StoreGrid Key features:

1. Disk Backup with effortless bare-metal recovery for all Windows Desktop and Server platforms
2. Virtualization support for P2V, V2V migration to restore physical machine backups as VM in your virtual environments.
3. Support major Server Virtualization platforms like MS Hyper-V, VMware ESX, Citrix Zen and KVM
4. Offers granular integration with cPanel and WHMCS where you can offer domain backup and recovery service to your customers
5. Integrates with PSA platforms like AutoTask and ConnectWise
6. Complete recovery flexibility, choose your recovery time – from multiple recovery points to restore applications (like cPanel or MySQL) instantly to a specific point in time
7. StoreGrid application smart plugins ensure availability of business critical applications such as MySQL, cPanel, SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle.

and lots more…

If you have any questions on the above feature set of the product, please feel free to contact us at storegrid-hosting AT vembu DOT com.

We also have now opened up a new office here in Sunnyvale, CA and if you are prospect or a partner and would like to schedule a in-person meetup to discuss the product’s capabilities, please contact us at 1-408-981-3920

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.

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.

Choose Partners Who Listen—Find partners who evolve their features and define their roadmap based on the specific requirements of their customers.  These partners will have regular communication with their customers through a variety of interactions.  First, the partner’s support organization should have a formal feedback mechanism into product management and engineering to ensure that the customer’s voice is being heard.  This goes far beyond fixing bugs and includes usability and functional evolution of the product.  Second, look for partners who have formulated formal customer advisory boards and proactively reach out to their active customers to gather feedback on existing usability and functionality as well as input on the priorities of future releases.  Finally, look for partners who have executive-to-executive interaction so they can stay apprised of the macro business issues and other factors affecting your business.

Channel Commitment Means Everything—Many companies like to talk about being channel focused, but the proof is in the pudding.  Avoid working with companies that try to sell direct and through the MSP channel because invariably those companies will find themselves staring down the barrel of channel conflict.  It is important to partner with companies that is transparent while dealing with channel partners.  In addition, the company needs to understand the margin requirements of its channel partners and ensure that the discounting structure is clearly defined and handled in a consistent manner.  Select partners who understand services and the MSP community.  They need to appreciate recurring revenue and SLAs and the way YOU need financial and support arrangements to work.

The good news is that there are vendors who have a great reputation working with the MSP community.  Vembu was founded on a culture of close communication with its partners.  We realize that our MSP partners are living and breathing the customer experience every day and our goal is to support the product and drive the product roadmap based on what our partners need to grow their business.  We established a Customer Advisory Board several months ago and we have had several very successful meetings where 70+ Vembu partners have shared their feedback on usability, new releases and future requirements.

Vembu understands the MSP marketplace and our pricing reflects the goal of consistent discounting with high margins to maximize the revenue for our MSP partners.  We also live and breathe the MSP experience having built up a partner base of over 2500 MSPs.  We know your business depends on your reputation and your ability to provide high quality service to your customers.  Our commitment continues to be providing leading edge technology, great support and a roadmap that will keep you meeting the needs of your MSP customers now and in the future.

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

• Ed Monacelli
• Matt Dryfhout
• John Hankers
• Altus Koorts
• Dennis Levesque

We once again congratulate the winners and hope they are going to enjoy the Apple iPad v 2.

Others fret not! We’ll sending out more of such surveys in future and you could be the one next time. And yeah, your free license as promised will be credited to your Partner Zone account.

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

The folks at Interop sent us a special promo code through which you can get FREE EXPO PASS or 25% off on the conference pass. If you would like to get one, email us at storegrid-partner AT vembu DOT com

BTW, did you know ! Vembu Technologies is also recognized as finalist for Best of Interop 2011. InformationWeek Analytics and Interop Las Vegas 2011 Recognize Vembu Technologies for Market Leading Innovation. The Best of Interop Judging Committee, comprised of InformationWeek Analytics editors and analysts, reviewed over 100 entries and selected finalists based on the products with the most significant technical impact that are helping to move business technology forward.

See you there at the event and let us all share our experiences.

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

Synthetic Full Backup for Exchange Server Backup

One of the challenges for Service Providers in delivering Offsite Backups for Exchange Servers, has been running full backups from the customer’s site to their offsite data center on regular basis, say once a month. Without these regular full backups, the number of incremental log files in the backup data would continuously grow, making restore all that much more time consuming. Very large Exchange Server data and limited network bandwidth are the common constrains that service providers have to work within. They normally overcome these by seeding the full backups using external drives through StoreGrid data export/import capabilities or by setting up an on-site StoreGrid backup server which is then replicated (either by Replication Server seeding or directly to replication server) to an offsite StoreGrid replication server.

