• RedHat Enterprise 5.4
• RedHat Enterprise Linux 4.8
• Debian 5.0.3 Lenny

To verify your version of Linux has been certified, you can view the Microlite Linux Support Tables.

Additionally, Centos 5.4 has recently been released and is undergoing Microlite’s certification test.  This version should be certified and supported soon.

The Next Generation

Microlite reports, “Our engineering team is hard at work on a next-generation BackupEDGE product.”  Some great new features will be released in this upcoming version, so stay tuned for more information from Microlite.  They also mention in their newsletter that customers under a 2.x maintenance agreement will receive a significant discount on the upgrade, so be sure to keep your maintenance agreement valid.

This is the first paid upgrade to BackupEDGE in over 6 years(!) so be expecting some exciting new features.

Danger! - Unverified Backups - Danger!

Would you trust your most recent backup in hydrochloric acid?  What if I told you that your entire set of backups might have been tainted — that they had been completely ruined?  I’ve talked to far too many people who are deep into panic when they realize that every backup they’ve ever made… is worthless.

How does this happen?  I’ll tell you a story.

Bob was an entrepreneur.  He had started his business from the ground up — With his own two hands, and all that jazz.  Now it was a thriving company producing solid net revenues.  Having so much skin in the game, Bob was very particular about how his business was handled from accounting to system administration.  In fact, every night he would take the most recent backup and tuck it neatly into the passenger seat of his Mercedes for the ride home.  The backups were even locked away in a safe at home (he apparently hadn’t bought the BackupEDGE encryption option!) so they were protected from crooks and fire alike.

Well, the unthinkable did eventually happen.  There was a major disaster at the office and all of the data on Bob’s primary server was gone.  Bob wisked home to retrieve the backups he had so meticulously squirreled away.  He handed the most recent backup to his sysadmin to have the tape restored.  To his utter dismay, he found that the tape was completely empty.  What’s even worse, every tape in the set was totally blank!  What could have happened!?

Well, in poor Bob’s case, his Mercedes seat heaters acted like a giant electromagnet, erasing each and every tape on the drive home.  Unfortunately, without doing verification of the tapes, Bob had no way to know that his backups would be empty when he needed them most.

It’s a great illustration (and I believe it is even based on a true story) that explains why data verification is so important.  Unfortunately, most people only care about data verification once it is too late.  A backup without verification is like playing Russian Roulette, and frankly that’s not a game I’m willing to play with my business.

The good news is, there is a way to fix the problem from the beginning.  Data Verification.  Once a backup is made, it is quintessential that a verification be run to assert that the data has made it to the destination and that it is actually the right data.  In the case of physical media it is important to make sure that the data is the right data.  When we’re dealing with remote data (data backed up to FTP, for example), we’d really like to know that our data made it to the destination safely.

I had a conversation with a system administrator one night.  We were talking about proper data backups and their expected restore rates and he actually mentioned that while working for a Fortune 500 company, he had never done a verification.  I was astonished and asked him how they knew any of those backups were any good.  “We didn’t”, was his reply.  He added, “We were just hoping we’d never have to restore from them to find out.”  When I told him I knew of a product that did automatic restores, he was impressed.

Automatic Data Verification is just one of the many reasons I chose to sell Microlite BackupEDGE on this website.  It isn’t just good data backup, it is an entire package.  Hopefully you’re reading this article today before you have a data “oops”.  I hate telling folks how cheap good data backup can be after they’ve had a major meltdown.  So, stock up on professional backup resources today so you can save yourself the headache and the heartache.

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.

“Securing computer systems and networks addresses only part of the problem when it comes to maintaining the confidentiality of client and patient data, and of methods, systems and business practices,” said Tom Podnar, president of Microlite Corporation. “By using the encryption option of this product, companies can ensure that no one can simply walk off with a backup tape or disc and read privileged information at their leisure”.

BackupEDGE 2.0 employs its own cryptographically strong random number generator and a powerful combination of symmetric and asymmetric algorithms to encrypt and decrypt archived data. It is completely standards-based. Individual archives are protected by separate, randomly generated 256 bit AES encryption keys, which are in turn protected by a 2048 bit RSA key pair. Encryption is fully integrated into the product and performed at the file level, providing the following benefits…

• Only data that needs to be protected is encrypted.
• Overall performance stays high as only critical files are subject to CPU intensive encryption.
• Full compatibility with other product features such as    verification, quick file access, and disaster recovery is    maintained.
• Each encrypted file is pre-compressed to ensure that no space is lost due to the inability of tape hardware compression implementations to compress encrypted data.

About BackupEDGE 2.0

Microlite BackupEDGE 2.0 is a full-featured backup and disaster recovery solution. Over two years in design, and validated with a long open test period, it provides best-of breed capabilities in many areas, including…

• Standards-based data format with longer pathname support than any other product.
• Most robust device support, including all CD and DVD formats and all tape drives, autoloaders and libraries.
• The most powerful integrated compressor for maximum utilization of all media types, especially optical.
• A combination of full-file checksum and bit-level verify for utmost confidence in archive reliability.
• Full-featured scheduler allows unlimited schedule creation with event triggering and multiple notification methods.
• Fastest access to archived files on tape or optical media.
• RecoverEDGE, the most versatile integrated disaster recovery tool available for Linux.