Posts Tagged ‘MSP’

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Backup and Restore with StoreGrid

by arul on May 28th, 2010








With the release of StoreGrid v3.1 SP1, StoreGrid now supports Exchange Server 2010 database backup and restore. The v3.1 SP1 patch should be installed on both the backup server (and replication server) and in the client machines running StoreGrid v3.1. Remember this patch installs only on top of StoreGrid v3.1 installations.

Exchange 2010 Backup Restore

Exchange 2010 Backup Restore

VSS based backup of Exchange 2010

Unlike Exchange Server 2000, 2003, 2007 where StoreGrid uses Exchange Server’s ESE API (Extensible Storage Engine) for backing up live Exchange databases, in Exchange 2010 StoreGrid uses VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Services) based APIs. StoreGrid invokes the “Microsoft Exchange Writer” (comes with the Exchange 2010 Server) which provides the backup of the live Exchange databases in a consistent state.

During the Exchange 2010 Server backup, the VSS is used to create a snapshot of the database and log files pertaining to the databases configured for backup and those files are then saved locally in a temporary location. Once all the relevant files are saved in the dump location, StoreGrid will report to the VSS that the backup is complete and the VSS will then purge the log files. StoreGrid will then backup the dumped files to the backup server and will delete these files from the temporary location.

Efficient as always..

Though the way Exchange provides its backup data may be different in Exchange 2010 server, but to StoreGrid users, Exchange 2010 Server backup and restore will work exactly the way Exchange 2000, 2003 and 2007 backup and restore work. The process continues to be slick and efficient as always:

1. Only incremental changed data is dumped during the incremental backup and not the entire Exchange database

2. Even within the incremental data that is dumped, StoreGrid backs up only the changed blocks by running StoreGrid’s Intelli-Delta on the incremental log files

3. Backup data files are deleted from the dump location once the backup is completed.

What is next in StoreGrid for Exchange Server Backups

We continue to make enhancements to Exchange Server Backups since we know that it is one of the most important service offerings for our MSP partners. Here are some the enhancements that is in near roadmap

1. Mail Level Restore – Specific emails from can be restored and attached into the Exchange Server.

2. Synthetic Exchange full backups – During additional full backups only the incremental backup data with respect to the previous full backup is sent to the backup server. Large Exchange Server data can be first seeded from the Exchange Server machine to backup server using StoreGrid’s seeding (export/import) feature and then later all additional full backups can be Synthethic Full Backups.

3. ‘Copy Only’ local backup – StoreGrid client can be configured to do regular weekly or monthly full ‘Copy Only’ backup of the entire Exchange Server, while it continues to run its incremental/differential backups to the offsite backup server. The ‘Copy Only’ backup will not set the archive bit on the Exchange Server, therefore letting the offsite backup to continue running its incrementals.

4. Incremental/Differential Exchange backups both locally and to remote backup server – We have also started working on providing the ability for the StoreGrid client to backup both locally and to a remote backup server in the same backup schedule.

Want to learn more about Exchange Server Backups and Restore using StoreGrid?

Please refer the following URLs:

http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/sp-help/PageHelp/exchange-backup-configuration.html

http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/sp-help/PageHelp/exchange-server-restore-configuration.html

http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/sp-help/PageHelp/exchange-recovery-database-restore.html

http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/sp-help/PageHelp/exchange-mailbox-rights.html

http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/sp-help/PageHelp/exchange-mailbox-backup-configuration.html

http://www.storegrid.com/online-backup/sp-help/PageHelp/exchange-mailbox-restore-configuration.html

















The above post was written by Arul Prabhu of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

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Posted in Microsoft, New Release, Online Backup, Remote Backup, SMB, SP Edition, VARBusiness, Vembu StoreGrid



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Life of an MSP – in less than 30 seconds

by lenin on April 15th, 2010

Google recently aired an ad during the Super Bowl using Google searches and a little music – a great idea!   The ad was Google standard – classy, minimalist and to the point.   Imagine having your customers come in and design, create ads for your brand and even advertise them for free while you sit back and have fun!   This would be any marketer’s wildest dream come true.

