We’ve developed a lot of new features since BackupAssist 8 first came out. So much so that our latest version of the software, BackupAssist 10, feels like a completely different product.
And so, we’re urging all of our users to shift to the most up-to-date protection for their data. The End-of-Life for BackupAssist 8 will be on the 22nd December 2017. After this date, no further product updates, fixes or technical support will be provided for this version.
If you’re not sure what version you’re running, we encourage you to take the following steps:
- Open BackupAssist, if it’s not currently running.
- Click on the ‘Help’ tab in the menu.
- Click on ‘About’
- If the version is 8 or earlier, upgrade your software right now.
It’s also worth noting that by upgrading from BackupAssist 8, your backup speeds could be 40% faster. There are also 22 new product features to make your life easier.
Thankfully, upgrading is really easy! If you’ve got valid BackupCare (Formerly Upgrade Protection), just download the newest version. If you’re not sure if your BackupCare is active, you can check it out and/or renew it here.
Keep reading to see all the features you gain by upgrading from BackupAssist 8 to 10!
Why We Are Retiring BackupAssist 8
The nature of backup software is that it’s always evolving to accommodate the data it has to back up. In the year it comes out, it’s designed to backup the files and apps of that time.
In short, when BackupAssist 8 was released in 2014, it was designed to back up the data and software of 2014.
It’s late 2017 now, and the data landscape has significantly changed. And so, as software developers who prioritize the completely reliable recovery of your data, we can’t continue supporting it in good conscience.
In order to bring your backup and disaster recovery software up to 2017, we strongly urge you to upgrade to BackupAssist 10.
You Gain 22 New Features By Upgrading!
1. Ransomware Protection
BackupAssist now gives you active ransomware protection for your backups with our CryptoSafeGuard tool. With ransomware being a major threat to all modern businesses, this tool is a must!
2. Public Cloud Backup
BackupAssist 10 introduced the Cloud Backup job, which allows you to store your data with public cloud providers. This is highly recommended as part of a 3-2-1 backup strategy.
3. Rapid VM Recovery
Rapid VM Recovery allows you to spin up a single guest from its backup destination to keep critical systems online. This interim solution takes only seconds, and provides business continuity until a Full VM Recovery can be performed.
4. Up to 40% Faster Backup Speeds
With BackupAssist 9, we drastically increased the speed and performance of backups. Your System Protection backups could be running up to 30% faster, and your File Protection backups up to 40% faster.
5. Bootable Backup Media
Bootable Backup Media allows you to recover an entire environment from a backup media device. When a bare-metal image backup is stored on an external USB hard disk, you can directly boot into a RecoverAssist environment without the need for a separate recovery disk.
6. Restore Search
Restore search is an amazing BackupAssist feature, and you can read the full rundown here. To sum it up in a sentence, this feature allows you to search multiple backups for the files you want much like a Google Search, even when your backup media aren’t connected.
7. VHDX Data Containers
BackupAssist 10 supports VHDX data containers for Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2012 R1/R2. This means you can have Data Containers of up to 64 TB in size.
8. Advanced Windows Server 2016 Support
BackupAssist’s latest version has advanced support for Windows Server 2016, meaning there’s also never been a better time to upgrade your OS. This support stretches to Shielded VM Backups and Nested VM Backups. Read more about Window Server 2016.
9. Dedicated Hyper-V Tab
There is now a dedicated Hyper-V tab for servers that have the Hyper-V role installed. Under it, you can see which guests are active, which guests are being backed up, and when the last successful backup ran. From this tab, you can also begin a Hyper-V granular restore or a guest recovery (Full or Rapid).
10. Advanced Dynamic Help
Our easy-to-use software has gotten even easier to operate. In our UI, context-sensitive help is now only ever a click away, directly connecting you to our online help depository.
This means no matter what section you’re in, if you want to ask something, you can easily and immediately get an answer. This online database is now kept up to date in real time, instead of being pre-packaged help that is only updated with new version releases.
11. Streamlined Hyper-V Restores
All Hyper-V restores can now be performed using the Integrated Restore Console. This means you do not need to use different tools to restore Hyper-V host files or perform Hyper-V Granular Restores.
12. Integrated Restore Console
You can now locate backups within the BackupAssist user interface, meaning less clicks, and use a customizable filter to specify a date range for the backups that you want to display.
13. Data Deduplication
BackupAssist 10 offers data duplication, which you can read all about here. In short, it means you only ever send unique data chunks to your cloud destination once, meaning you never back up the same data twice.
This drastically reduces your bandwidth use, job speeds, and storage costs. In our case studies, this has lead to as much as a 71% reduction in backup size!
14. Cloud Independence
Unlike most Backup and Disaster Recovery Software, which forces you to use that vendor’s cloud storage, BackupAssist 10 provides Cloud Independence.
This means you can choose where you want to store your backups (E.g. Data Provider, Data Center Location, etc), and fine tune your storage options to suit your requirements, not ours.
15. Insulated Encryption
With BackupAssist 10, you can create military-grade encrypted containers to store your data in, ensuring your data is fully private when in the cloud. With Insulated Encryption, even your cloud provider can’t access your data.
16. Non-Convergent Encryption
BackupAssist’s non-convergent encryption feature means that your cloud provider won’t mix your data in with other people’s data at the destination site to save space.
17. Resilient Transfers
With BackupAssist 10’s Resilient Transfers feature, you never send the same data twice. Even if your backups get interrupted, you resume exactly where you stopped—even if this is halfway through backing up a large file.
18. Windows 10 OS Support
BackupAssist now fully supports Windows 10, which means you can upgrade your desktop operating systems to the latest version.
19. Exchange & SQL 2016 Support
BackupAssist supports both Microsoft Exchange 2016 and Microsoft SQL 2016. You could be benefiting from the dozens of new features these server applications have to offer.
20. Full VM Recovery
Full VM Recovery is a dedicated recovery process to fully recover a guest back to the same host or a different host. Paired with Rapid VM Recovery, this allows you to achieve maximum redundancy and near-zero downtime even if the worst happens.
21. Discover Backups
This feature, located in the BackupAssist Restore tab, allows you to locate and use backups created by other systems. It also allows you to find and use backups made by jobs that have been deleted.
22. Destination Checking
You can run a test to see if your selected backup destination is going to be accessible by the software, allowing you to iron out any accessibility issues before you start running your backup jobs.
