How multiple layers of backups will slash data loss, enable fast recovery and give the best cyber-resilience.
With support for system image backup, file backup, and application backup (Exchange, Hyper-V and SQL), we make it easy.
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Backup Capabilities
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Technical Deep DiveLong gone are the days when having a image backup was sufficient. Yes, you need a bare metal backup for system recovery... but that's only the start.
With so many hackers targeting your systems and your backups, what you need are multiple layers of protection.
BackupAssist Classic provides onsite, offsite, online and offline backups including system drive images, and application & file backups. This gives you multiple recovery options when you need them the most. Back up to USB disk, NAS, iSCSI, cloud - it's easy to be cyber-resilient and never pay a ransom!
We provide multiple types of backups, customizable to solve your cyber-resilience goals.
- Windows Image Backups: to hard drive, NAS, RDX and iSCSI - for fast system recovery
- File backups to the cloud: to Azure, AWS S3, Wasabi, or any S3 enabled cloud / NAS
- File backups to local NAS/iSCSI: for extensive version history
- Archival backups: for long-term compliance and recordkeeping to disk or tape
Easily achieve a comprehensive backup system.
- A mixture of onsite, offsite, online and offline backups.
- Easily store multiple backups in multiple locations.
- Each backup is independent of each other, giving you multiple layers of fallback and options for recovery.
Faster recovery times while slashing data loss.
It's always better to have several good recovery options in case some go bad.
BackupAssist Classic gives you these options. With the correct setup, there's no way anyone should lose all their data or pay a hefty ransom.
The result: successful recovery.
Most backup software products are a “one trick pony”, offering just one type of backup. Generally they only give you two options.
- One type of backup to one place (local or cloud).
OR
- One type of backup to a local destination, then replicated offsite.
The problem is, no single backup can do everything and be resilient to all potential disasters. Each type of backup (image backup, file backup, etc) has strengths and weaknesses, which you might not realize until it's too late.
Now, in the age of cyber crime, hackers are exploiting these weaknesses to hold businesses and government departments to ransom.
They thought they were “smart” by optimizing or streamlining their backups by putting all data online in a single cloud, simplifying the setup using a single sign-on, or relying on cloud replication for geo-redundancy.
This inadvertently gave cyber criminals a single point for attack, and robbed the administrators of recovery options.
The result: permanent data loss / ransom
OVERVIEW OF BACKUP TYPES
Welcome to our five "backup engines" - the building blocks for success.
Firstly, let's introduce our five backup options, and the role they play in building a customized cyber-resilience strategy that's right for your organisation.
System Protection
(Windows image backup)
A system image of your hard drive - operating system and data, preparing you for a full server recovery if you lost everything.
Recommended for essential cyber-resilience
Cloud Offsite
(File backups)
Fully automated offsite file backups designed to complement drive imaging, to achieve additional recovery options in the event of a cyber attack, hardware failure or natural disaster.
Recommended for essential cyber-resilience
File Replication
(File replication)
A replica of your file system, updated daily onto a different storage device. Can provide huge amounts of version history, and point-in-time restores, and extra recovery options in a disaster recovery situation.
Provides enhanced cyber-resilience and rich file versioning
File Archiving
(File backup to ZIP)
A snapshot of your file system at the time of the backup. Each ZIP file is complete and fully independent. Designed to be put into archives, for long term “system of record” and data retention.
Provides enhanced cyber-resilience and meets legal compliance
SQL Backups
Additional backups for SQL Server designed to reduce the window of possible data loss down to just a few minutes.
Provides enhanced cyber-resilience and reduces data loss
Now, let's see how we use these different backup engines to good effect.
WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU
Using the five backup engines in the right combination gives you advantages that no other Windows backup software package can offer.
It meets the requirements for robust cyber-resilience - onsite, offsite, online, offline backups.
It provides optimal solutions for business continuity, file versioning and long term data retention.
