What can BackupChain do for my business?

BackupChain Backup Software is specifically designed for small to medium sized companies and offers you a multitude of configuration options so you can fully control your backup processes and the characteristics of your backup data.

Mitigate Risks of Data Loss

Naturally the main function of backup software is to prevent data loss as much as possible. You need to have a good sense of all common risks of data loss because most forms of data loss are preventable.

These are some typical causes of data loss:

• Fire.
• Storms.
• Floods.
• Software faults and errors, including the operating system.
• Accidental deletion by users.
• Hard drive faults: head crash, deterioration, etc. The expected lifetime of hard drives is usually under two years.
• Virus, ransomware, and malware damage.
• Static discharge. For example on days with low humidity below 40% and carpets installed in the office. Vacuum cleaners and other devices may be statically charged as well. Be aware of this when near a computer.
• Humidity levels and condensation. Ideal levels should be kept between 40% and 60%. High humidity levels can cause condensation. Dry levels can damage electronic parts.
• Electric shock caused by lightning strike to exterior structures in the vicinity of the building or power lines.
• Electric surge caused by lightning or defect electric appliances connected in the same office or household.
• Water damage. Fire sprinklers, flooding, or other leaks.
• Temperature. Do not expose computers to temperatures below 15 degrees Celsius (60 degrees Fahrenheit) or above 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees Fahrenheit) because electronic parts may overheat. Low temperatures may lead to condensation.
• Mechanic shock. For example, a notebook may be dropped or a desktop may be struck accidently while the hard drives are spinning.
• Magnetic fields. Magnetic fields caused by older TV sets or wiring can damage the sensitive plates inside hard drives or electronic components on motherboards.
• Incomplete data transport. For example data is copied to a new computer and users may not notice that the transfer was not complete.

Protect Your Data Efficiently and Economically

Using BackupChain you can plan your backups and thereby save time, money, storage space, and bandwidth. In addition, the built-in FTP server and client features allow you to set up your own remote backup system.

Deduplicate and Save Space by Removing Redundancy

The deduplication (delta compression) technology offered by BackupChain offers incremental and differential backups at the file level and is optimized to work with very large file sizes (> 1TB).

The deduplication process works as follows: first, a compressed full file copy is generated. At the next cycle, BackupChain compares the current file to its previous version in the backup store. It extracts the changes and creates an incremental delta file. Differential backups always compare the current file to its most recent full copy in the backup store.

Incremental Backup

Incremental backup may also mean that only changed files are backed up. BackupChain skips files automatically if they haven’t changed since the last backup. Incremental backup may also refer to ‘deduplication’, also known as delta compression. See previous section on how BackupChain performs deduplication on a file basis.

Run Backups in the Background While You Work or When Logged Off

BackupChain runs in the background and can process locked or exclusively opened files as well. For example, BackupChain can back up your Word document while you are writing it and back up databases and virtual machines while they are running without service interruptions.

“Owning” your Own Data – No Technological Lock-In

Many other tools lock you in technologically to their software. Once you make a backup, so-called container files are produced in the backup store. These container files are usually in a proprietary format that cannot be opened using standard tools; hence, even if you have backup you may not be able to get access to your own data unless you use the software that generated it.

BackupChain does not use container files. BackupChain replicates the exact folder structure from the original folder to the backup media. It uses open-standard file formats, such as ZIP or 7Z files which can be opened on any computer without BackupChain. The only exception is the “FastNeuronDelta” format which is BackupChain’s proprietary file format for incremental / deduplicated file backup. This format is necessary because there is no open standard for deduplication; however, you can fully configure how, if, and when to use each file format to match your specific in-house backup requirements.

Sector-Level Disk Image Backup (P2V, V2P, P2P, V2V)

Sector-level disk image backup in BackupChain offers several advantages. Physical disks can be copied to either physical disks or virtual disks and vice versa. The supported formats are VHD, VHDX, VDI, and VMDK. The resulting physical to virtual (P2V) or virtual to physical (V2P) conversions are bootable as VMs or physical machines in most circumstances. Virtual disks may be mounted to Windows (VHD, VHDX, depending on Windows version) or you can use the BackupChain tool to access disk images and restore files individually without restoring the entire disk image.

Physical to Physical Disk Copy (P2P) / Disk Cloning

Copying physical disks to physical disks on a schedule allows you to always have an independent boot disk or data disk available when the original disks fail.

