Storage WarsIf you're considering a backup strategy for your business, it won't be long before you need to start thinking about storage media, and which of the various types is best suited to your needs. In this post, I attempt to help by doing my best, to sum up the strengths and weaknesses of each as I see them, from my experience of working with customers using BackupAssist for Windows (which we're distributors of). I hope this will be of some use to you regardless of the software you're using, however, this is written with BackupAssist users in mind. First up....USB drives.

Gmail-block-ipv6I wanted to share an issue we've seen multiple reports of this week, where MDaemon customers have started receiving bouncebacks from Google mail servers. Valid email is being refused due to PTR record failures, and it's happening for all Gmail domains including customer registered domains that are used with Google services.

BackupAssist is most popular in the SMB market and as a result, is often used to back up servers running Microsoft Exchange. However there is more than one way to backup Exchange server using BackupAssist, and most importantly multiple options when it comes to restoring data back to exchange. In this blog post, I want to explain the main differences available with and without using the Additional Exchange Granular Restore console add-on and hopefully explaining how invaluable a tool it is for exchange administrators.

archiving-mdaemon-email1Our standard recommendation for anyone who wants a true email archiving solution is MailStore Server, however, MDaemon does have some basic archiving capabilities worth being aware of too. Version 16 of MDaemon introduces changes to the way these native capabilities work, so in this post, I'm going to take a moment to explain the changes and the options now available to you.

system-protectionI'm frequently asked by customers to explain exactly what's happening when BackupAssist performs a 'System Protection' job, so I figured a blog post on it was well overdue! Now bear with me as it may seem a little heavy going if you're new to the subject, but this stuff really is genuinely useful to get your head around, regardless of the backup software you use.

Set up an out of office responder in MDaemon

Before you hang up your mouse for the Christmas break, it's a good idea to make sure that if anyone contacts you via email, they know whether you're available and if not, when you'll be back. If you use MDaemon Messaging Server, rather than all staff replicating the same out of office autoresponder, you can use a simple temporary account and content filter rule to create a global version for all staff.

While it'll probably never be 100% effective, the level of email security we have available to us today is less expensive and more effective than it's ever been. This may go some way to accounting for the recent rise, and added sophistication in phishing attacks as criminals choose to target the new weakest link, now located between the chair and keyboard.