With the release of StoreGrid v3.5, StoreGrid now supports Synthetic Full Backups where during an additional full backup, only the changed data with respect to the previous full backup alone is sent to the backup server, instead of sending the entire Exchange Server data again. The logs are purged into the Exchange Server during a Synthetic Full Backup just like regular full backups. During the restore, the full backup, the Synthetic Full Backups and  the incremental log files backed up after the last Synthetic Full Backup are retrieved to restore the Exchange Server data.
For more details on Synthetic Full Backup on Exchange Server Backup, please refer this help document.

Synthetic Full Backup for File Backup

Service Providers managing large file backups for their customers sometimes run into scenario where the version files become huge (when files are frequently changed and the incremental backups are run for a long period of time), making the overall incremental backups larger and longer to complete. StoreGrid v3.5 extends Synthetic Full Backup feature to file backups as well, where if the size of a version file exceeds a certain percentage (can be set by user, default is 80%) of the file’s initial full backup, then StoreGrid v3.5 client will automatically run a Synthetic Full Backup of the file during the subsequent incremental backup. During Synthetic Full Backup of a file, only the changed blocks of the file with respect to the previous Full Backup (a Synthetic Full Backup) is backed up. The version files created after the Synthetic Full Backup will be small as it will be with respect to the last Synthetic Full Backup and not the initial full backup.

The details of Synthetic Full Backup for files can be found here.

Mail Level Restore

Often users by mistake delete emails that they later wish they had not. Service Providers trying to restore the deleted emails would prefer to restore minimal backup data and not the entire Exchange Server to retrieve the specific emails. StoreGrid v3.5 SP1 client now provides extensive search and filtering capabilities to enable Service Providers to select and restore specific emails into the Exchange Server from the restored mailbox data. The emails can be searched by From, To addresses, Subject, Date etc.

Like for example,  just the Sent Mails from 8am to 11am on a particular day from John’s mailbox alone could be restored back into the Exchange Server.

For more details on Mail Level Restore, please refer this help document.

Disk Image Backup and Bare Metal Restore with P2V (Beta)

Some of our partners have been running third party applications to take image backup of disk and backup that data using StoreGrid to an offsite backup server.  Such third party applications tend to be expensive and managing multiple solutions is often cumbersome to say the least. Partners have been therefore requesting us to provide Disk image and Bare Metal Restore capabilities natively within StoreGrid and that is exactly what we have done.

We launched a beta version of StoreGrid Disk Imaging and Bare Metal Restore (BMR) and P2V Backups (Physical to Virtual Conversion). It works on all Windows 2003 & above Servers and Windows XP & above desktops. It supports backing up the entire image of a disk or specific partitions. It also supports converting the Windows image into VMDK (VMware) or VHD (Windows Hyper-V) virtual image. In the event of the server disaster, partners can restore the machine on a virtual environment at their data center and provide business continuity for their customers.

More details of BMR and P2V capabilities within StoreGrid can be found in the following help documents:

http://www.storegrid.net/help/31/sp/PageHelp/bmr-backup-configuration.html
http://www.storegrid.net/help/31/sp/PageHelp/bmr-restore-configuration.html
http://www.storegrid.net/help/31/sp/PageHelp/bmr-recovery-through-cd.html

This is just the tip of the iceberg. We have lots more interesting features coming on the way like VMware Backup, Oracle and PostgreSQL Database Backup, support for SNMP, local+remote SQL and Exchange Server backup etc.  If you are a prospective partner who have been frustrated with some legacy backup software, we would encourage you to take advantage of our ‘competitive upgrade offer’ and equip your backup arsenal with latest features available with StoreGrid.

Contact us at storegrid-partner AT vembu DOT com to know more about our competitive upgrade offer.

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

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.

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.

This special doodle was created in the honor of PAC-MAN’s 30th Birthday, where you can refresh some of your old 8-bit memories and play PAC-MAN in the Google’s first ever playable doodle. You can start playing the game by clicking the ‘Insert Coin’ button on the home page of the Google or wait for few seconds for the game to start automatically. One more item to note here, Google has managed to remove the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button, where one of our old prophecy came true, atleast for the next 48 hours.

The PAC-MAN game has not done really bad either – it has kept up with the latest technologies. Since it initially made its appearance as an arcade game, it has made its appearance in PC, XBOX, PSP, and iPhone and now in the Google logo. This leaves me to expect a multi-player Cloud based PAC-MAN game for the PAC-MAN’s 31st Birthday. With Cloud Computing, I can visualize these cloud based retro games in the near future.

For Managed Service Providers, who would like to play PAC-MAN on the Google logo, enter the code ‘Online Backup Software’ on the Google Search box and then press the ‘Insert Coin’ button, aloha! your game is on!

Hurry up! This is only for the next 48 hours, then the ‘I’m feeling lucky’ button will come back and put you out of luck!

Google's new doodle PAC MAN

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