Get APLawrence.com by RSSMicrolite Edge 2.1 released
Thu Jan 6 20:14:22 2005 Microlite Edge
2.1 released
Posted by Tony Lawrence
Search Keys: backups
Referencing: http://www.microlite.com/
Those of using Microlite will want to download the newest 2.1 release. It's a free upgrade for 2.0 users, and adds the ability to use a FTP server for backup, any mountable device, or even just a local directory.
(Yes, I sell this product. Contact me by email for pricing)
You don't have to worry about file size limitations for these backups; Edge breaks the backup into < 2GB sections. Bare metal disaster recovery restores can be done from an ftp server.
These features let you centralize backups to one server or spread multiple backups to various machines.
From Microlite's product announcement:
We are pleased to announce that BackupEDGE 2.1 is now shipping for the following platforms:
* SCO OpenServer 5.0.4 - 5.0.7
* SCO UnixWare 7.1.0-7.1.4
* Linux systems running 2.4.x kernels on Intel IA32
architecture.
BackupEDGE 2.1 for AIX and for Linux 2.6.x kernels is currently in development. We'll make another announcement when these platforms are ready.
Logistics
BackupEDGE 2.1 is a no-charge update for BackupEDGE 2.0.x registered licensees, and an inexpensive upgrade for users of our older 1.x products, as well as competing products, since BackupEDGE competitive upgrade pricing is generally less expensive than most other vendors' standard upgrade.
BackupEDGE 2.0.x licensees can simply download the update from the Microlite web site manually and install it directly over their current product. No license changes are required. Or, choose the auto update functionality from within EDGEMENU if the target machine is on the Internet. All 2.0 licenses remain valid for 2.1.
Channel partners with in-stock, unregistered media kits may request replacement CDs by emailing to sales@microlite.com.
New Features in 2.1
* Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices of any kind become valid
BackupEDGE storage Resources.
* Removable hard drives, flash drives and dedicated directories are
now functional as valid storage devices, subject to some
limitations designed to ensure that they are not accidentally
erased as part of the automated disaster recovery process.
* Multi-volume backups of any media type now have Fast File
Restore� / Instant File Restore� capability.
Potential Uses
* Consolidate all your server backups by sending them to a data
center, eliminating the expense of local storage devices.
* Become a backup data center for your clients, stores, etc.
* Use any Network Attached Storage (NAS) device from any vendor to
reduce backup windows and consolidate archives.
* Create your own inexpensive storage server.
* Have two servers backup to each other for redundancy, over your
Intranet or the Internet.
* Create a ring topology, allowing each server to store archives to
another server.
* Backup multiple servers to the same storage device
concurrently.
* Increase the frequency of data protection. Perform multiple
differential/incremental backups per day.
* Combine traditional media, NAS, Internet backups as
desired.
* Use removable USB hard drives as backup devices.
* Lower the cost of individual servers by eliminating tape drives
completely.
Our revolutionary new Transparent Media� technology makes it all possible. Any server or appliance on the network (or Internet) becomes a full-featured backup, restore and disaster recovery device. Full-featured means we've given network backups the same set of capabilities afforded by locally attached storage devices, including...
* Backup / Verify / Restore of entire systems or parts of systems
(called Domains).
* Instant File Restore, allowing access to individual files or
directories on remote archives within seconds.
* Full Security with optional encryption of the network link,
archive contents, or both.
* Disaster Recovery access to remote archives.
Removable hard drives and flash media, as well as dedicated directories, get the same functionality. How NAS works with BackupEDGE
BackupEDGE 2.1 builds a full-featured, high-performance, high security ftp client directly into the backup engine. This allows any directory/folder on virtually any system or appliance equipped with an ftp server to act as a standard storage Resource for BackupEDGE. The system/appliance acting as the NAS server for archives...
* Does not need to have a copy of BackupEDGE installed.
* Can be running UNIX, Linux, Windows or even an embedded OS, as
long as it has an ftp server.
* Can have any type of filesystem. Our Transparent Media technology
automatically segments archives as necessary, eliminating "ulimit"
restrictions and the 2GB limitation associated with "file" archives
on some operating systems.
* Can have virtually any type of ftp server. Modern ftp servers
include ftps, a secure ftp transport allowing encrypted
transmissions. BackupEDGE can use ftps with the addition of the
Encryption License. Note that the Encryption License also allows
the archive itself to be encrypted at the remote site, which is
perfect for complying with data privacy and security regulations
and when dealing with third-party data centers.
* Does not need to have CIFS/Samba/NFS type mount access to the
system being backed up. These impose performance penalties,
compromise security and are a nightmare when it comes to disaster
recovery.
