you can manage Blackbird recovery from your desktop without logging on to the Blackbird server via RDP. Likewise, the tight integration with Microsoft’s management tools helps you to learn very quickly how to use the Blackbird recovery.

In my next post, I will explain how Blackbird recovery for AD has to be configured.

To participate in the competition for a chance to win a Blackbird recovery license, worth $1,800 USD, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

Blackbird recovery.

You can also use this contact form.

The deadline of this contest is August 31, 2010.

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Blackbird recovery is a module of the Blackbird Management Suite, which consists of Blackbird auditor for AD (real-time auditing for Active Directory), Blackbird auditor for Windows File System (real-time file system auditing), Blackbird privilege explorer for Windows File System (access rights reporting), Blackbird protector (protection against AD modifications), and Blackbird privilege manager (workflow based management of AD privileges).

This suite is not just a collection of Active Directory and Windows file system tools. Essentially, it is one big management tool with different modules that are tightly integrated. Each module can be purchased separately. In this article series, I will only cover Blackbird recovery, the Active Directory backup module.

Today, I will outline why it makes sense to have a specialized Active Directory backup tool. Most organizations secure their Active Directory data with a common backup tool that is also used to back up file systems, databases, E-Mail, etc.

Blackbird recovery does not really compete with these solutions because they usually have a different purpose. While the AD agents of common backup solutions are often only for disaster recovery—that is, the recovery of a whole Active Directory domain or forest—Blackbird recovery’s main purpose is for restoring individual or multiple AD objects and attributes in case of a user error or an application malfunction.

Even if a conventional backup tool supports granular recovery, you usually can only restore the data from the last backup. In comparison, Blackbird recovery allows you to restore the previous state of a particular object at any point in time. That is, the backup software supports continuous data protection (CDP) for Active Directory.

In my experience, AD disaster recoveries are rare because Active Directory is very robust. Even if one of your domain controllers goes down because of a hardware malfunction, you still have “backups” of your directory database on other domain controllers.

On the other hand, Active Directory is an essential service in every Windows network. Not only does Windows rely on it, but many third-party applications depend on it as well. And this is where the problems begin. Applications, admins, and even end users store data into the directory all day. This is why errors are inevitable. As with file system backups, most restores are required not because of hardware malfunctions but because of user mistakes or application errors.

Of course, you don’t want to restore your whole Active Directory just because your great new PowerShell script that was supposed to automate a tedious administration task wreaks havoc and “automatically” destroyed half of your directory. An Active Directory disaster recovery, where the complete database has to be restored, is quite complicated and usually shuts down your whole IT infrastructure for the time of the recovery process.

Furthermore, even if your backup software supports restores of individual objects without downtime, you will most often only get one-day-old data. This might still prevent a disaster, but it could also mean that you will lose essential data and most certainly your brilliant automation efforts won’t stay unnoticed.

Lucky you if you have a backup tool at hand that allows you to restore Active Directory to the point in time when you hit the enter key on the PowerShell prompt, with just a few mouse clicks and without the hassle of an authoritative Active Directory restore. This is where Blackbird recovery comes into play. In my next post I will describe Blackbird recovery’s architecture.

To participate in the competition for a chance to win a Blackbird recovery license, worth $1,800 USD, please send an email to:

with the subject line:

Blackbird recovery.

You can also use this contact form.

The deadline of this contest is August 31, 2010.

• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – Active Directory trusts – Sample question (0)
• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – Active Directory trusts (0)
• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – Active Directory Forests and Domains – Sample question (5)
• Microsoft Exam 70-640 – Active Directory Forests and Domains (0)
• How to synchronize Windows Server 2008 with an external time server (6)

SharePoint is a big success for various reasons; one of them is certainly the ease of administration. Once you have internalized the structure of SharePoint, it is very straightforward to use. Almost too straightforward: because it is so easy to create new websites and lists, web applications often grow too fast and unstructured. Keeping the content ‘findable’ often requires the taming of the rank growth. It is a difficult task, but doable.

But, SharePoint is deployed not only to make content more findable. Granting and denying users the privileges to access certain data is another major job of SharePoint. Most SharePoint administrators may raise an eyebrow now, because SharePoint seems to have no mechanics to deny access. And that’s right. This is a huge drawback, because it makes the administration of user privileges pretty hard. The only choice, besides building a perfect SharePoint hierarchy, is to micro manage the access rights for every item in SharePoint.

