Despite its name, which might suggest a lightweight consumer-oriented product, Backup My Info! (or BUMI, for short) is a comprehensive cloud-based storage solution that scales for large enterprises. The product is based on technology provided by Asigra, a company that has offered backup solutions since 1986. BUMI supports an impressive array of OSs and applications, including Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, SAP’s ERP software, and Oracle databases.
Installation
BUMI engineers use remote-control technology to install the product. They’re on hand around the clock to monitor logs, inform clients if there’s a problem with a backup job, and assist with restore operations if necessary. BUMI uses two data centers based in Canada, which are ideally located for customers in North America. (If your offices are outside this region, look for a cloud solution that has data centers located close to the servers that you want to back up.)
Installation of BUMI involves assigning a server to run the DS-Client software. The client software connects through port 4401 (TCP and UDP) to the DS-Service software running at the remote data center. The firewall rule can be locked down to a specific external IP address. DS-Client uses SQL Server 2005 Express to store backup catalogs. The management interface (DS-User) is simple and intuitive.
BUMI refers to each data set created by a backup job as a generation. You can specify the number of generations that should be kept until the oldest generation of a file is overwritten. In addition, you can specify retention rules to make sure that a generation from a given time frame isn’t deleted (e.g., keep one generation per month for 1 year).
Agentless Architecture
DS-Client can perform an initial encrypted backup on a portable hard disk to send by courier to the data center. This avoids having to synchronize huge amounts of data over the Internet to make the first-generation copy. Furthermore, BUMI can keep the latest generation of backup on a local disk in addition to the copy in the remote data center, thereby enabling organizations to restore data quickly in the event of a disaster.
DS-Client can be installed on a dedicated server. You can back up any device or supported application without having to lay your hands on those devices. This reduces the risk of downtime caused by agent deployment, upgrades, or operational problems that can be created by backup programs. The ability to run agentless backup and restore operations also extends to non-Windows OSs. In my testing, I had no problem getting BUMI to back up another Windows-based server across the network. Moreover, there seemed to be no noticeable slowdown on the device while the backup was in progress. BUMI can also throttle bandwidth—a useful feature if you want to run online backups at busy times.
Disaster Recovery
During the restore process, you must click File Info to get access to any backup other than the generation that’s stored locally. This isn’t entirely intuitive, but it didn’t take long to figure out. The Restore Now Wizard dialog box opens to show the generations that are stored in the cloud. The local backup is marked for clarity. Figure 1 shows the wizard in action.
Figure 1: BUMI’s Restore Now Wizard