Microlite Corporation announced that BackupEDGE 02.03.01 build 3 is now shipping and available for download. Media kits are also available for order. Build 3 of 02.03.01 introduces support for:
• Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise 11
• Debian 5.0.1 Lenny
• Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope
• CentOS 5.3
• Mandriva 2009.1

If you have any of these platforms, or an older release that you have updated, it is mandatory that you install 02.03.01 build 3and then remake your disaster recovery media.
Note that starting with 02.03.01 build 2, RecoverEDGE supports the EXT4 filesystem.

Remember to periodically check the Linux Support Tables on Microlite’s web site to see which Linux distributions they’re keeping up with.

Re-startable FTP Backups (from the latest Microlite Newsletter)

As more people use the Internet for backups, firewall and link reliability issues come into play. Build 2  introduces re-startable backups, that is, if in the middle of the backup the connection drops, BackupEDGE will simply reconnect and continue the backup.

To do this, when re-startable backups are selected BackupEDGE changes the segment size, or the amount sent in one transfer, from 1GB to 50MB (the same segment size used by Amazon S3 backups). Each 50MB segment is cached in RAM, and if the segment transfer fails it will be re-sent. A backup will now fail only if a single segment fails 8 consecutive times.
Additionally, we’ve found that many firewalls drop idle connections after a pre-set time. For instance, our Sonicwall drops them after 15 minutes. While the FTP data connection is happily churning away, the control / authentication connection is doing nothing but waiting, and the firewall kills it after 15 minutes, terminating the backup.
To resolve this, we’ve implemented keep-alive packets on the control connection.
If you’ve tried FTP backups in the past and been stymied, we think this release will make you happy.
1. Update to 02.03.01 build 2 and try your standard backup again, since keep-alive packets will now be enabled. If it fails…
2. Check section 4 of the updated User Guide to see how to enable re-startable backups.