This is time consuming and, for bigger installations, impossible to do. So, you often have to deal with the inheritance of access rights. For sites with only a few sub sites, it is possible to keep the overview. The more the sites are nested, the more complex it becomes to deviate the current access rights, because there is no way to see which rights were passed down by the site’s parent.

That’s the time for SUSHI to enter the stage. It can display what permissions a specified user has on a site, the permissions inheritance for site collections, and list group memberships for users. You only have to choose the site and the user, and click on “Run security report”. This function is tremendously helpful if you want to prevent some users accidently seeing the wages of all your company’s employees.

Besides that, SUSHI offers quite a wide range of other useful options. For example, it provides an easy way to back up your farm or site collection. It isn’t more sophisticated than the stsadm command, but having a GUI for it doesn’t hurt at all.

You can find a full feature list here and the program can be downloaded here.

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Agent configuration

I already mentioned in the first post of this series that the agent basically is GFI Backup Home. That is, end users have a full-fledged backup tool on their desktops. Please read my review of GFI Backup’s free edition for a detailed description of how users can manage backups with this free tool. In this article, I will describe only the additional features that come with the business edition.

First of all, you should know that admins can disallow access to the agent’s user interface. Actually, this is the default setting. With this configuration users will only be informed whenever a backup job starts or if errors have occurred.

Of course you can also disable these messages. Moreover, GFI Backup allows you to control in detail what users can do with the agent. For example, you can allow users to only view backup jobs and stop them. See the screenshot for all settings.

Admin tasks and user tasks

GFI Backup distinguishes between admin tasks and user tasks. Admin tasks are those backup jobs that are configured at the Administration Console, whereas user tasks are created with the agent’s user interface (see screenshot below).

Admins can configure tasks that store backups at a central location on a server, or they can use local destinations (for example, a local drive at the user’s desktop). GFI Backup supports backups to local disks, network shares, CD/DVDs, and tapes. User tasks basically offer the same options as admin tasks.

The advantage of local destinations is that users always have access to their backups even if their laptops are not connected to the company network. However, in this case the laptop should have at least two disk drives. Another option would be to store backups locally and at a central store. GFI Backup offers remarkable flexibility here. The only feature it lacks is that admins can’t predefine central backup destinations for user tasks, which requires users to know the location of the network share.

All tasks, including those that are created locally by end users, are displayed in the Administrator Console (see screenshot below). Admins can view the configuration of local backup jobs but they can’t modify them in the Administrator Console. In the same way, users can only view the configuration of admin tasks (if allowed by the admin).

User restores

It is certainly helpful in some environments for users to be allowed to create their own backup jobs. However, most interesting is that users can restore data through the agent’s user interface without the help of an admin. This is possible for user and admin tasks alike. Of course, admins can also restore backups with the Administrator Console to the user’s PC. However, this only works for admin tasks. Backups of user tasks can only be restored through the agent user interface.

GFI Backup supports item-level and full-backup restores. With item-level restores you can only access the last backup from either the Administrator Console or the agent user interface. However, since the backup destination can also be accessed through Windows Explorer, it is possible to restore single files of older backups without GFI Backup’s user interface. Older backups of full-backup restores can be accessed through the agent and the Administrator Console.

Conclusion

I have tested numerous backup programs in my IT career. The popular solutions have become quite bloated over the years, with many features that are simply overkill for small- and mid-sized organizations. This makes these tools difficult to administer, which increases the risks of incorrect configurations. GFI Backup targets mostly small- and mid-sized organizations, and it comes with all the features for this target group. In particular the features that allow end users to restore backups without admin intervention are awesome. Even though my description of user and admin tasks might sound a bit complicated, you’ll find that GFI Backup’s user interface is quite easy to use.

To participate in the competition for a chance to win a copy of an Asus netbook worth 328 USD and a license of GFI Backup Business Edition for 500 workstations and 50 servers worth 7,100 EUR, send an email to:

with the subject line:

GFI Backup.

You can also use this contact form.

The deadline of this contest is July 16, 2010.

Disclaimer: Any warranty issues regarding the netbook have to be addressed with the netbook vendor. Neither I nor GFI can offer any support for the netbook.

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Last time I mentioned that new backup clients are added automatically to the GFI Backup Administrator Console. In some environments the backup admin might prefer to authorize new backup clients. For this you can disable auto-approve in GFI Backup’s settings.

Automatic data backup job configuration

However, automatically adding new backup clients has its advantages in environments with many desktops. GFI Backup is a specialized solution for this situation because it can also configure the backup jobs automatically for new clients.

