Backup Software

We have begun working on version 4 of our backup software and this is the first post of a new series I am going to be writing in regards to that. It’s called, “SecureBackup 4.0 - Backup Software Development”. I will not only discuss our goals in terms of the software and how that will benefit you, but also about the technical aspects of the software underneath the hood.

The SecureBackup software currently requires the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework to be installed on the target system. We are planning on continuing to use this platform for version 4.0. On the surface, the new version will be quite similar to what you are used to. This means that much of the user interface will be the same both in form and function. You also won’t have to worry about transforming your current backup jobs to a new format as this will be taken care of automatically. Underneath the hood, however, several things will change. I will cover a lot of these changes in the coming months but for now, I just wanted to outline some of the major goals we have for version 4.0. These include:

• To allow SecureBackup to run as a service.
• To provide additional options such as bandwidth throttling, backup server access options, and more.
• To allow backing up open files.
• To simplify some of the underlying code and other mechanisms to allow us to maintain the software more easily.
• Possibly a .NET to MONO port so that we can also support MAC OS X.

Probably the biggest change will be the first one mentioned. Allowing SecureBackup to run as a service is important for certain IT departments. Currently, a work-around is to simply log in, start the SecureBackup software, and then lock your computer - this still allows you to leave your workstation on for backup purposes but no-one can access your system without your password.

Bandwidth throttling will allow you to limit your upload connection speed. This means that your computer/network Internet access speed will not be bogged down while SecureBackup backs up your files. Currently, you need to use a third party tool such as NetLimiter to do this.

We get many requests for people who want to back up open files. SecureBackup does not currently support this. As a matter of fact, most backup solutions don’t. However, the new version of SecureBackup will backup open files as long as they are not locked, or in-use by the operating system. These files simply can not be backed up.

Some of the underlying code and backup mechanisms will be completely reconstructed from scratch. This will not only make our life easier in terms of maintaining the code, but you will get less false error messages. For example, the newer version of SecureBackup will simply reconnect to the backup server in the event that it was unreachable for a period of time and automatically resume backing up your files. Right now, it displays an error and your backup needs to be manually restarted unless you wait until the next scheduled backup. With the new version of the backup software, this will no longer be an issue. Most of the current “backup server is offline” error messages in the SecureBackup software are not due to our servers being down but are due a networking error somewhere between the client computer and our data center. Our servers are online virtually 100% of the time.

Lastly, we may port the software over to use C# and MONO to target the MAC OS X operating system exclusively but this is still in discussion. Either way, the latest Windows operating systems will always be supported. For now, the only solution for backing up a MAC OS X computer with SecureBackup is to use mapped network connection for your MAC while still running SecureBackup on Windows.