• Copy RAID array disk contents to a single disk, which can be simply plugged in or brought online (via Windows Disk Management) when needed. Or the disk can be plugged into another server at any time.
• Copy the system disk or data disk to another disk. Unlike a typical mirror RAID you now have some reaction time in case of a virus attack or accidental deletion. Also the disk can be placed offline or physically removed from the server for additional safety and security, for example to protect against ransomware or theft.

See the section “Create a new disk backup task” on page 29 for detailed how-to instructions.

Physical Disk to Mounted Virtual Disk Copy: Disk to Disk Copy over LAN

Physical disk to a virtual disk appearing as physical can be achieved over the network:

Create VHDs on target server and share the VHD files using a network share. Mount the VHDs on the other server where you plan to run the backup via Disk Management. They now appear as “real” physical disks even though they are VHDs stored on a network server.

Then create a physical disk to disk copy task in BackupChain to copy each disk to its own target disk. In case of a disaster the disks are immediately accessible on the target server or any other server over the network. The VHDs can be attached to VMs if need be (and booted) or simply attach them via Disk Management to any computer you want to access files immediately.

See the section “Create a new disk backup task” on page 29 for detailed how-to instructions.

Live VM Conversion (V2V)

Another unique feature in BackupChain is its ability to back up live virtual machines into a different virtual disk format, while running and without interruptions. You could for example, convert a VM from VMware Workstation to Hyper-V or VirtualBox and vice versa.

See the section “Create a new disk backup task” on page 29 for detailed how-to instructions.

Physical to Virtual (P2V) and Virtual to Physical Conversion (V2P)

A virtual disk can be converted and copied to a physical disk and vice versa.

See the section “Create a new disk backup task” on page 29 for detailed how-to instructions.

General File Backup

File backup is more than just a simple file copy. BackupChain can be configured to keep track of file histories so you can go back in time and restore old versions of a file.

In addition, BackupChain uses VSS technologies to obtain valid, consistent, and reliable live copies of files when these files are in use. Copying files by hand does not provide a consistent view of the files and folders being copied. Some application or another user may be modifying, moving, adding, deleting files while the folder is being copied. The result of a manual copy is hence not guaranteed to contain exactly the same information as when the copy began. BackupChain, on the other hand, uses a snapshot mechanism to guarantee that all files and folders are copied exactly and consistently to the target media, as they were when the backup commenced, even if the backup job takes a long time and other users have since modified the files being backed up.

BackupChain can be configured to process files depending on their type. For example, you may wish to ZIP compress Microsoft Word files and keep the last 100 versions of each document, but in the same task you may want to deduplicate VMDK files with compression and set a file version limit of only three copies.

Files may be backed up to a network share, an external drive, a local drive, or an FTP / FTPS server.

Virtual Machine Backup (Hyper-V, VMware, VirtualBox, CSV)

BackupChain’s tools are optimized to perform live virtual machine backups using Hyper-V (including Cluster Shared Volumes), VMware, VirtualBox, and other platforms that are VSS compliant.

For Hyper-V, BackupChain offers a single-click and restore feature which configures itself automatically. For other platforms, such as VMware, simply point BackupChain to the folder containing the virtual machine files.

An important part of virtual machine backup is deduplication (delta compression). Instead of generating full virtual machine copies, BackupChain detects the changes that occurred between backup cycles and extracts and compresses them into a delta file. Using this technology a daily backup is usually only 1 to 5% of its original size.

Another important strength of BackupChain is its quick processing ability, which can be configured to use all available CPU cores during deduplication.

Database Backup

Databases contain a lot of redundancy; therefore, data compression and deduplication are very effective means to back up database files.

BackupChain’s delta compression feature performs a quick scan and generates delta files of each database every time it backs them up. This is the fastest and most economical way to back up database container files.

Set up Your Own Online Backup System

One of BackupChain’s unique features is its built-in FTP / FTPS server. An FTP server is needed to receive backup files from other computers over the Internet.

Many customers use BackupChain to connect their office and home computers or connect two servers in different offices. The idea is to back up one computer’s files to the other and vice versa. That way you don’t need to have a backup store or pay for online storage because each computer uses the other as its backup store.

In addition, you can set up a centralized backup server and have workstations back up to that centralized server locally or over the Internet.

Alternatively you can use a compatible standard FTP server on the Internet that is hosted by a third party.

Many online backup hosting services have switched to BackupChain. Using BackupChain at the client site as well as the receiving end eliminates most incompatibility problems that other solutions involve. Contact FastNeuron sales or support for more information if you plan to deploy BackupChain in a large scale environment.