Using multiple backup engines will slash your window of data loss while making recovery faster.
It provides long term data accessibility.
Let's delve in further.
1. A comprehensive cyber-resilience strategy with BackupAssist Classic gives multiple recovery options in each of the three major emergency situations.
How would you respond in each emergency? Open the sections below to discover what your recovery options are.
As you can see above, this means you need a combination of onsite, offsite, and offline backups. BackupAssist Classic does it all, providing options for each:
| For… | Keep | Use this type of backup | Safest destinations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fast recovery | Onsite backup (Stored on-premises) |
Advanced image backup | > USB HDD or RDX > NAS |
| Recovery if premises are destroyed | Offsite backup (Stored at a different physical location) |
> Advanced image backup > File protection > Cloud offsite file backup |
> USB HDD or RDX, swapped offsite > USB HDD or RDX, swapped offsite > Azure / AWS S3 / Wasabi / S3 compatible cloud / NAS |
| Recovery if cyber attacked | Offline backup (Disconnected from the Internet / LAN) |
> Advanced image backup > File protection |
> USB HDD or RDX, swapped offsite > USB HDD or RDX, swapped offsite |
2. BackupAssist Classic gives you optimal solutions for business continuity, file versioning and system of record (long term data retention).
| For… | Use this type of backup | Example destinations |
|---|---|---|
| Business continuity | System protection (Advanced image backup) | > USB HDD or RDX > NAS |
| File versioning | > File protection (replication) > Files to cloud offsite |
> NAS > Azure / AWS S3 / Wasabi / S3 compatible cloud / NAS |
| System of record / long term data retention | File archiving (ZIP) | > Disk > Tape |
3. Using multiple backup jobs improves recovery times while reducing data loss.
Unfortunately, theres no single “perfect” backup. In fact, each type of backup has its own “Achilles Heel”… but combining different backup types together will give you a much more resilient system with fast recovery (RTO) and small window of data loss (RPO).
Here are some issues with individual types of backups.
| Type of Backup | Strengths & benefits | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|
| System Protection (Advanced image backup) | Fastest way to recover a server. | If backup is online (NAS, iSCSI), it is vulnerable to hacking. If backup is onsite, it is vulnerable to premises destruction. Taking the backup offsite and offline requires manual human intervention. Generally, you need to back up your entire system, so the backups are generally large. |
| Cloud offsite | Automatic offsite backups without human intervention. | Downloading large amounts of data from a public or private cloud can be slow. |
| File Protection (file replication) | Massive amounts of version history. You can selectively protect parts of the file system, saving on backup storage space. |
Not suitable for a full system recovery. |
| File Archiving (backup to ZIP) | Fantastic for long term data retention. | Not suitable for a full system recovery |
| SQL backups | Near continuous protection for SQL Server | Only backs up to local directory on SQL Server |
However, when you start to combine these engines together and perform multiple backups, you improve recovery times, reduce the window of data loss, and improve your overall cyber-resilience. Here one example.
Combining Advanced Image backup and Cloud offsite backup to reduce window of data loss, retaining fast recovery.
Acme company performs a System Protection (Advanced image backup) job nightly at 10pm, to a set of USB hard disks. These disks get swapped offsite daily.
Their building burns down on Wednesday at 2am. This is the worst case - they have to recover from the last offsite backup, which was done on Monday at 10pm. They lost all work since Monday 10pm - a total of 28 hours, including all of Tuesday's work.
However, Acme II company (in the same building) does 2 backups - the same as described above, and they also do a Cloud Offsite backup to back up their files. And they do this backup every 6 hours (12am, 6am, 12pm, 6pm). Now the only lose 2 hours of work.
Acme II will do this for their recovery:
- Bare metal recovery of entire system from Monday night's Advanced image backup
- Differential restore from the cloud - only downloading the changes between the last backup (Wednesday 12am) and Monday 10pm.
Therefore - the recovery is fast, window of data loss is reduced.
