Backup Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials, Windows Server 2012 Essentials

One important storage principle that many people forget is that RAID is not a backup solution, it is a method of achieving performance targets, redundancy, and up-time. Users backup their PCs to their local servers, but often forget to backup server data off-site. This is especially concerning for any data using the local server as primary storage. One option employed by users is to backup server data to the cloud which provides a redundant, off-site backup solution. Cloudberry Labs’ CloudBerry Online Backup for Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (code name Aurora) is a program that automates cloud backup and also automates server backup to a network share.CloudBerry Online Backup for Small Business Server 2011 Essentials (code name Aurora) supports Amazon S3 storage, Microsoft Azure Blob storage, Nirvanix Storage Delivery Network, and Dunkel Storage (Germany). This gives users a few options when it comes to cloud storage vendors. Of course, I am never content with doing easy things like using software for it’s most often used purpose, so I decided to skip the cloud back-up for now, and see if I could get my SBS 2011 Essentials Release Candidate Hyper-V virtual machine to backup to my test WHS (v1). Some people are probably wondering why I would want to backup to a machine that is 2m away versus to the cloud, and the simple answer is that I have been playing with 10-gigabit interconnects, including multi-port adapters.

CloudBerry Online Backup Features:

• Seamlessly integrates with SBS 2011 Essentials control panel
• Scheduling capabilities
• Data encryption
• Data retention schedule
• Secure online storage
• Data versioning
• Differential backup
• The ability to restore to a particular date
• Backup verification
• Backup Window
• Automatically delete files from online storage if the were deleted locally
• Backup to Multiple S3 accounts/buckets
• Smart Delete – an option to keep locally deleted files on backup storage for a certain time
• Simple Mode – maintain exactly the same data structure on S3 as you have on your local computer.
• Reduced Redundancy Storage support