Windows System Backup and Restore

For computers running Microsoft Windows Vista Business/Enterprise/Ultimate Edition, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008, APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) client backup application of APA Backup Software is able to perform Windows System Backup and Restore. For older versions of Windows, we will provide you with a special tool for using in conjunction with APAOBM to perform Windows System Backup and Restore.

You can configure APAOBM to save a copy of a Windows system on a local or network hard-drive before performing offsite backup. In case of a total-loss disaster happened to a local computer or server, you can recover the Windows system quickly from the local backup. A crashed Windows machine with 10GB in size can be recovered within 10 minutes. If the local backup has been destroyed in the disaster, backed up Windows image can still be restored easily from the APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS).

Therefore, APA offers you a complete backup solution in protecting your Windows machines and allows you to recover them quickly after disasters.

Support Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) client applications can be used to backup Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express. Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Outlook Express are the two most popular email readers used by businesses and home users. However, backing up data stored in these two email readers is a headache to most users, as few users know where to find the related files storing the personal information (e.g. ".pst", ".dbx") and address book (".wab") used by these email readers to back up. With APAOBM / APAACB, backing up these data becomes really easy as it only requires clicking a few buttons.

Support All Common Databases

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) client-side backup application comes with specialized backup modules for backing up commonly used database and email servers. System administrator is able to activate or deactivate individual modules for different users through APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS). These modules include

- Microsoft Exchange Server

- Microsoft SQL Server

- Oracle

- MySQL

- Lotus Domino/Notes

Brick-Level Backup and Restore for Microsoft Exchange Server

The built-in Microsoft Exchange Brick-Level Backup Module in APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) allows you to perform brick-level backup and restore for Microsoft Exchange Server, including individual emails, calendars, and contact lists, etc. When data loss disaster strikes, user can restore any individual emails, calendars and contact lists within a very short period of time, without the need to restore the full Exchange's information store. This capability makes APAOBM an ideal backup tool for Microsoft Exchange Server.

Virtual Machine Backup

Our client-side backup application, APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) version 6, is able to back up the images of individual guest virtual machines in VMware ESX, ESXi, Server 2, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

You can restore the whole backed up image of a particular virtual machine to its original host server. Alternatively, you can also restore the components of a virtual machine, e.g. VMDK of VMWare, or the snapshots, virtual hard disks and virtual machines of Microsoft Hyper-V, for manual restoration.

With APA, virtual machine backup is simply a breeze.

Virtual Machine Backup

Our client-side backup application, APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) version 6, is able to back up the images of individual guest virtual machines in VMware ESX, ESXi, Server 2, and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

You can restore the whole backed up image of a particular virtual machine to its original host server. Alternatively, you can also restore the components of a virtual machine, e.g. VMDK of VMWare, or the snapshots, virtual hard disks and virtual machines of Microsoft Hyper-V, for manual restoration.

With APA, virtual machine backup is simply a breeze.

Support All Common Databases

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) client-side backup application comes with specialized backup modules for backing up commonly used database and email servers. System administrator is able to activate or deactivate individual modules for different users through APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS). These modules include:

- Microsoft Exchange Server

- Microsoft SQL Server

- Oracle

- MySQL

- Lotus Domino/Notes

Support All Common Databases

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) client-side backup application comes with specialized backup modules for backing up commonly used database and email servers. System administrator is able to activate or deactivate individual modules for different users through APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS). These modules include:

- Microsoft Exchange Server

- Microsoft SQL Server

- Oracle

- MySQL

- Lotus Domino/Notes

Support All Common Databases

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) client-side backup application comes with specialized backup modules for backing up commonly used database and email servers. System administrator is able to activate or deactivate individual modules for different users through APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS). These modules include:

- Microsoft Exchange Server

- Microsoft SQL Server

- Oracle

- MySQL

- Lotus Domino/Notes

Open File Backup

Both client-side backup applications, APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB), have integrated with Microsoft's latest Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) framework. It allows you to back up files that are being opened without any additional applications or plug-ins. VSS is only available on Windows XP / 2003 / Vista, and you must have administrative privileges to start the VSS service on a computer. Also, VSS will only work if at least one of your partitions is formatted using NTFS

Continuous Data Protection

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) are equipped with advanced Continuous Data Protection (CDP) feature which can be set to capture every version of the data of a file that has been saved to your hard drive. With CDP, whenever you have made changes to the files in the backup set, it will automatically backup the changes to APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS). Thus, it provides a highly dependable means of real-time, continuous data protection for file servers, desktops, and laptops effortlessly and transparently, without any human intervention.

Flexible Backup Schedule

Other than Continuous Data Protection (CDP), both our client-side backup applications, APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB), are equipped with flexible backup scheduler that allows you to implement your desired backup policy.

As APAOBM is a comprehensive client-side application designed for backing up servers, it comes with an advanced scheduler which allows system administrators to create multiple backup schedules such as backup at a specific time and at multiple times per day etc. APAACB is designed for desktop and notebook backup, thus its scheduler is with simpler options.

Multi-threading

The new multi-threading implementation in APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) can improve the backup and restoration speed to a great extent, especially for the client machines with multi-core CPUs, as they will create 2 threads per CPU's core during backup or restoration. For a client machine which has a quad-core CPU, 8 threads will be created during backup or restoration. That means the speed will be a lot faster than a single-threading operation.

In-File Delta Technology

Both client-side backup applicants, APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB), are equipped with our proprietary In-File Delta technology. With this feature, the original file is required to be backed up once only, i.e. in the first backup job. Subsequently, only changes are necessary to be backed up. There are two types of In-File Delta that users can choose.