4. BackupAssist Classic provides long term data retrievability from backup.
An important property of a good backup is whether you can retrieve data from the backup without needing any special software. For most backup types offered in BackupAssist Classic, the answer to that is 'yes'.
| Type of Backup | Data Format | Long term retrievable without BackupAssist? |
|---|---|---|
| Drive imaging (Advanced image backup) | VHDX | Yes |
| File replication | Files, same as original | Yes |
| Cloud offsite | Deduplicated, compressed, encrypted chunks | No* |
| ZIP backups | ZIP64 format | Yes |
| SQL backups | SQL Server native format | Yes |
* Cloud offsite backups are stored in our proprietary format because there is no industry standard data format that is suitable. All other backups are stored in open, open-source or ubiquitous file formats.
HOW IT WORKS
Each backup engine provides specific protection for your Windows environment. Here are detailed technical details of each of our backup engines:
What is it?
A System Protection backup is a system image, or drive image backup that can be used for a bare metal disaster recovery (BMDR) - that is, rebuilding a system from a backup, to new hardware. It is the only type of backup that can be used to recover a complete machine, so we recommend it for most of our clients for a baseline level of "essential cyber-resilience".
When it comes to recovery, you can recover your entire system, or just restore specific files, folders, or VSS Applications.
Image backups have the added benefit of running incrementally. This means the jobs are quick and the backups use minimal space. You can also choose to include only selected volumes in your backup.
When do I use it?
There are many situations where this type of backup is recommended.
- When you need fast recovery for an entire system.
- Where your system contains many configuration customizations, so rebuilding it from the OS up is not feasible.
- Instantly boot into the backed up system as a VM to provide uninterrupted business continuity.
- If you have Exchange installed - this prepares you for future Exchange Granular Recovery tasks.
System Protection is ideal for backing up files, folders and applications. And you can restore individual files, folders, and application files using the Integrated Restore Console.
What is an example use case?
A business has three servers. All critical servers that would need to be recovered quickly if there was a ransomware infection or operating system failure. One is an Active Directory server; another is an Exchange server; the last runs a SQL Database and custom applications.
The business uses BackupAssist Classic to back up all 3 servers using System Protection. They back up to removable USB drives that are later taken offsite and stored in a secure location.
In this example, the business can achieve full bare-metal disaster recovery, and also near-instant recovery of server using VM Instant Boot feature.
How do I use it?
Choose Advanced System Protection from the Backup tab and follow the steps. These include selection of the volumes, the destination configuration, backup schedule, and media preparation for removable drives.
When choosing the backup destination, consider how it will be accessed if you perform a recovery. Destinations like network locations can be easy to access, but they are vulnerable to outages and ransomware. USB drives that are stored offsite are more secure but they can take longer to recall and access.
To use a System Protection backup in a recovery, you can use BackupAssist to create a bootable media that will launch the RecoverAssist recovery environment. RecoverAssist streamlines recoveries from many types of backups including those accessed over a network and includes many other helpful features.
Technical features
- Full system backups.
- Enables a range of recovery options including bare-metal disaster recovery (BMDR), VSS application recovery, file / folder restore, Exchange Granular Restore, Hyper-V Granular Restore.
- Supports VSS-Aware applications like Hyper-V, SQL and Exchange to create application-consistent backups.
- Creates fast incremental image backups.
- Backup history is stored as "reverse incrementals" - so you always have the latest backup on disk and as many previous backups as the device can hold while maintaining data integrity.
- Optionally use encryption to protect your backups.
- Uses a non-proprietary backup format (VHDX files) so that your backups are not locked to the backup vendor.
- Can notify you if an incorrect removable media has been attached and prevents that media from being accidentally written over.
- Instantly boot into the backup without affecting the integrity of the backup
- Manage your RPO - with full control over backup retentions
- Recover to dissimilar disks and from dissimilar environments
Supported backup destinations
- External disks
- RDX drives
- Local drives
- Network locations
- NAS devices
- iSCSI targets
What is it?