Here’s Google’s invitation -

“All you need to do is type in your Google searches, pick some music and — presto! — you’ve got your very own Search Story to share with your friends or showcase on our YouTube channel”

They have created a simple video creation tool that allows anyone to create a video based on the Google Searches. We were fiddling with this new tool and ended up creating a video about the typical searches of a managed service provider.

The above post was written by Lenin Srinivasan of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

Vembu Home is the only FREE consumer backup solution for free local backups and optional Amazon Cloud backups. Get your FREE COPY now.

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Posted in General, Humour, Vembu StoreGrid, google



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HP shutters its Upline online data backup service – Why commoditized online backup service is not a sustainable business

by Sekar Vembu on March 1st, 2009

I was contacted by ChannelWeb to comment on HP’s decision to shutter their Upline online data backup business. The gist of what I commented was carried in the article “HP To Shutter Upline Online Storage Backup Service” by ChannelWeb’s Senior Editor Joseph F. Kovar. I felt it’s a good idea to post here my full comments along with my view about commodity online backup services like Carbonite and EMC’s Mozy.

Hope these are not perceived as just wishful thinking on my part. My comments are based on our experience supporting more than 1000 partners offering backup services to tens of thousands of SMB customers. Below is my unedited comment I sent to ChannelWeb.

On HP’s decisions to kill its Upline online storage service we are not very surprised by the decision. The reason is that we always believed that backup is not like Skype where you install it and it works. Backups by its very nature require monitoring, management and administration to ensure everything goes smoothly. So any large vendor who gets into online backup services thinking that you just sign up large number of customers and then everything can be put on auto-pilot is completely mistaken. That is the reason we never offered online backup services directly to end customers. Our business model is to partner with MSPs and VARs who already provide IT services to their SMB customers. These local MSPs and VARs, because of their proximity to their customers, are in the best position to offer backup services. Since they act as “Virtual CIOs” to their SMB clients they are in the best position to monitor and manage the backups along with everything related to IT in these SMB organizations.

With regard to consumers who backup to a brand name mega online backup service providers, we do not think that is a very profitable business because consumers view storage as a commodity. They do not appreciate the additional value delivered by good backup software and treat everything as just raw storage. Since backup requires monitoring and management the more consumers you sign up the more support you will have to deal with. This just cannot be sustained as consumers are willing to pay for only raw storage and not for the value the software brings. This is one reason HP would have felt it’s not worth their while to go after consumers nor after SMBs where it just cannot be put on auto-pilot. No wonder AOL shut down their XDrive business a few months ago.

Considering the above I strongly believe Carbonite may be under pressure notwithstanding the twenty plus million venture capital they have raised. With the meager amount they charge their customers for storage it is just not sustainable as the cost of offering good customer support can never be recovered.  Needless to say, in spite of Mozy’s brand recognition and EMC’s backing, Mozy may also struggle to scale their business profitably. It may be relevant to point out the blog post, “May be I am not so impressed with EMC“, which I wrote on EMC’s decision to spin off Mozy (Decho).

I also want to highlight another blog post by my colleague, Lux, some time ago: Carbonite and Mozy’s Achilles Heel.

The above post was written by Sekar Vembu of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

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Posted in CRN, Online Backup, SMB, SP Edition, Vembu StoreGrid



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StoreGrid supports Amazon Cloud – Choice and Flexibility is our mantra

by Sekar Vembu on October 28th, 2008

Hot on the heels of Amazon removing the Beta tag and releasing Amazon EC2 for production, we are excited to announce the Beta release of Vembu StoreGrid Cloud AMI, which facilitates deploying StoreGrid in Amazon cloud computing infrastructure. This has been a long pending demand from our partner base, who are MSPs, VARs and IT Solution providers offering online backup services using StoreGrid.StoreGrid Cloud AMI in Amazon Web Services

StoreGrid Cloud AMI Beta is available for both Microsoft Windows Server and CentOS Linux Server. Also, the StoreGrid backup server uses the MySQL 5.0 database. All these are bundled together in the StoreGrid Cloud AMI to facilitate ease of deployment for our partners. Of course, we are working on lot more automation as we try to move into production release before the end of 2008.

