BackupAssist is a backup software for physical and virtual Windows servers. It supports on-site and cloud backup, and allows users to restore anything from a few files to an entire server. The software is modular, meaning customers can pick and choose what they want in their backup software suite. It does this by providing a core product and several optional add-ons.
Backup
BackupAssist can perform several kinds of backup, each offering a different level of redundancy against data loss. Full Image Backup: BackupAssist takes an image of a physical or virtual system that can be used to perform a full recovery, even if the whole system is lost, corrupted, or destroyed. After the first full backup, the rest are performed incrementally, meaning only changes since the last backup are saved. Selected Items: it can back up selected files, folders, apps, Hyper-V guests, databases, and drives. Archival Backups: highly compressed and encrypted backups of old or unused data, ready for cold storage. Continuous SQL Backup: continuous backup of a SQL server, so any potential data loss is minimized. Backups can be compressed and encrypted with up to 256-bit AES. Cloud backups are deduplicated in order to reduce backup size, transfer times, and storage costs further. The backup media supported as of BackupAssist 10 are local disk, NAS, SAN, iSCSI, RDX, USB HDD, tape, public cloud, and private cloud.
Data Recovery
Data recovery can be performed on a scale from complete to very granular. For instance, an Exchange Server can be restored in its entirety, just the database, or individual mail items. BackupAssist includes a backup search tool which allows the user to search backups that are currently not connected. It does this by searching the backup libraries made when a backup is performed. Much like Google, it also supports wildcard searches. With BackupAssist's Hyper-V Advanced add-on, lost or damaged Hyper-V Guests can instantly be brought back online if they are lost or damaged. A user can run the guest off their backup media to ensure zero downtime. While this happens, a full recovery can be performed in the background. With virtual machines, BackupAssist is licensed per host, not per socket or VM. BackupAssist includes a recovery app called RecoverAssist, which acts as the boot environment when performing a bare-metal recovery. This environment includes a dozen well-known third-party disaster recovery and diagnostic apps. The BackupAssist support team can also be contacted from within the boot environment.
MultiSite Manager
Multiple installations of BackupAssist can be managed remotely via a web app called Multisite Manager. Management can be performed on the WAN, LAN, machine or backup job level. Through the app, data backup and restore jobs can be remotely scheduled. The app also allows for the remote deployment of BackupAssist to machines without it, remote report and license management. User accounts can be created with selected site permissions.
History
BackupAssist started as a software project designed to overcome shortcomings with NTBackup on Windows NT and 2000. In 2002, BackupAssist was released. As of 2017, BackupAssist has customers in 165 countries worldwide, including NASA and Fortune 500 companies.