Cloud Offsite Backup creates a secure and efficient backup of files to a cloud destination. It is a superb option for automated offsite backups.
Your destination can be a public or private cloud - Azure Blob Storage, Amazon S3 and any S3-compatible cloud (like Wasabi, Backblaze) are all supported. Private cloud options are particularly cost effective.
To keep your data safe, all data is encrypted before it is sent to the cloud destination.
Data deduplication and compression are used to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred and stored at your destination.
Please note that Cloud Offsite Backup requires the Cloud Offsite Backup Add-on.
When do I use it?
There are two compelling situations where you would use Cloud Offsite Backups.
- When you want an extra layer of protection against ransomware, machine theft and destruction, enhancing your cyber-resilience over and above your daily drive imaging backups. Having an offsite copy of your data in the cloud gives you extra options for recovery.
- In situations where you cannot rely on a human swapping out USB HDDs to achieve offsite backups.
In both cases, your backups will be stored in a safe, offsite location, with no human intervention required.
What is an example use case?
An education company uses documents and training materials that are created and updated daily.
These documents are kept on two servers, and the backups of these servers have two main requirements.
The first requirement is that they need to be offsite and resilient to ransomware, because staff add a lot of documents from client sites.
The second requirement is that the backup destination needs to be able to grow as documents are added.
The company decides to use BackupAssist Classic to set up Cloud Backup jobs for both of these servers to their Microsoft Azure storage.
How do I use it?
Firstly, you should decide where to store your backups. Your choices are a public cloud (Amazon S3, Azure, Wasabi, Backblaze, or any public S3 provider) or a private cloud.
Then, configure BackupAssist Classic.
Choose Cloud Backup from the Backup tab and follow the steps. These include the selection of data, the backup schedule and the notification settings.
To use Cloud Backup, you will need to set up an account with Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services or a cloud service that supports S3 like Wasabi or Backblaze.
If you want to set up your own private cloud destination, you can use any server or NAS device that supports the S3 API. Examples include FreeNAS, MinIO, Zenko CloudServer, Synology and QNAP NAS.
Technical features
- Uses deduplication and compression to reduce the amount of data that needs to be transferred to the cloud each time a job runs. This means backups run faster and use less storage, storage operations, and bandwidth.
- Encrypts your data prior to it being transferred to the cloud provider. Combined with deduplication and compression, this means the cloud provider cannot access the backup directly nor learn anything about what data was backed up.
- Backs up files in chunks and keeps track of what files have been sent to the cloud destination. This means if a backup job stops or is interrupted, for example due to a network or internet outage, the backup job can resume and does not need to restart.
- Allows you to automatically throttle the upload and download speeds of your cloud backup jobs, so your bandwidth remains intact.
Supported backup destinations
- Microsoft Azure
- Amazon S3
- Any S3 compatible public cloud, like Wasabi, Backblaze
- Any S3 compatible private cloud like FreeNAS, MinIO, Zenko CloudServer, or Synology & QNAP NAS
What is it?
File Protection backups are a complete replica of the files and folders onto the backup destination.
Think of it as a turbo-charged version of “robocopy /mir /copyall” - the destination will mirror the source, including all files, folders, and metadata such as NTFS security attributes.
However, thanks to the single-instance store, unchanged files do not have to be re-copied across. Instead, hard links are used. This enables large amounts of backup history to be kept.
Because the files are copied across to the backup device, no special software is required to do a restore. The files are “just there” on the destination.
However, the BackupAssist Classic Restore Console does make the restore process easy - enabling both a point-in-time restore of the entire file system, and version history restore of a specific file.
When do I use it?
Use this backup type when you need to keep large amounts of backup history.
For example, if your organization works on document files, such as Word and Excel, you can easily get hundreds of days of backup history.
