Addition of CloudNucleus strengthens our current Vembu offerings in the areas of Failover virtualization, P2V (Physical to Virtual Migration), P2P (Dis-similar hardware migration), Disk Imaging and Bare Metal Restore. Our partners have always been asking us for improvised support for offering enterprise class Disaster Recovery services and by this acquisition we proved our commitment to the channel one more time. Here’s what our CEO, Sekar Vembu said regarding this acquisition, “This combination is all about accelerating our ability to bring key functionality to our MSP and MHP partners. We’re combining best-of-breed storage technologies, two winning employee populations with similar reputations for customer focus, and two experienced management teams with highly complementary visions for the future of information management. This represents a significant win for the companies, our collective customers, employees and partners”

We intend to integrate the CloudNucleus technology offering into StoreGrid and deliver a unified Data Protection and Disaster Recovery software. We expect to have the first release of the integrated solution available during the end of October 2011.

“CloudNucleus’ employees, customers, and partners will see tremendous benefits from Vembu’s extensive partner community, expertise in data protection solutions for the MSP market, global presence and overall financial strength,” said Srivatsan Venkatesan, CloudNucleus’ founder and CEO.  We will now have additional resources to further accelerate the development of solutions that fulfill our mission of delivering technology that enables our partners to deliver truly differentiated services to their customers.” added Venkatesan

Srivatsan Venkatesan will be joining the Vembu team as VP – Product Management and drive the Vembu’s product development initiatives and enhance StoreGrid’s support in the areas of Virtualization backup, Continuous Data Protection and instant failover virtualization during disaster recovery.

“This would add a great tool to our company’s present Backup and Disaster Recovery Offerings” said Ed Monacelli, president of EMCS, “We are upgrading all our clients over to Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans and are confident to see an increased revenue from this integrated solution of Vembu and CloudNucleus”

We are confident that this acquisition will add more value to our existing channel partner base of both Vembu and CloudNucleus and enhance our core competencies to go after new set of customers. In case you have any questions regarding this acquisition, please feel free to mail us at storegrid-partner AT vembu DOT com

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 Pro Online Backup Service allows Value Added Resellers and Managed Service Providers to offer online backup service to their customers without worrying about storage or hardware infrastructure.

With the StoreGrid’s recent  granular integration with cPanel for domain backup and WHMCS for billing and provisioning automation, we headed straight to HostingCon 2011, San Diego to get feedback on these integrations from the hosting community. What we got was more than feedback; we received insight into how the industry is shifting. We personally spoke with more than 150 attendees who mostly comprised of hosting providers, Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and VARs. Many of the hosting providers who are currently offering pure hosting services that includes dedicated hosting, managed hosting, shared hosting, web hosting and VPN said they are looking at offering managed services including fully outsourced network management arrangements. During the show one MSP even asked “Hey! Do you see some convergence in the industry between hosting providers and MSPs?” Yes, many of the hosting providers whom we spoke with said they are planning to include managed services as a part of their short term business strategy. Of course there are hosting providers, who already have managed service offerings, but I am talking about pure play hosting providers stretching their business towards managed services and are optimistic about the lucrative opportunity.

So, what does this mean for Vembu? Hosting providers jumping in the managed services market have two major requirements. One is to backup the domains through their hosted control panel and the other is to offer a fully managed backup service for not just the data hosted in their data canter, but also for customers’ on premise data.

Below are some of the recent additions and enhancements in StoreGrid which makes it a compelling solution for both hosting providers and MSPs.

1. Granular integration with cPanel with the ability to perform restore from cPanel client console
2. Billing and provisioning integration with WHMCS
3. Comprehensive reseller management
4. Support  for Disk Imaging, Bare Metal Restore and P2V (physical to virtual) on all windows machines
5. Ability to backup Virtual Machines (VMware and Hyper-V)
6. Integration with PSA and RMM platforms like ConnectWise and Autotask
7. and lot’s more….

We still have a long way to go to satisfy all the needs of both hosting and managed services industry and our team here at Vembu is hard at work to ensure we meet your needs. Soon you will hear about additional integrations and strategic partnerships that will benefit our partners including integration with Parallels Plesk, Level Platforms, Ubersmith etc…With our ever growing partner base it is important for us to understand even a small change in the industry and at any point in time we want our partners to stay ahead of competition. Please let us know your thoughts and needs.