Why is StoreGrid Cloud AMI relevant for our partners?

Our primary target market segment is Small and Medium Businesses. Considering the growing complexity of IT infrastructure it is our strong belief that it is not easy for software vendors to directly service SMB customers. Close proximity to the customer is extremely important when you service SMB customers. Hence the local VAR or an MSP is in the best position to provide IT services to a small and medium business customer. This is especially relevant when it comes to data backups and more specifically online backups. As we work with large number of partners servicing different types of small and medium businesses with different sets of requirements, it is an absolute must that any IT product or solution we build should provide the maximum flexibility when it comes to deployment options or other relevant functionality.

Given this context, we have always focused on giving as much choice to our partners as they go about augmenting their business with an online backup service powered by StoreGrid. Specifically, as cloud computing as a framework gains momentum, as an aspiring leader in the online backup category, we recognize the need to provide the choice of deploying StoreGrid in a leading cloud computing infrastructure – and nothing beats Amazon EC2 and Amazon S3 for a start.

Moreover, for the last two years we have primarily worked with partners who are willing to host StoreGrid in their own data center and offer online backup services to their customers. Many of our prospective partners had expressed interest in having a solution which they can host in a cloud computing environment like Amazon EC2/S3. With the release of StoreGrid Cloud AMI, we are responding to a long under-served market demand.

With StoreGrid Cloud AMI, any IT solution provider (MSPs, VARs) can now start an online backup service without any capital investment. All they have to do is to get an account in Amazon Web Services, instantiate an instance of StoreGrid Cloud AMI, create and mount the Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) volume as a backup storage and start offering online backup service to their customers. It is as simple as that. The backup data stored in Amazon EBS is periodically backed up as a snapshot to Amazon S3 for redundancy. On top of this partners who require another level of redundancy can instantiate StoreGrid Cloud AMI as a replication server and replicate the backup data to another Amazon EBS volume. This again can be backed up as a snapshot to Amazon S3.

Our existing partners or partners who prefer to deploy StoreGrid in their own data center can now use Amazon cloud infrastructure as a redundant storage for the backup data in their data center. All they have to do is to deploy StoreGrid Cloud AMI as a Replication Server in Amazon EC2 and configure their internally deployed StoreGrid backup server to replicate the backup data to the StoreGrid replication server running in Amazon EC2.

As I said, choice and flexibility of deployment is what we provide our partners. To summarize, with StoreGrid, our partners now can offer an online backup service in the following ways:

1. StoreGrid backup server and StoreGrid replication server deployed in their own data center with their own local storage.

2. StoreGrid backup server and StoreGrid replication server in Amazon EC2 with Amazon EBS volume as the mounted storage. And for additional redundancy data in the EBS volume is backed up as a snapshot to Amazon S3 storage.

3. StoreGrid backup server deployed in their own data center with local storage and StoreGrid replication server deployed in Amazon EC2 with Amazon EBS volume as the mounted storage for the replication data. Again for additional redundancy data in the EBS volume is backed up as a snapshot to Amazon S3 storage.

4. Another deployment which is also popular amongst some partners is to deploy StoreGrid backup server on-premise in the end customer location so that there is local copy of the backup data for quick restores. And these partners can now deploy StoreGrid Cloud AMI as a replication server and replicate the on-premise backup server to the Amazon EC2 deployed replication server.

You can learn about more technical details on using the StoreGrid Cloud AMI at http://www.vembu.com/storegrid/amazon-ec2-s3-cloud-online-backup.html

The above post was written by Sekar Vembu of Vembu Technologies. Vembu Technologies is a backup software vendor whose product, StoreGrid, powers the online backup services of a large number of service providers across the globe. Besides remote backup, StoreGrid is also used for on premise backups of workstations and servers at various companies & universities.

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Posted in Online Backup, Remote Backup, SMB, SP Edition, Uncategorized, Vembu StoreGrid



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