GFI Backup allows you to configure backup jobs for a domain or workgroup. Whenever a new client joins, the corresponding job configuration is automatically applied to its agent. Thus if you have to add new server, desktop or laptop you only have to deploy the agent and you are done.

This also limits the number of necessary backup job definitions, which is essential for desktop and laptop data backup. Important to note is that the corresponding backup jobs run independently. This way, the job won’t fail just because some clients are not online at the scheduled start time.

Data Backup task monitoring

When a backup job starts, the corresponding definition blinks; when the job runs through for all available clients, the blinking stops. Unfinished jobs can be monitored in GFI Backup’s command queue. Once a client comes online the job definition starts blinking again in the Administrator Console. The Agents tab gives you an overview of the clients that are online and offline and when they were last active.

Desktop and laptop data backup scheduling

In addition, GFI Backup has schedule types that address the problem of unavailable desktops or laptops. Aside from schedules that allow you to run the backup at specific times, you can start jobs when clients boot up or when they shut down. Moreover, it is possible to reschedule missed data backups and wake up computers from standby/hibernate before running the backup. Once the backup job is finished GFI Backup can shut down the computer.

GFI Backup has quite a few interesting features to solve the problem of unavailable clients, which is quite common for desktop and laptop data backup. In my next post, I will discuss some additional interesting features that help reduce the work of admins—that is, the GFI Backup features that enable end users to configure backup and restore jobs without bothering you.

To participate in the competition for a chance to win a copy of an Asus netbook worth 328 USD and a license of GFI Backup Business Edition for 500 workstations and 50 servers worth 7,100 EUR, send an email to:

with the subject line:

GFI Backup.

You can also use this contact form.

The deadline of this contest is July 16, 2010.

Disclaimer: Any warranty issues regarding the netbook have to be addressed with the netbook vendor. Neither I nor GFI can offer any support for the netbook.

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The netbook runs Windows 7 and its battery lasts a whopping 11 hours (1 more than with the iPad). It is the ideal gadget to restore user backups with GFI Backup directly from the beach or wherever you plan to spend your summer holidays. You’ll find more information about the contest at the end of the article.

GFI Backup Business Edition allows you to back up servers and desktops with one solution. However, the main strength of this backup tool is that end users can independently restore backups and even create their own backup jobs. Administrators can centrally monitor everything and only have to intervene if problems arise. So chances are that you only need your netbook to watch some Flash videos (which you can’t do with the iPad) when you get bored by all this sand and water.

In this post, I will give you an overview of GFI Backup Business Edition. In the next article in this series, I will show you how admins can configure backup jobs.

The agent

Essentially, GFI Backup Business Edition is a central management tool for the free edition of GFI Backup Home, which I reviewed a while back. In this review I will use the term “GFI Backup” to mean the business edition. The agent, which has to be installed on all desktop computers and servers, functions similarly to GFI Backup Home with some additional features that I will discuss in this review.

One of these features is the support of Microsoft SQL Server backups. The agent will automatically detect if an SQL Server is installed on the client. You can install the agent manually, through Group Policy, or with your software deployment solution. In my test I installed the agent manually on a Windows 7 machine that was a member in the Windows Server 2008 R2 domain. However, GFI Backup also works fine in a Workgroup environment.

The Administrator Console

It is interesting to note that the agent automatically found the GFI Backup server. Shortly after I installed the agent on the Windows 7 machine it appeared in the Administrator Console on the server. If you intend to test the software please make sure that ports 5580 and 5543 are open on both the server and the client.

The Administrator Console has a web interface, which has the advantage that you can manage backups and restores easily from the aforementioned beach. Thanks to Ajax the user interface of the Administrator Console feels almost like a Windows application.

Because GFI Backup is very easy to administer, I didn’t require a manual. Everything in the Administrator Console is self-explanatory and the wizards always ensure that you don’t forget an important setting.

In my next post, I will discuss those of feature of GFI Backup that are most useful for desktop and laptop backup.

To participate in the competition for a chance to win a copy of an Asus netbook worth 328 USD and a license of GFI Backup Business Edition for 500 workstations and 50 servers worth 7,100 EUR, send an email to:

with the subject line:

GFI Backup.

You can also use this contact form.

The deadline of this contest is July 16, 2010.

Disclaimer: Any warranty issues regarding the netbook have to be addressed with the netbook vendor. Neither GFI nor I can offer any support for the netbook.