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 Pro Online Backup Service allows Value Added Resellers and Managed Service Providers to offer online backup service to their customers without worrying about storage or hardware infrastructure.

Some of the features that might be of important to you as a Managed Service Provider are listed below

• Disk Imaging and Bare Metal Restore on all Windows Servers and Workstations
• P2V capability where you can convert a physical machine to either an VMware or Hyper-V file
• Support for backing up virtual machines (VMware and Hyper-V)
• Centralized monitoring and management of clients and backup servers
• Integration with leading PSA and RMM platforms like Connectwise, Autotask etc..
• and lot’s more…

As a Managed Hosting Provider, you might be interested in knowing what’s cooking in here for you

• Granular integration with cPanel and WHMCS
• Ability to backup multiple domains / databases / files / settings hosted through cPanel
• Single click restore of domains either through StoreGrid web console or cPanel console
• Ability for billing and provisioning through WHMCS
• Extensive support for backing up Linux and FreeBSD environments
• and lots more…

For more information, please contact storegrid-partner@vembu.com or call us at 1-432-558-0055

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 Pro Online Backup Service allows Value Added Resellers and Managed Service Providers to offer online backup service to their customers without worrying about storage or hardware infrastructure.

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

 
1. Expand Your Customer Base—Data Protection is one of the key strategic services you can offer and the SMB market is wide open for grabs. Every SMB would need backup solutions to protect their valuable data and most struggle with cumbersome, ineffective and insecure solutions.  In addition, data protection is a strategic service that allows you to add value by providing one of the most sensitive and critical aspects of a company’s business.  You can help your customers understand the trade-offs between RPO and RTO and the importance of understanding how to build a business continuity plan.
2. Generate Additional (Recurring) Revenues From Your Existing Customers — For break/fix customers as well as customers you have provided professional services, data protection services allow a natural expansion of your relationship to a model of recurring revenue and value.  Many customers are looking for alternatives to traditional backup solutions and a managed service presents an attractive alternative.
3. Create Sticky Customers by Protecting and Storing Their Data — When you are protecting your customer’s data you have become an indispensable partner in their business. Hiring a new break fix VAR is easy; moving their data to a new data protection service provider is not. What’s more,  if your customer finally gets a data protection service that works well and meets his RPO and RTO objectives they will not want to leave you.
4. Evolve Your Customer Relationships — Selling a strategic service like data protection allows you to completely change your relationship with your customer from being “another” vendor selling hardware/software, to being his “virtual CIO” making strategic recommendations and delivering critical business systems. When developing a business continuity plan, you will gain deep and broad understanding of customer’s business. This allows you to deliver even more value down the road.
5. Ride the Wave of Growth— One of the beauties of any service tied to data is that data typically grows at a minimum of 20% year over year.  This means that your data protection service will grow by an average of 20% even if you don’t add new customers.  That is why it is important to create a business model that is able to capture the data growth.
6. Increase Your Brand Value by Selling a Customized Offering — Promote the look and feel of your colors, your logo and your brand.  This includes all customer-facing UI components as well as reports.  This helps establish domain expertise for your company even if the majority of the technical expertise is coming from your service partner.
7. Leverage Existing Infrastructure— If you have made an investment in infrastructure you can leverage that investment by pointing your customer’s data to your data center.  If you haven’t made that investment and don’t want to, you can point your customer data at your service provider partner and let them provide the hardware, software and operations staff, while you focus your energy on professional services engagements and sales.
8. It’s easy – An integrated console provides easy remote administration. Whether you want to be a master MSP managing other service providers or an MSP managing multiple customers, a centralized client management interface is crucial.  The web-based console provides a wide range of control over both backups and restores.  You can designate which functions are automated while still maintaining the ability to manage and monitor the entire backup and recovery process from anywhere and at any time.  In a disaster situation, you can restore files over the web or perform complete bare metal restores of desktops or servers.