This backup is a superior way to achieve file versioning when compared to using VSS Snapshots, as placing past versions onto a separate backup device means your primary disks won't get choked up by VSS snapshots.
It's also provides more reliable file version history when compared to drive imaging (which provides “best effort” version history).
You can also use this type of backup as an extra layer of protection against ransomware. For example, many of our clients perform daily file replications to a NAS or DAS, while CryptoSafeGuard shields that device from unauthorized access.
What is an example use case?
A legal firm works predominantly on Word documents. With both the firm's staff and their clients continually making changes, important sections within the documents can get deleted by accident.
The firm uses configures BackupAssist Classic to back up the client folders to a local NAS, using the File Protection backup engine on a daily basis. This captures a daily snapshot of client documents.
Additionally, a separate yearly backup is taken to a removable USB disk, and that disk is placed into offsite archive storage for record keeping.
How do I use it?
Choose File Protection from the Backup tab and follow the steps. These include selection of the data, the destination configuration, backup schedule, notification settings and media preparation for removable drives.
Selecting a backup destination depends on your restore objectives. Most of our clients value fast restores, so they choose an onsite destination such as NAS.
However, you can also achieve offsite, offline backups by using USB disks.
Technical features
- The simplest form of backup - a straight copy of your files to the destination.
- Uses a non-proprietary backup format so that your backups are not locked to the backup software.
- Uses single-instance store so that only one unique copy of each file is stored on your backup destination.
- Hundreds of days of backup history is possible in common deployment scenarios.
- Supports an rsync server as a backup destination. Rsync support requires the Cloud Backup Add-on.
- Provides the option of using BitLocker encryption for removable backup media.
- Notifies you if an incorrect removable media has been attached and prevents that media from being written over.
- Supports VSS-Aware applications like Hyper-V, SQL and Exchange to create application-consistent backups.
- Supports Microsoft Hyper-V Replica and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV).
Supported backup destinations
- Removable disks - USB HDD, RDX
- Local disks
- Network drives / NAS
- ISCSI targets
- Rsync servers (with the Cloud Offsite Add-on)
What is it?
File Archiving backs up selected files and folders into a single ZIP file.
It uses the industry standard ZIP64 file format, which features compression and AES-256 encryption.
Data from the ZIP file can be restored using BackupAssist restore tools, or any standard ZIP program such as WinZip.
For average data sets, the compression ratio of ZIP is around 2:1 (that is, 50% space saving).
A ZIP file can be as large as 18,446,744 TB - a limit you're unlikely to encounter in real life!
When do I use it?
Excellent for long term data backup and retention.
Each ZIP file is completely self contained, so it is perfect for putting into archive storage.
You can also use this type of backup as an extra layer of protection against ransomware. For example, perform weekly backups to a USB disk on the weekend. Every Monday, someone disconnects the disk, and takes it offsite.
The File Archiving engine also supports tape drive destinations, when you have purchased the Tape Archiving Add-on.
What is an example use case?
A building company offers 12 year guarantees on work, and wants long-term record keeping to protect itself in case of lawsuit.
The company configures BackupAssist Classic to back up all quotations, invoices, project documents and email correspondence to a USB disk, and then put that disk in physical archival storage.
This provides an offline and offsite backup.
These disks are retained for 12 years.
How do I use it?
Choose File Archiving from the Backup tab and follow the wizard steps. These include selection of the data, the destination configuration, backup schedule, notification settings and media preparation for removable drives.
Selecting your type of backup destination (disk, tape, etc.) can depend on the required lifetime of the data. Check with the manufacturer of your backup device. Many tape manufacturers quote a shelf life of 30 years, and the commonly quoted life of a USB disk is 10 years.
Technical features
- Backs up selected files and folders to a single ZIP file.
- Uses the non-proprietary ZIP format so that your files are not locked to the backup software.
- Supports any regular disk-like device (USB HDD, RDX, NAS, iSCSI) as the backup destination.