Building ftp directly into the backup engine increases the reliability of the data stream and eliminates "store and forward" backups that take extra disk space and add complexity. With 5,000 character pathnames, state-of-the-art compression, world-class encryption and three-way integrity checking, the exclusive BackupEDGE engine has been engineered with all of the proper infrastructure for network backups.
Enter your email address for automatic notification of new posts here
(be sure to whitelist 'feedburner.com' if you use spam filtering)
Installation and light training Boston and New England
Reliable and experienced, punctual and professional.
| Views for this page | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Today | This Week | This Month | This Year | Overall |
| 1 | 1 | 2 | 201 | 2,060 |
Have you tried Searching this site?
Unix/Linux/Mac OS X support by phone, email or on-site: Support Rates
This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more. We appreciate comments and article submissions.
Your ad here - $24.00 yearly!
http://www.vss3.com SCO/Caldera OpenServer, Unixware & Linux. Tarantella & Non-stop Clustering
SCO, OpenServer, UnixWare, software, servers, security, networks, installation, administration, troubleshooting, maintenance, Watchguard, firewalls, VPNs, e-mail. Visit us at http://opensystemscomputing.com and www.go2unix.com.
http://www.m3ipinc.com Security, firewalls, ids, audits, vulnerability assesments, BS7799, HIPAA, GLB, incident handling
Related Posts
Publish your articles, comments, book reviews or opinions here!
CommentsBlog1224 :
---January 7, 2005
For what it is worth, I upgraded 2 linux machines to this version, and *both* of them failed to do a restore. Each machine also gave two different error messages! One said, "Directory information too long", and the other said "No medium detected". The no medium detected is pretty bad error handling, since I was using the FFR utility, which looks at the header on the tape, and compares it to any database that edge has. Obviously, there was media in the drive, or it would not have given me the files to select from the database.
Both are Linux machines, using the glibc 2.0/2.2 Edge version. I have not tested this on my SCO machine. I have also reported this to Microlite, and have not heard back from them yet.
I hope others have better luck, but for now, I had to "downgrade" both machines to 2.0.x so I could use that basic restore feature :-)
--BruceGarlock
---January 7, 2005
Wow. That is really surprising, because these guys do a LOT of beta testing.
I had no problems backing up or restoring on my Linux box with this release..
--TonyLawrence
---January 7, 2005
Yes, this is the first time I have had any trouble with any of their releases, where I could not restore. I am sending some debugging output. I upgraded both machines again to the new release, and sure enough, both failed with the same errors. I am sending the output to them now. I will let you know what they come up with.
--BruceGarlock
---January 10, 2005
Heard anything yet? I just put this up on another Linux box with an IOMEGA REV drive.. tested and it restores no problems..
--TonyLawrence
---January 10, 2005
I am working with Frank from Microlite right now. He is actually on my machine. I gave hime sudo access - I figured they are a trustworthy company, and this is my home machine anyway.
How's that for support? They log right in, and fix things! Also, Microlite always acts quickly, anytime I have ever emailed them. This is one reason why I prefer to work with smaller companies over larger ones. You usually get to know the people fairly well.
I also learned that going back to an older version, should require a 'fresh' install, versus just updating. I moved the old version, to /usr/lib/edge.SAVE, and copied over /usr/lib/edge.SAVE/config/edge.register to the new (old) version to keep the license stuff in tact.
How do other folks feel about letting a vendor ssh in, and use sudo (basically root) for fixing things? I figured I would give him the same perms as root, since I had no idea what commands he would need, or what device files he would need to be able to write to.
--BruceGarlock
The developer, Frank, also noted that they have found some instances where using 02.02.01b1 would have trouble with older db indexes, and that is what he thought my problem was.
Tony, have you trialed this with any machines that have updated from an older version to the newer version, and used the FFR utility? I just want to make sure we are comparing apples to apples.
--BruceGarlock
---January 10, 2005
Only one of mine was an upgrade, but I did not try restoring from older backup sets - only ones created new.
If the db's are the problem, you could just reindex the media.. or not use FFR for those
I'd let Frank sudo on my machines, yes.
--TonyLawrence
---January 11, 2005
Frank is a very good guy, indeed! Here is what he has found out so far, and I will report back after tonights backups, with the change he is suggesting, and how things are affected.
<pre> "I see what is going on, I think.
I think the fixed block size of the tape drive is causing linux
to help us out a bit, and try to pre-cache some of the data. When
edge tells the drive to position, linux still provides some cached
data afterwards, as though the tape hadn't gone anywhere.
For example, I grabbed the file that edge created to record which
sections to restore. There were two entries: one for the label, and
one for some file on the tape. If I delete the label entry, it
sucessfully restores the file. When both are together, the archive
it produces has the label, some junk (which is fine, I think), then
the third file on the tape!