Summary

Data protection services are one of the most strategic and broadly applicable services you can sell.  Vembu StoreGrid provides a world-class platform with tremendous flexibility for you to put together a flexible data protection practice with a suite of different packages meeting the needs of a range of customers. All of the solutions are fully brandable so you can present a single image to your customers and continue to build the value of your company.  As customers look to move away from legacy backup solutions, your ability to provide a path forward for this ever growing space (both in terms of number of customers and data per customer) will make you the partner of choice for your small business customers.

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 Pro Online Backup Service allows Value Added Resellers and Managed Service Providers to offer online backup service to their customers without worrying about storage or hardware infrastructure.

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

Some of the key benefits you get by partnering with Vembu StoreGrid are listed below:

• Benefit from a stable product with a comprehensive feature set that is built from the ground up to meet the requirements of Managed Service Providers and Value Added Resellers.
• No need to worry about price or cost fluctuation like other competitors in the market as we have priced the product just right and that will allow MSP’s to offer enterprise class online backup service at a price that is well suited for SMBs.
• Multi-tenant architecture with extensive ‘Reseller Management Feature’ with individual access roles for MSPs (Administrator), Reseller, Customer (IT Manager) and Clients.
• Support for backing up Windows Hyper-V and VMware servers where you can take a snapshot of individual Guest OS. Priced at only USD 48 / socket per year – You can run an average of 12 – 15 VMs in a socket.
• Extensive marketing support from a company who understands the MSP market much better than its competitors. Free product training, Successful Business case for MSPs, Free Marketing Materials etc.
• Support for Web Services APIs to automate your billing and invoicing through any third party billing application.
• Native Integration with PSA and RMM platforms like ConnectWise, AutoTask  and many more
• Simplified Adobe Flex based Interface for Desktops and Laptops.
• We are a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner – Gold Competency in ISV, VMware Technology Alliance Partner and Redhat ISV ready Partner. This ensures we stay in tune with the latest technology updates and our product supports all the latest applications and new developments like Microsoft Exchange 2010 (Mail Level Restore), SharePoint 2010 etc.
• And a lot more…

If you have made an investment in a competitor’s product and are suffering from frequent price rises without sufficient justification or  inadequate feature set, this competitive upgrade will ease your move by 50% off your purchase. By partnering with Vembu, you can now benefit from a software solution that is trusted by more than 2500 Managed Service Providers worldwide.

Last but not least, you can enjoy our fanatical support (24 x 7 x 365) through Phone, email, Chat, IM, Remote etc… which means we allow you to focus on improving your business and profit margins while our support team helps you out with any technical assistance that you might need. You can check out some of our successful case studies here.

In case you need more details on this offer you can immediately call 1-432-558-0055 or send us an email to storegrid-partner AT vembu DOT com with the subject line “competitive upgrade”.

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 Pro Online Backup Service allows Value Added Resellers and Managed Service Providers to offer online backup service to their customers without worrying about storage or hardware infrastructure.

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

With Vembu Home Synchronization feature, you can seamlessly work on a document from your office PC or your home PC without having to copy files back and forth. Once you add a document to be synchronized with Vembu Home, the document will be automatically synchronized to any number of devices you want the document to be available.

Configuring Vembu Home to sync your data

After installing Vembu Home in your computer, register for free Vembu Home account by accessing Vembu Home Agent console,

Once you complete with the registration process, login to Vembu Home Agent Console.

Once logged in, you don’t have to use the Vembu Home Agent Console to synchronize your files. You can simply sync your data right from your Windows explorer as you browse files.

Right-click on a file or folder from your Windows Explorer, select Sync with Vembu Home and then choose either one of the following option to synchronize your data across multiple devices.

Copy to sync folder – Choosing this option will copy the selected file or folder for synchronization to the Vembu Sync folder. You need to manually do this every time you change the file in the original location so that the changes would be synchronized to the Vembu Home Cloud and subsequently to other devices you have configured.

Sync from current location – Choosing this option will include the selected file or folder for Synchronization from its current location – without copying to the Vembu Sync folder. If you modify the file, the synchronization process will be automatically synchronize the modified content to the Vembu Home Cloud and subsequently to other devices you have configured.