Incremental Type

All delta files are generated with respect to changes made since the last incremental backup. It means the last full backup file and ALL incremental delta backup files are required to restore the latest snapshot of a backup file.

Differential Type

All delta files are generated with respect to changes made since the last full backup file (i.e. differential backup). It means only the last full backup file and the last delta file are required to restore the latest snapshot of a backup file. Other intermediate delta files are only required if you want to restore other snapshots of a backup file. Differential in-file delta backup has the benefits that a corrupted delta file would only make one particular version of a backup file non-recoverable and all other backups created by other delta files of the same file would still be intact.

Backup Account Protected by Login Name and Password

For each backup account using APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) or APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) client-side backup application, it is required to have a login name and password. These credentials will be used for logging in the client-side application as well as the user section of the APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS) web console for security protection. System administrator will also have a unique account for logging in the administrator.

Top of the Class Encryption

All data will be compressed and encrypted with 256-bit encryption with an encrypting key selected by the user on the client-side applications, APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB), before being uploaded and stored on APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS). The encrypting key will NEVER be uploaded to APAOBS during backup. In addition, it is also possible to upload backup data through a secure SSL channel to further increase the level of security. On the other hand, decryption is only possible with user's encrypting key. Therefore, this whole mechanism provides exceptional security to the backed up data.

CRC Data Integrity Checking on Server Side

Both APA Offline Backup Server (APAOBS) and APA Replication Server (APARPS) have CRC data integrity checking before storing the backup data. The CRC checking is configured to run bi-monthly on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of every month.

Server-side Delta Merging

APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS) is able to merge the incremental delta file which is out of retention period with the full backup file. This feature helps the system administrator to better utilize the space of the backup server for keeping the data which are really important.

Multi-threading

The new multi-threading implementation in APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) can improve the backup and restoration speed to a great extent, especially for the client machines with multi-core CPUs, as they will create 2 threads per CPU's core during backup or restoration. For a client machine which has a quad-core CPU, 8 threads will be created during backup or restoration. That means the speed will be a lot faster than a single-threading operation.

Seed Load Utility

If you have a lot of data (e.g. 500GB) to backup to the backup server, it would take a considerable amount of time to perform the first full backup through the Internet. If you run into this problem, you can use the Seed Load Utility to back up your backup set to local hard disk (instead of directly to the backup server) and then transport the backup data, using removable hard disk, to APA Offsite Backup Server (APAOBS). The administrator can then load all your backup files from your removable hard disk into your backup account. This could then save you days (even weeks) of performing your first full backup. Since subsequent backup will be incremental backup (only new or updated files will be uploaded to the server) you should have no problems uploading your backup data afterwards.

Command Line Tool

APA Online Backup Manager's (APAOBM) client application is equipped with a command line tool, which allows users to run pre-backup and post-backup commands. This feature is extremely useful for system administrators to back up an application or a database which APA does not have a dedicated module for it.

For example, you can write proper scripts to spool out a database to a temporary folder before running backup, and delete the temporary folder after finishing backup. With this powerful tool, APA can back up essentially any applications and databases.

Flexible Retention Policy

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) fully featured client-side backup application supports flexible retention policy. You can define multiple retention policies for each backup set. On the other hand, APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) simplified client-side backup application supports simple retention policy for its backup set.

Support Multiple Backup Set

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) supports the creation of multiple backup sets. For example, if you intend to back up files, Microsoft Exchange database, and Microsoft SQL database on a server, you can simply create three backup sets as shown below.

Logout Reminder

Both APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup are incorporated with the System Logout Backup Reminder feature. With this option selected, the user will be "reminded" to perform backup when logging off Windows or shutting down the machine. If the user selects "Yes", APAOBM / APAACB will start the backup job(s) and shut down the machine automatically when the backup job completes.

Off-line Backup Reminder

Both APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) client-side backup applications are equipped with off-line backup reminder feature. This feature is basically designed for users who are off-line most of the time and cannot rely on the backup schedule to backup regularly. The Backup Interval allows users to specify the interval that they would like their data to backup. When the machine is online and this interval has elapsed, backup will run automatically. If Off-Line Backup Alert is enabled, a popup message box will ask the user to confirm starting the backup. The Email Notification setting is the number of days since the last backup that triggers the backup server to send email notification to the client to remind him to run an off-line backup. When the System Logout Backup Reminder setting is enabled, a popup message box will ask the user to start a backup before logging out / shutting down Windows.

Flexible Backup Filter

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) comes with a comprehensive filtering tool for filtering the files that need to be included or excluded during backup.

Flexible Backup Filter

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) and APA A-Click Backup (APAACB) comes with a comprehensive filtering tool for filtering the files that need to be included or excluded during backup.

Keeping a Local Copy of the Backup Data on Client Side

APA Online Backup Manager (APAOBM) is able to keep a local copy of the backup data for fast restoration. User is even able to define a unique retention policy for keeping the local copy of backup data.

Support 31 Languages

APA supports 31 languages, which cover over 90% of the world's population. New languages are being added continuously. Therefore, even if you have offices in different corners of the world using different languages, APA can be used to back up all the servers, desktops and notebooks in all of your offices. Supported languages include:

•Bulgarian

•Catalan

•Simplified Chinese

•Traditional Chinese

•Czech

•Danish

•Dutch

•German

•Greek Modern

•English

•Euskara

•Finnish

•French

•Hebrew

•Hungarian

•Japanese

•Icelandic

•Italian

•Korean

•Lithuanian

•Norwegian

•Polish

•Brazilian Portuguese

•Portuguese

•Romanian

•Russian

•Slovenian

•Spanish

•Swedish

•Thai (Thai digits)

•Turkish