How to Set up Centralized Remote Management / Console / Dashboard

In order to manage many servers from a single screen without having to log on to each server individually, you need to use the Server Enterprise edition as the “master” and connect to it all other instances of BackupChain you have running on other computers. All instances of BackupChain can be remotely managed, except the […]

Network Tips & Tricks

Sometimes connecting to a server or NAS device on the network can be a real pain; this has mostly to do with how Microsoft manages network connections and how servers are set up and networks are structured. Background Info In Windows, each user session has its own network connections. On a Windows Server there are […]

Backing up Locked Files from a Network Share / Drive

Naturally, files stored on a network can be backed up using BackupChain using a pull strategy (that’s what you’re doing now); however, Microsoft’s Volume Shadow Copy Service doesn’t permit unlocking files over the network. In order to backup locked files, these files need to be local; hence, you can resolve the problem by installing the […]

Network Backups: Common Pitfalls

First of all make sure the network drive is NTFS formatted. If it is not, there will be critical limitations, depending on the file system used. NTFS allows paths to reach over 32,000 letters, whereas Linux file systems don’t. Linux file systems have different file size limits and file name limits (not just full path […]

What Does “Always Authenticate” Do?

The ‘always authenticate’ option was added to deal with the case where user X may have read access to a share but no write access, unless X authenticates explicitly. This occurs for example when shares are opened to everyone for reading but only certain users have write access. BackupChain is then forced to re-authenticate to […]