Sharing files Online through Vembu Home

If you need to share some of your files with your friends or colleagues online, Vembu Home is a simple and secure tool to achieve this. You can upload and share files online from your desktop with a single click.

Right-click a file or folder in Windows Explorer, select “Sync with Vembu Home” and then choose “Upload and Share” option to share files online.

Upload and share – Choosing this option will upload the selected file to Vembu Home Cloud and provide you with a link you could share with others.

For more details on Vembu Home’s File Synchronization & File Sharing features, please refer this document http://home.vembu.com/features.php

If you haven’t installed the Vembu Home yet, now is the time to do it. We will be adding more and more exciting features in the near future. If you are an existing user, please find the instructions to upgrade to the latest version of Vembu Home from here.

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.

Firstly, I want to state upfront that I do not like to beat around the bush to gain some PR advantage. We have no interest in succeeding by hook or crook. We want to succeed by adding true value to our partners and customers and we expect our partners to also want to succeed by adding true value to their customers. I personally hate to make money from anyone who did not gain some value through our product and services. That is one reason I absolutely do not pitch our business to venture capitalists as I do not want to be obliged to investors and do things against my philosophy just to provide returns to them.

Let me first do a reality check on our current business model:

1. 95% of our revenues are generated by our close to 2000 partners. 90% to 95% of these partners are managed service providers who host StoreGrid in their data center infrastructure and offer a managed online backup service to their customers. Between 5% and 10% of our partners would be hosting providers who provide a backup service to their cloud hosting, managed hosting or co-location customers. I want to mention that in our current business model there is no commitment, in terms of meeting some sales targets, we expect from partners – they simply purchase licenses upfront and get a volume discount or purchase licenses as and when they add a customer to their managed backup service. We do not insist on any long term contract or anything. Our partners continue to stay with us because they see value in continuing with us and not because of any contractual obligations.

2. 80% of our partners service customers with less than 100 employees. Most of our partners act as the outsourced IT manager taking care of everything IT for their customers and most of these customers may not even have an internal IT person and fully trust the local MSP for their IT needs. It is also important to mention that we have no visibility into our partners’ customers. We do not even know who these customers are. In the last 4 years of us focusing on this business model, we have never had a situation of a customer of our partner contacting us to purchase our product directly from us. So there is no question of competing against our partners by undercutting them by directly selling to their end customers.

3. Our partners have anything between 10 and 500 customers spread equally across all sizes. 50% of our partners have converted less than 10% of their customers to StoreGrid based managed backup service and 26% say they have converted between 10% and 25% of their customers to StoreGrid based managed backup service. Though we are not exactly sure why our partners have not been able to convert more of their existing customers, I am sure our partners are doing their best to get them converted and it will just be matter of time majority of our partners’ customers are moved to StoreGrid.

4. 92% of our partners say StoreGrid as a product is either excellent or good. We have been adding several new features to the product and would continue to do so and improve the value we offer to our partners and their end customers. Hopefully, as StoreGrid evolves and matures, our partners would be able to convert more of their customers going forward.

5. On the quality of technical support too, we have been rated highly by our partners – the average rating being 4.3/5.0. I want to highlight that this is about the free technical support we provide to our partners as part of their subscription license fee we charge them. We do offer premium technical support with telephone support and guaranteed response times etc. No wonder the number of takers for that is rather small considering our basic free support is one of the best in the industry.

6. It has taken four years for us to get to 2000 partners. We have spent considerable amount of money and resources in acquiring these partners. Our success depends upon the ability of our existing partners to add more and more customers to their StoreGrid based managed backup service and our ability to add thousands of new partners every year.

We as a business have to keep looking for diversification into different market segments and drive growth with the aim for taking a leadership position in this data protection domain. Indeed we like our current business model of serving the small business customers through our dedicated channel partners. We will continue to invest and grow this market going forward. But as StoreGrid evolves, we believe we have a chance to position StoreGrid in the medium sized business segment. Most of our ongoing strategy is based on feedback from our existing partners/customers and also some of our prospective partners and customers. Let me talk about our immediate diversification strategies and why this is not a strategy to compete with our partners or sell directly to their customers.

