What would happen if your computer system was destroyed?

Can Cloud Computing improve your Data Management?

Topics covered in this workshop will assist business owners with options for contingency planning and how Business Data can be managed off-site with Cloud Computing.

• Basic Business Contingency Planning
• What is Cloud Computing
• How can the Cloud benefit your business
• Data Security
• Examples of Cloud Computing

Come and join fellow business owners on Wed the 23rd of May to find out about Contingency Planning and Cloud Computing.

If you havent had a chance to catch our radio ads, here they are.

Enjoy….

—> Check it out here <—

We’ve just released our new packages for CloudBackup. Read more here http://cloudbackup.net.au/cloudbackup/compare/

In summary:

• Server+ is no more (current packages remain in effect until license renews)
• All server plugins now available as an add-on. Server plus 1 plugin is now cheaper than the old Server+
• Desktop license storage limit is now 150GB
• Server license storage limit is now 400GB

Connection issues

Over the weekend some people have seen connection issues during the backup schedules. This may been seen in the form of a timeout, SSL error or other general message.

On investigating the issue we have noted that some of the clients affected all use the same ISP; Pacific (pacnet) with other providers are also routing through Pacific (such as iiNet or TPG).

Pacific and other ISPs are in the process of rolling upgrades in anticipation for the National Broadband Network. The 19th to 25th are the scheduled period for Brisbane with the majority of sites being affected over the weekend. At this point the remaining areas should not affect any clients.

On speaking with several ISPs this morning, we have been advised that as the NBN is implemented ‘in force’ over the next 6 months, internet users can expect more interruptions as infrastructure is upgraded.

We recommend you keep an eye on your ISPs Service Status as well as any upstream providers in the mix.

NBN: Miracle or mayhem?

With some areas already being forcibly churned onto the NBN, there are some very unusual procedures to customers to follow.

In one area of Brisbane, TPG customers are having their internet contracts cancelled as the copper lines are being removed as part as the NBN rollout. Customers are advised that they will need to contact Telstra to arrange for the upgrade to take place and then they will need to sign new contracts.

So what sort of speed will the NBN connection have?

Well, the same TPG rep advised that the speed would be “dependent on how far you are from the exchange”. What?

Fortunately we spoke to Telstra for a second opinion who clarified the ‘fixed speed’ technology of fibre before putting their foot in it with this exchange:

Telstra: “You don’t need fibre because you can get cable internet already”

Customer: “But isn’t the NBN fibre faster?”

Telstra: “Oh no, they’re actually the same thing”

Customer: “…”

Sound the alarm!

Talk to your customers and make sure that they know more than Telstra and TPG when it comes to the NBN and DON”T SIGN ANY NEW CONTRACTS WITHOUT ADVICE.

New Features in v4.1

1. Support for backing up Hyper-V Virtual Machines – Hyper-V Virtual Machines can now be backed up. The software needs to be installed in the Hyper-V Server and it can then centrally backup all the VMs running in that Hyper-V server.
2. WHMCS Provisioning Integration – With the integration of WHMCS provisioning APIs, an action in WHMCS (like subscribing a customer for a service) in WHMCS can trigger an event in the backup server (like creating that customer account in the backup server).

Enhancements in v4.1

1. Bandwidth Throttling can now be disabled during weekends
2. For Exchange Mailbox backup, backup can be configured to upload the previous Mailbox and delete its dump while the next Mailbox is being dumped in the Exchange Server. This will save dump space required for Exhange Mailbox backup. Currently all the Mailboxes have to be first dumped before upload to the backup server can start.
3. SGTrash Management enabled for Amazon AMI builds – software will move version files that have exceeded retention policy to a Trash folder in the storage location in the backup server.
4. Server side MySQL DB and query optimizations to improve performance and resource utilization.
5. Added skipped file report during server side restore.
6. Option to include MCAL usage cost into customer invoicing
7. Group notes can be added/edited via API for Reseller/Customer/Client.
8. Mutliple Email addresses can be added for Consolidated Email report via API.
9. Option to not ask encryption password when deleting a backup job in the client machine through Centralized Client Management feature in the backup server.
10. Recovering data from Trash through console utility.
11. Sending Email reports from backup server (on backup/restore success/failure etc.) to Customer and Reseller as well. Currently only the Server Admin gets the emails.
12. Uncompressed size of files included in Backup Reports
13. Adding MCALs to remote backup server and backup server health through remote server management.
14. Excluding reports of deleted client from backup status report
15. Filter delete performance improvement and removing empty directories after filter delete