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• VMware Backups – Troubleshoot the Consolidate Helper-0 backup error (1)
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Oops!Backup’s ReverseDelta stores file changes in so-called delta files. These delta files contain changes at the byte level. There is some overhead if only a few bytes are changed, but this can save a lot disk space on your backup drive if you have to secure large files as they are common with database systems. For instance, a conventional backup system will store a full 10GB database if only one record has been changed, but Oops’Backup would only require a few MBs of additional space. The tool allows you to configure the file size on which ReverseDelta is invoked, and you can also specify the number of versions after which a full copy of a file is preserved.

The latest backup will always contain the full copy of all files. This allows you to use Windows Explorer for restores. The delta files are only needed if you want to go back to an earlier point in time. In this case, you have to use the tool’s user interface to restore the file. My only complaint here is that the navigation pane on the left side is missing, which makes it difficult sometimes to locate a file if you are unsure in which folder it is in. In Oops!Backup’s defense it ought to be said that you can also search for files. What I like about the search function is that it displays all file versions with their backup time.

Oops!Backup supports Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) backups. Hence, in theory, it should also be possible to backup open files. I tried to backup a TrueCrypt file of a mounted volume, but Oops!Backup didn’t detect the changes. However, this is a problem specific to TrueCrypt. It is interesting to note that Oops!Backup detected the changes whenever I unmounted a volume. The fact that it uses the Windows File System Events to detect file changes made this possible. Actually, most backup tools I tried so far weren’t able to detect changes in TrueCrypt files at all because TrueCrypt neither changes the “modified Date attribute” nor does it set the archive bit. By the way, the size of my TrueCrypt test file was 1GB, but thanks to the ReverseDelta technology Oops!Backup only needed 1,8MB to save the changed file.

Oops!Backup has another important advantage over conventional backup tools when it comes to securing the data on laptops. Usually, on mobile computers an external drive is used to store the backup. The problem is that conventional backups have to be scheduled. So you have to make sure that the backup device is connected during the backup time. I have been travelling a lot lately and even though I always carried my external disk, I found it very difficult to make sure that my external disk was always connected at the right time. As a result, I was often without backup for several days.

As with other CDP tools, Oops!Backup doesn’t require schedules. You only have to configure the time interval when the tool checks whether new data is available and when old file versions will be purged . If the backup device is not connected, then Oops!Backup will just log the changes. If you hover over its Systray icon, you will be informed about the number of files that have to be saved. Oops!Backup will detect whenever you connect the backup drive and then start the backup automatically. Therefore, you don’t have to worry about backup schedules when you are travelling with your laptop. Just plug in the external drive whenever it is convenient and your backup will be up to date.

The tool’s dashboard and the history will inform you at what times backups have been performed. If you double click on a backup job, you will get information about the files that have been secured and the files that have been removed from the latest backup because they have been deleted by the user. The dashboard also tells you how much space the backup occupies and how much space is still available on the backup device.

My overall impression of Oops!Backup is very positive. I have been testing countless backup tools in my career as an IT pro. Oops!Backup has a unique combination of ease-of-use and effectiveness. Prices range between $16 and $37, depending on the number of licenses you buy. Please note that Oops!Backup is not a system backup tool. You can only use it to secure data files.

If you’d like to have the chance to win one of the 15 Oops!Backup licenses, please send an email to

with the subject line

Oops!Backup.

The deadline for entering this contest is March 7, 2010.

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The name Oops!Backup fits well for a CDP backup solution because it protects users from their own mistakes. If you accidentally delete or overwrite a text document on which you have been working for the last few hours, then yesterday’s backup won’t be helpful. Oops!Backup secures user data every hour by default, but you can also configure it to check for changed files every five minutes. This makes the tool a “near CDP program” , the difference being that real CDP backup solutions save new data immediately.

In my opinion, five-minute intervals are enough for client computers. In my test, this interval worked fine and didn’t slow down my computer. Actually, one of the disadvantages of conventional backup tools is that they slow down the computer during backups because they have to scan the file system for changed files.

In contrast, Oops!Backup listens to Windows file system events in order to detect file changes. Thus, when the time of the backup is reached, Oops!Backup already knows which files have been modified and only these are accessed during the backup process. In most cases, the backup is finished after one or two seconds.

What I like most about CDP solutions is that you don’t have to mess with incremental or differential backups. There is just one backup job, and that’s it. This not only makes the backup job configuration easier, it also tremendously simplifies restoring files. To restore a file, you only have to select a snapshot and you will get the file’s state at that point in time. If you work with incremental backups, you have to find the corresponding backup job first. If you don’t know when the file was last changed, this can be quite time consuming.

