BackupAssist

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BackupAssist

Developed by	Cortex IT Labs
Initial release	2002
Latest release	v4.0.16 / May 2008
OS	Windows 2000, 2003, XP, SBS
Genre	Backup software
Website	http://www.backupassist.com

BackupAssist is a backup software product created for use with the Microsoft Windows environments. Developed by Cortex I.T Labs, it is aimed primarily at the small to medium business market and provides protection for Windows Server, Active Directory, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SQL Server.

The main distinguishing feature of BackupAssist is that it integrates with existing backup tools that are present in the Windows operating system (such as Ntbackup, exmerge and wbadmin).

1 Major Releases ^[1]
2 History
3 Architecture
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Major Releases ^[1]

Version 4 – May 8th 2007 – application rewritten in .NET Framework, 64 bit OS support
Version 3.5 – November 8th 2006 – Exchange mailbox backups
Version 3 – July 16th 2004 – SQL Server backups
Version 2 – October 24th 2003
Version 1 – August 28th 2002

[edit] History

BackupAssist started as a small project designed to help a system administrator use NTBackup on Windows NT and 2000. Due to the many shortcomings with certain features of NTBackup (scheduling, media rotation and monitoring), the purpose of BackupAssist was to provide users software that could backup their servers as per their requirements ^[2].

When BackupAssist was initially released in 2002, a basic website was created to help support the software. Over the next few years, extra features were implemented such users could choose from a variety of backup destinations such as tape drives, NAS, REV drives, external hard drives and CD/DVDs ^[3]. Add-ons for Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange Server mailboxes were introduced in 2006.

By 2007, a totally rewritten version of the software was released with a new architecture based around “Backup Engine Independence”.

In February 2008, a solution for Windows Server 2008 was released, featuring drive imaging capabilities.

[edit] Architecture

The concept of “Backup Engine Independence” is a key differentiating factor between BackupAssist and other similar products. By designing BackupAssist to be able to interface with any backend engine, it is possible to add extra capabilities to BackupAssist easily ^[2]. This is done by interfacing with existing, well known, popular engines – such as the Microsoft Block Level Backup engine (drive imaging) on Windows Server 2008, NTBackup, Exmerge and Stsadm.