You may have picked up from our subtle marketing that something new is on the horizon with the next release of BackupAssist, Version 7. Now the public Beta is here I'm excited to be able to finally tell you all about the new features, which include a completely reworked interface design. First off, let me introduce the completely new simplified interface and layout...

SearchServerVirtualisation screenshotBackupAssist's Hyper-V product has been featured in a recent review on the virtualisation pages of the TechTarget group Web site. Acknowledged as one of the smaller players in the Hyper-V backup market, BackupAssist with it's Hyper-V Granular Restore Console received praise as a product that - "offers great value for small and medium-sized businesses"  ...and is "a good place to start if you're an SMB".

Our Aussie friends over at BackupAssist developers Cortex IT have recently released two excellent short videos showing the best practices for configuring the BackupAssist user identity. I often come across issues relating to rights associated with BackupAssist jobs. The BackupAssist user identity is key to correctly assigning these rights, so if you are using BackupAssist to back up a Windows Server we these are definitely worth a watch.

Creating Backup User Identities with BackupAssist

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gcVOHF6tZY?feature=player_embedded&w=640&h=360]

Hyper-V Youtube screengrabA little over a month ago, I announced our friends 'down under' at BackupAssist developer Cortex IT were hosting a webinar for a limited number of channel partners from around the globe - presented by Jason Schultz, one of the lead programmers. There were a few of you who were busy with the day jobs and weren't able to attend so the guys at Cortex have kindly uploaded the recorded version to YouTube, ready for viewing over a cuppa. Perhaps a few cuppas actually - it's a long one at a just under an hour but it really is worth sitting through if you've got any interest in using BackupAssist in a Hyper-V environment.

Hyper-V webinarOur Aussie friends over at BackupAssist developer Cortex IT, have opened up a great opportunity for our partners to attend the first in what we hope will be a series of online Webinar/ Q&A sessions. They're presented directly by the BackupAssist development team and are a unique chance to hear about BackupAssist's Hyper-V backup capabilities while also providing feedback should you wish.

For a long time now I've been experimenting with different hardware and software solutions, looking for an all purpose storage server I could use both at home and in the office. At home I've basically just been after a centralised store for my photos, movies and documents with a level of integration that would also allow me to stream content to various different devices. In the office we need a bit more, so support for technologies such as Rsync, SSH, iSCSI, RAID drives and NFS have all been on my wish list.