Minor Enhancements and Bug Fixes in  v4.1

1. Adding an event when MCAL balance is low for the Server and Customer.
2. Issue in updation of backup used space after filter delete operation is fixed.
3. Reseller level branding themes for the backup server web console cannot be now enabled by a reseller when its disabled by the server admin.
4. Issue where reports of two day prior backups sent in daily consolidated customer report has been fixed.
5. The backup will be reported as ‘Failed’ when the root folder configured for backup is missing from the client machine.
6. Fixed the issue where continuous backup causes high CPU usage in backup server during retention cleanup.
7. Hiding Export data option at reseller/customer/client level login.
8. Fixed an issue where unicode files where getting skipped when the files were open even with VSS enabled
9. Fixed the issue where client would abort backup if another application had run Copy Only Full Backup on the SQL Server that is been backed.
10. Fixed the issue where the file/folder tree listing hangs when the number of files is several millions
11. Fixed the issue where backups run outside the backup window when two backups are configured in a client machine with the same start time.
12. Fixed issue in generating On-Demand invoicing when the time zone specified in the web console is different from that of the backup server machine OS
13. Issue in SharePoint backup where dumping site-collections with “https” extension fails if already an identical site-collection with “http” enabled is fixed

v4.0 SP1 (we might call this 4.1)
==============================
1. Hyper-V backup
2. Disabling throttling during weekends
3. Uploading previous Exchange mailbox backup to backup server while the next mailbox is being dumped.
4. Enabling sgtrash in Amazon AMI builds
5. Server side MySQL DB and query optimizations to improve performance and resource utilization.
6. Added skipped file report during server side restore
7. Included MCAL usage cost into customer invoicing
8. Group notes can be added/edited via API for Reseller/Customer/Client.
9. Mutliple Email address can be added for Consolidated Email report via API.
10. Do not ask encryption password while deleting backup schedule
11. Recovering data from SGTrash through CloudBackup utility
12. Sending Email reports to its customer and reseller if it is enabled for that customer/reseller. Currently only the admin gets the emails.
13. Including uncompressed size details in client backup reports.
14. Adding MCALs to remote backup server through remote server management. Also backup server health check will be included
15. Removing reports of deleted client from backup status report

v4.0 SP2 (we might call this 4.2)
==============================
1. Hyper-V (vhd) compatible BMR backup with image based Incremental. The backup can be restored directly into a Hyper-V VM without having to run the P2V conversion explicitly
2. Oracle Backup
3. PostgreSQL Backup
4. MAPI based Outlook Backup
5. cPanel end user domain backup
6. Directory Monitoring type changed/deleted files notification on Linux Clients
7. CCM (adding/editing backups from server) for plugin based backups
8. Email alert when a drive is nearing its capacity
9. Invoice support with AutoTask
10. Blocking rogue clients at backup server based on CloudBackup ID
11. Backing up client side meta-data DB – sgprp.db as part of backup
12. Round robin support for load balancing for backup/replication server cluster
13. Pushing failure event notifications into WHMCS
14. Invoice support with ConnectWise
15. CRC check of backup data
16. Selective replication

v4.0 SP3 (we might call this 4.3)
==============================
1. Support for Exchange DAG
2. Replication of Replication Server
3. File Synchronization
4. AES encryption support
5. Support for LDAP/Active Directory
6. Integration with ATMOS
7. Citrix Xen Backup
8. vStorage API based VMWare Backup

Current installations will automatically be updated over the next few days.

New Features in CloudBackup v4.0

1.         Support for Disk Image Backup and Bare Metal Restore (BMR) on all versions of Windows. The image backup can be restored even to a machine with a dissimilar hardware (P2P).
2.         Support for conversion of Physical Disk Image to Hyper-V or VMWare Virtual Machine image (P2V).
3.         Reseller Level Branding of backup server for rebranded server installations – customers accessing the backup server can now see the reseller specific branded user interface
4.         Integration of CloudBackup Invoicing with WHMCS
5.         Backup data can now be exported from the backup server in encrypted format itself and imported into the client for restore.
6.         Centralized Management Console to monitor multiple backup servers – can centrally view the backup reports and invoices from the different backup servers.
7.         User activity log report to log user activities in the backup servers.

Enhancements in CloudBackup v4.0

1.         List of files backed up in a backup job can now be optionally included in the backup completion notification email.
2.         Ability to abort a restore job from both client and backup server
3.         Newly designed menu for easier navigation in web console UI.
4.         Add Backup from backup server with a System Generated Password is now supported through CCM.
5.         The time at which the automated consolidated customer email report is sent can now be configured in SGConfiguration.conf file.
6.         CloudBackup client now checks if other third party backup software is also running in the client machine for SQL and Exchange Server Backups. Backups will be aborted if both applications run backups out of sequence.

Minor Enhancements and Bug Fixes in CloudBackup v4.0

1.         Fixed the issue where invoice was getting calculated on average usage instead of total bandwidth usage.
2.         Issue where custom SSL certificates would get over written during upgrade with default certificates is now fixed.
3.         Fixed the issue where backup status would be wrongly reported as failed when deleted DBs where present in the SQL Backup. Now the deleted backups would be skipped and the backup would be reported as success with the message that deleted DBs were skipped.
4.         Fixed the issue where usage would be wrongly updated in MCAL utilization history report for new clients with one or more plugin based backups.
5.         Restore failure due to 0 KB ori file is now handled. If the ori file is a 0 KB file, a full backup of the file will be run.
6.         Fixed the issue where multiple emails were mistakenly sent from the backup server for missed backups.
7.         Fixed the issue in authenticating backup server with replication server.