Why Vembu Home Online Backup Service to Consumers

Consider the fact that we have signed up close to 2000 partners in the last 4 years and that all our active partners put together have converted possibly 30,000 or more business customers to their StoreGrid based managed online backup service. The two well-known current brand names in online backup domain, Mozy and Carbonite started off by targeting consumers and spent quite a bit of money in building a brand amongst consumers. It is a different matter that they may not be really viable, long term businesses trying to treat backup as a commodity for even business customers. But by lieu of building a brand amongst consumers they get lot more attention from the press, the bloggers and even amongst the MSPs than they deserve. That is the reality. We can only build a brand by focusing on the consumer market or by focusing on the large enterprises. It is not easy to build a brand by focusing on the SMB market that too through the channel. Why is a brand important to us? It is important because it will reduce the cost of acquiring a lead for us and it will also help us convert more of our leads into partners as it will give the prospective partners more confidence in partnering with a reasonably well known brand than dealing with what may be perceived as an obscure little company. It is a different matter that we feel we have a very good product backed up by a highly committed technical support. When it comes to signing up large number of customers or partners, a recognizable brand name definitely matters. By providing services to consumers we want to build a brand name in the cloud storage domain.

I see no reason why our MSP partners should feel threatened by our consumer focused initiative. By definition, MSPs focus on business customers who tend to outsource their IT as they see better value in an MSP managing their IT rather than themselves. The data I have provided about our partners establish that very clearly. Of course there are always some businesses which are confused. They may have some IT capability internally and they may look at the commodity storage services available and start comparing them with the MSP provided IT service. Either the MSP has to educate such customers about the value they bring to the table or just let the customer try the commodity service and figure it out for themselves. For the Vembu Partners, even if we do not provide a commodity online backup services to the consumers, these businesses are going to compare the MSP services with the other competitive consumer focused commodity services anyway. The business customer who is confused and does not see the value the local MSP bring to the table is anyway lost and there is no point in MSPs trying to win them over. If someone does not see the value it is better to not win them over as a customer as it will only result in unhappy customers because of mismatched expectations.

Also, our Vembu Home backup service license agreement clearly precludes businesses from using the service. Even those business users signing up as individual consumers would have anyway signed up with a competitor. Vembu, as a business, wants to win the mind share of such business users too. Once we win their mind share, there is a distinct possibility that they realize that commodity online services may not be all that perfect for businesses (as they are for consumers). And they may be more willing to see the value the local MSP bring to the table. When that happens we surely want to provide those businesses as a lead to our MSP partners. The modalities of how that will happen have to be worked out. We need to start somewhere and hopefully it will all work out as we plan.

Of course, there are some MSP partners who claim they also want to go after the consumer market. The same logic as business customers applies here too. If there really is a consumer need which the MSP tries to fulfill and the consumer sees value, it is fine. But if the consumer does not see the value the MSP offers, then she is anyway going to go with a commodity service. Why cannot it be Vembu? Why should Vembu give up serving that consumer and win their mind share if it can help us in some intangible way. That is what we think. Majority of our MSP partners focus on business customers. We do not believe it is possible for the MSPs to easily offer a commodity service to consumers. If they want to do that they have to become SaaS vendors themselves by creating and owning the core IP etc. This is the reality we believe in and we need to follow a strategy based on what we believe in. Commodity consumer offering will always be part of a larger offering as it is impossible to sustain a business by only offering commodity services to consumers. It is always offered with a larger strategic goal in mind. If some MSPs want to also offer commodity services to consumers they cannot do that simply by licensing the IP for the core services from a vendor. They have to own the IP themselves and in that case they are no longer an MSP.

Why Vembu Pro Online Backup Services

Since the time we released our StoreGrid Service Provider Edition for MSPs, we have always had prospective partners express interest in reselling a managed backup service hosted by Vembu rather than hosting it themselves and managing them. As a vendor we initially decided to be a pure software vendor as we did not want to invest in building our own data center and the associated NOC. We have always been quick to offer options to our partners including having the ability to host StoreGrid in “Infrastructure as a Cloud Service” like Amazon Web Services. Now that we have enough experience in working with cloud computing services like Amazon Web Services we believe we now are in a position to host StoreGrid in Amazon Web Services and offer business an online backup service. The Vembu Pro online backup service will be offered exclusively through the channel. That means it is just an extension to our current business model where we license StoreGrid to our MSP partners for them to host and provide a service. Even our existing MSP partners have a choice now. They can offer options to their customers where in the backup is done to their data center or if the customer chooses the backup can be done to the Amazon Cloud. We probably are the first serious vendor focused on the channel providing such a capability. Backing up to the Amazon Cloud, specifically the S3 infrastructure, can be such a compelling selling point to the MSPs. At least that is what we are hoping for.