Anyway, I'm going to have to go looking around for what's going on
here, but I suspect that as a short-term solution, switching the
hardware block size to 0 from -1 in edgemenu:Admin:Define Resources
will fix it, since linux won't try to cache a variable block tape
unless it's very smart or very dumb. I have not changed this, though." </pre>
I can say this: Microlite has a customer for life, for providing me with this kind of support! I just don't think a large commercial company is capable of that kind of personalized support. I also did not have to take 20 minutes of my time filling out forms. Simply email support@microlite.com. Great company.
--BruceGarlock
---January 11, 2005
Setting the HW block size to 0 from -1 did the trick! I can know restore from my backups. I will let Frank know. My next question is how this will affect my monthly backups; will they not be able to be restored? I have several monthly backups which I keep off-site, which where made with the HW block setting at -1. Also, I am guessing the -1 is a default value? I cannot remember changing this to -1. In fact, I am not even sure what -1 would mean, other than no HW block, but I would think 0 would mean none. I will have to look this one up.
--BruceGarlock
---January 11, 2005
The default for a tape device is -1, but it's been a long, long time since I've used tape for backup - I'm DVD-RAM and IOMEGA REV on all my systems and most clients.. of course tape still has that big, big capacity, but the IOMEGA fits 99% of my customers.
--TonyLawrence
Other than price, what would you say are the advantages to the REV drive? We have kind of standardized on Sony AIT drives at our business, for compatibility. Our art department has a autoloader tape robot, with 5 sony AIT-3 drives, to backup our huge artwork archive. These files are huge, so we need a large tape drive to keep them archived. I have an AIT-3 drive on one server, and an AIT-2 drive on another. I actually have an AIT-2 drive at home. I have a lot of data, and need a large medium to back it up. It looks like the REV would fit my home needs, but I like to keep things the same at home, as at work, since I do a lot of testing at home before I deploy something at work. Plus, if I needed to archive off stuff at work, I could restore at home, if the size was larger than a DVD. I have not had to do this often, but it has helped on one occasion.
Do they make an internal version of the REV drive? Those look like nice units. How would you rank their reliability?
--BruceGarlock
Note that USB REV's cannot be used for bootable backups.
Check the link to Microlite below.
But you can walk the ext USB REV from machine to machine and take it home. When people use external REVs, I think they
generally are USB, but external scsi (and firewire) are
also offered by Iomega.
Dan Martin
Team 1 Systems
---January 11, 2005
Yes, they make internal IDE versions. I have one here on my main server - think it was around $500 with 5 disks..
Too new to be sure of reliability, but IOMEGA seems to think it will be excellent, and so does Microlite.
Bootable, of course. Fast. Medium capacity, reasonable price.
Lots of product info at their website:
----
Since this is not a "sealed" hard drive, is contamination an issue when moving the disks from place to place?
Iomega devoted a lot of attention to this, and has made great technical progress in the area of contamination control, employing a number of patent-pending and trade-secret technologies to guard against failures. The spindle motor is in the cartridge and not the drive, specifically to eliminate the spindle hole, a potential source of contamination. With no spindle hole, the cartridge is sealed at all times while it is out of the drive. Upon insertion, the disk door is sealed to a mating door in the drive. This gasket sealing ensures minimal introduction of foreign matter. During operation, air flow is specially channeled around the media heads to flush away any potential contamination. Algorithms in the drive firmware also monitor the system and if necessary apply a special head cleaning mechanism. Finally, the Iomega REV drive uses advanced ECC error correction when writing data to the disk, which compensates for localized media issues.
----
--TonyLawrence
Tony, could you post some "real" statistics about the speed of your backups, like this output from edge:
SUMMARY - BACKUP
Serial Number = xxxxxxxxxx
Date = Tue Jan 11 01:49:05 2005
Files Encountered = 599292
Total Data = 44.85GB
Data Written = 45.26GB
Elapsed Time = 01:38:44
Data Transfer Speed = 27.814 GB/hr
= 474.702 MB/min
= 8296034 bytes/sec
Exit Status = 0
I am just wondering what the "normal" tansfer speed of this drive is, since manufacturers tend to "pad" their data to make things look good. Obviously, on a larger system, the backup cannot take all night, or things are incredibly slow when users start logging in, and hammering on the server.
--BruceGarlock
PS: I do not know why, but when I copy/paste that output from edge, it does not do any <CR>, so I had to double space it to make it readable.
---January 11, 2005
Sure: but I'm going to move this to the forum because it's getting off topic
Look for it there shortly
--TonyLawrence
---January 15, 2005
Tue Feb 15 23:44:00 2005: Subject: Review TonyLawrence
Review is here: http://aplawrence.com/Reviews/backupedge21.html
Add your comments