- Also supports tape drives, when you purchase the Tape Archiving Add-on.
- Multi-threaded architecture performs the compression and encryption 4-7 times faster than regular single-threaded ZIP programs.
- Provides the option of 256-bit AES encryption for securing data, especially on removable backup media.
- Notifies you if an incorrect removable media has been attached and prevents that media from being written over.
- Can back up VSS-Aware applications like Hyper-V, SQL and Exchange to create application-consistent backups.
- Supports Microsoft Hyper-V Replica and Cluster Shared Volumes (CSV).
Supported backup destinations
- Removable disks - USB HDD, RDX
- Local disks
- Network drives / NAS
- ISCSI targets
What is it?
SQL Protection creates full or transactional backups of Microsoft SQL Server databases.
The transactional backups can run as frequently as every 5 minutes throughout the day.
This can be important for frequently changing databases, because a daily backup is often not adequate for SQL Servers.
Performing a restore from these backups is made easy with the SQL point-in-time restore tool, and the backups are compatible with native SQL tools.
Please note that SQL Protection requires the SQL Continuous Add-on.
When do I use it?
When a SQL Server is used by an application, the databases undergo constant change when items like sales and stock are updated.
The risk for these SQL Servers is that when only one backup is performed per day, up to a day's worth of transactions could be lost if you have to perform a restore.
SQL Protection solves this by running frequent transactional backups that can help you to meet your restore point objectives.
Instead of losing 24 hours' worth of transactions, you would lose 5 minutes' worth at the most.
What is an example use case?
A soda company uses an in-house application for its sales force, who travel to customers and enter orders into their tablets.
The application stores this data in an SQL database, which is updated about 200 times a day. The company decides that a daily backup of the SQL Server is not adequate, so they use BackupAssist Classic to create an SQL Protection backup job for the database.
How do I use it?
Choose SQL Protection from the Backup tab and follow the steps. These include selecting the SQL Server and databases, and setting up the schedule and notifications.
When setting up a transactional backup schedule, consider how often you want the backup job to run. This can depend on how often the databases change and your RPO, meaning how many minutes' worth of changes you can afford to lose. Another consideration is the processing power of the server running the SQL Server and the backups.
For example, if you want good performance and know you can manually recreate 15 minutes' worth of transactions easily, you could set the backup frequency to be every 15 minutes.
Technical features
- Can back up any number of remote SQL servers in addition to the local SQL Server.
- Includes two schedule options: basic and transactional. Basic backs up the selected databases in full at a set time. Transactional backs up the SQL Server throughout the day at 5-minute or greater intervals.
- A transactional backup job can be used to perform a full SQL Server restore if all of the databases were backed up, including a master database recovery.
Supported backup destinations
- SQL Protection saves backups to a local drive on the SQL Server.
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
We hear your pain… if you're just starting off preparing for cyber-resilience, it can seem daunting to have to set up multiple backups all at once.
We recommend that you start with one backup type - system protection - to get a advanced image backup for essential cyber-resilience, and build from there.
This is the type of backup that helps you recover the entire system, all configurations, applications and data, in a single backup. From this single backup, you can recover from many different scenarios. This makes it a very versatile backup.
- Rebuild your entire server.
- Restore VSS applications (Exchange, Hyper-V, SQL Server).
- Restore files.
- The drive image files can become very large if your system is large. There is one backup file (VHDX file format) per volume on your system.
- Large drive images are not suitable for uploading to the cloud. A file backup solution is more suited to this.
A file backup, or file-based backup, is a completely different technology that backs up file-by-file. This is generally slower than an image backup, but has advantages because it backs up at a very granular level.
A good file backup engine will not only back up the file contents, but the metadata for each file. The metadata includes the timestamps (created, modified, accessed), attributes such as read-only, and Access Control Lists. This means when you restore a file, all metadata associated with that file is also restored.
BackupAssist Classic's file backup engines will correctly back up and restore both file contents and metadata.