Moreover, with differential and incremental backups, if you have to restore all files in case of a disaster recovery, you will also restore files that have been deleted deliberately since the last full backup. Hence, you will never get the exact state before the disaster. Oops!Backup, on the other hand, removes deleted files automatically from the latest backup. Therefore, any snapshot represents the exact state of the file system at that point in time.

If you’d like to have the chance to win one of the 15 Oops!Backup licenses, please send an email to

with the subject line

Oops!Backup.

The deadline for entering this contest is March 8, 2010.

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The number of features included is astonishing for a free program. Wizards help users to configure backup jobs, but some settings may be difficult to understand for the non computer savvy. I therefore recommend specifically configuring this tool for your end-users. Although this may be a little labor-intensive at first, it will pay off in the long run, as GFI Backup has features that can help reduce the number of support calls and simplify the work of a help desk.

Application specific backups

This backup tool is not only able to secure data, but can also save settings for Windows and applications. I counted 41 common applications it supports, as well as five email programs. On my own laptop, there is only one unsupported application whose settings I would like to save. Of course, it is quite likely that you will also have some applications in your environment that are not supported. However, since GFI Backup can also backup the registry, you can restore most applications’ configurations anyway.

The advantage of these application-specific backups is that end users can restore settings themselves if configurations get messed up. This also applies to common Windows settings. Users can take advantage of GFI Backup’s interface to restore data and settings, although I recommend using Windows Explorer for this purpose instead. Settings for applications, as well as for Windows, are stored in .REG files, and can be restored with a double-click, even with standard user rights. GFI Backup preserves the folder structure of the backup source, so users can easily find their files and then simply copy their files with Windows Explorer.

Backup destinations

There are two other features that make GFI Backup useful in corporate environments. One is that users can backup their data to a network share or FTP server. It is also possible to synchronize data, so if they are in the office, they can work with the files on the server and when they are on the run, they can use the data on their laptop. Other possible backup destinations are removable devices (like a USB stick or memory stick) or CD/DVD. Another nice feature is that the backup tool can send email notifications if problems occur. This way admins can be informed whenever backups are not working properly.

Backup strategy

Using the right backup strategy is essential when it comes to securing data. Backing up data is NOT just creating a copy. It is essential to keep several versions of user data. I encountered a typical case myself recently. My home banking software’s database somehow got messed up, so I restored an older version of the database. I lost a few days’ data, but it was not a big deal, because I could download this data from my bank accounts. Without an older version of the database I would have lost years of information.

GFI Backup allows for different backup strategies. It can keep a configurable number of copies of your data (stack backup) and can replace backed-up files with newer file versions (incremental/differential). I recommend working with both options. I would create a backup task for daily backups using the latter method, which can be used to restore the latest version of a file. The stack backup is useful for weekly backups. If you configure GFI backup to keep four copies of your data, then the oldest version of all your files will be one month old.

Scheduling

GFI Backup supports all common scheduling methods, and gives the user the ability to run backups whenever their computer starts up or shuts down. What I like is that the tool can reschedule missed tasks. So if the computer is off at the scheduled time, GFI Backup will just run the backup when the computer next boots up. If you backup data to an external drive (which I recommend), then the tool will warn you if the device is not connected. You can then connect the drive, and GFI Backup will run its task. If you are on the run, and didn’t bring your backup device, you can just cancel the job.

I’ve used GFI Backup for a few days for my own backups, and everything has worked fine so far. Thanks to the support of Volume Shadow Copy backups I was able to secure all important open files, including my Outlook database and settings.

I haven’t covered all of GFI Backup’s features in this article. However, if you are looking for a free backup tool, you definitely should have a look at it. As for me, I have decided to continue using it as my backup tool.

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This initial release includes the ability to backup, restore and update your ESXi host (epically handy for people that are not using VirtualCenters Update Mangers).

VMware RCLI is required to be installed on your machine in order to use the ESXi Configurator Utility.

I have been using this tool for some time now , and it’s working great , I would really recommend it !

ESXi Configurator Utility

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Freeagent is available in three sizes: 320GB, 500GB and 750GB. I opted for the biggest drive because I like to keep old backups as long as possible. Amazon offers it for less than $200. You can connect the drive through USB or eSATA. For the latter you need an eSATA card adapter. I think, it is worth the extra 30 bucks because it is much faster. USB 2.0 supports up to 480 Mbps and eSATA 3 Gbps. You won’t always reach this speed, though, because there are bottlenecks like drive speed or the performance of your laptop.