As I said, Vembu Pro will be offered exclusively through the channel. And we are also putting together an SMB lead generation program through which we want to provide SMBs interested in backing up to the Amazon Web Services as leads to our partners. These are in early stages but it is just a matter of time before all these things come together. And believe me when I say Vembu Home for consumers is an important component of this whole strategy and it is not meant to compete with our partners by undercutting them.

What about StoreGrid Professional Edition – the on-premise or branch office backup solution?

Until now we have never had to face a question about our StoreGrid Professional Edition. It has been there even before the release of our Service Provider Edition. So far, we never actively marketed it. But we do get sales from businesses that is looking for a self managed on-premise backup solution or other larger businesses for consolidating their branch office backups to a centralized data center. Though there are direct sales from businesses we also have about 50 resellers actively reselling the StoreGrid Professional Edition. We have a Channel program for that too and a few of our MSP partners also resell StoreGrid Professional Edition apart from offering an online backups service to their customers. We never really paid much attention to selling the StoreGrid Professional Edition and whatever has been happening is on its own. We are evolving StoreGrid Professional Edition recently and we believe it is just a matter of time before we are in a position to take on the likes of Symantec Backup Exec – by offering compelling features at 1/5th or 1/10th the price. We will then actively seek resellers to push StoreGrid Professional Edition to customers who want to stick to on-premise backups. As I said we do have a channel program already in place which can be fine tuned and evolved based on market requirements. Here again our main strategy is to involve the channel wherever it makes sense. But there are these occasional online sales which happen across the world on its own. If ever such a sale happens because of some effort from our channel partner we will surely compensate them for that. And this is the type of guarantee I can provide the channel as of now. We will also be seriously looking at some kind of customer registration program wherein a channel partner can register a customer with us and we then make sure any direct communication from the customer is always routed through the channel partner. We do have such a program in a small scale in India with a reseller.

I sincerely hope this long post is treated as an honest effort from our side to dispel any doubts in the minds of our partners about our ongoing strategy. I am sure there are some of our partners who are not going to be entirely happy. To them I want to say that we are as open and transparent as it can get. We say things as they are however uncomfortable the facts are. End of the day, our long term success can only be guaranteed only if we can continuously provide value to the end customers. Any strategy which revolves around an assumption of customer ignorance cannot last long and as a company we are uncomfortable in forging any strategy based on an assumption of customer ignorance.

I am open to honest feedback and suggestions based on market reality where the internet and the social media have turned all the existing business models upside down.

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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Why did we launch only 10 GB storage plan?

With this initial production launch, we want to get to know more about Vembu Home user’s adoption for cloud storage. Based on the results and user feedback we are planning to provide premium storage options in  the coming months.

What shall you do if you need more storage immediately in the cloud?

Please e-mail Vembu Home support at help@vembu.com with your requirements. We will try hard to incorporate your suggestion as we do more updates to Vembu Home.

Besides payment plan and making Vembu Home production ready, lots of exciting stuff has happened with this update. While most of the changes are back-end performance stuff, there has been a prolific effort in fixing bugs and making Vembu Home easy to use. Surely, this update belongs to the Vembu Home Server cluster, which has sort of come of age to provide a smooth and uninterrupted service for our users. Watch out for lots more cool stuff coming your way in our coming updates.

The above post was written by Jay 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.

[Updated @ 09:30 AM PDT] Maintenance operation is still going on, we will update you once the service is up and running.

[Update @ 10:30 AM PDT] Maintenance in our Amazon infrastructure has been completed. Vembu Home service is now available. More details on the maintenance update once our initial stability tests are complete.

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

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.