Autobackup is a nifty backup tool supporting continuous data protection (CDP). The software detects all changes made to the file system and secures them to your external drive, immediately. You can decide how many different versions of a file you want to keep. To my experience most data losses happen not because of hardware defects, but because of user mistakes. Sometimes one realizes that a file was accidently or deliberately overwritten with wrong data months later. To keep multiple versions of all data files is essential for every backup strategy.

A downside of CDP backup solutions is that they can slow down your computer, significantly if you misconfigured it. Windows and also many applications tend to save data continuously to your hard disk. Usually, it doesn’t make sense to backup this data with a CDP tool. I experimented for some weeks with Autobackup. The best way, I found, is to include your profile path (C:\users\your_profile under Vista and C:\Documents And Settings\your_profile under Windows XP) and then exclude the path used by applications to store their data (C:\user\your_profile\AppData\ under Vista and C:\Dokuments and Settings\your_profile\Application Data under XP).

I recommend keeping an eye on Autobackup in the beginning to see if it secures unnecessary files. If you have Google Desktop installed, you should be very cautious. It crashed my Vista machine every time I logged on because Autobackup tried to backup the index where Google Desktop added data, continuously . If UAC gets on your nerves whenever the Freeagent software launches, I suggest disabling the UAC prompts.

I wouldn’t use Autobackup to backup your system drive. It will not only strain your computer, constantly, I think, it will also be difficult to make use of this backup if your system drive ever fails. If you have Vista on your laptop, I would use the backup tool that comes with the operating system. It can create a complete image of your whole computer. If your system drive fails, you will be able to restore your laptop, easily. Since the image is created while the operating system is online, I would make sure that all applications are closed and I wouldn’t use the computer while the backup is running. In theory, the backup utility should be smart enough to cope with changes made to the hard disk during the backup process. XP also has a Backup Utility that supports backup to hard drives. It is not as smart as Vista’s counterpart, though. Keep your hands off the computer while the backup is running!

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To secure the data on an USB stick, you have to encrypt it. Many memory sticks come with encryption software. However, it is not advisable to use it. Usually, one doesn’t know what encryption algorithm was used, and if it was correctly implemented.

My favorite encryption software is the Open Source tool TrueCrypt. It is a well-known program that is very easy to use. If a security leak was found in it, you’ll will probably read about it somewhere, and an update will be available shortly afterwards. You certainly don’t have this guarantee for encryption software that was delivered with your USB stick. Please check out my review about TrueCrypt to learn more about this nifty tool.

Update: Please, also check out my review about TrueCrypt 5.

Another advantage of using TrueCrypt is that it simplifies backups because all your data will be stored in just one file. So you only have to make sure that this file is copied regularly to your hard disk. And if your stick contains confidential data, your backup will be automatically encrypted, too.

The best time to backup your USB stick is whenever you plug it into your PC. If you use the stick on your PC at home and at work, you’ll always have a copy of your data on both computers. To start the backup automatically when you insert the USB stick, you have to create a file named autorun.inf in its root directory with the following contents:

[autorun] open=autorun.bat action=Backup

On a Vista machine this will automatically start autrun.bat whenever you connect the USB stick. On a computer with Windows XP, a window will be opened where you can launch the batch file.

TrueCrypt has one disadvantage. You have to specify the size of the TrueCrypt file in advance. The size of this file is always the same even though you only use a fraction of its capacity. So it can take some time until the file is copied to your hard disk. The size of my TrueCrypt file is 1GB. With my stick, it only takes a couple of seconds to copy the file. However, if you want to use a larger file or your stick is slow, you might want to run the backup only if you know that you changed the data on it. The following batch file which should be named autorun.bat solves this problem:

@ECHO OFF ECHO 1. Backup USB stick ECHO 2. Quit set /p choice= IF '%choice%' == '2' GOTO QUIT IF '%choice%' == '1' GOTO BACKUP :BACKUP copy stick.tc "%userprofile%\my documents" :QUIT

In this example, I assumed that you named your TrueCrypt file stick.tc. If you choose “1″, it will be copied to your documents folder and if you select “2″, no backup will be performed. Of course, you can copy your backup to any other folder.

A nice side effect of this backup solution is that if you ever forget your USB stick at work, you’ll have at least the last version of your data at home. But if you want to make sure that you’ll always have your memory stick with you, then you should check out this post: Never forget your memory stick.

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