One of the major challenges we face in the web hosting industry is to plan for a disaster recovery. A very important element is taking backup of servers regularly and managing them effectively. There are several backup solutions which takes the backup regularly, however when it comes to managing them, most of them require expertize. This is what separates R1soft from other backup solutions. R1soft works on both Windows and Linux flavors. It provides an easy-to-use graphical interface which allows even novice users to manage(ie configure backup schedules and restore files).

R1soft (they call it as Continuous Data protection ie CDP) works mainly on a client-server architecture. One need to install the CDP-server software on the central backup server (to which the backup is taken) and the CDP-agent software (client software) on all the servers that need to be backed up(They are generally called as Hosts). New hosts can be added to the system through graphical user interface on the central backup server.

Another feature of R1soft is that the Hosts can do a number of tasks from their end itself through the graphical interface. there is no need to contact the central backup server administrator for this task. Some of tasks that can be performed are:

– > Scheduling various tasks like backup or restore on a monthly, weekly, daily or Hourly basis.

– > Deciding the time period of backup retention. If we want to configure backups in order to keep data for 7 days, on day 8 the backup of Day 1 will get deleted.

– > Setting an email reporting task, so that after the scheduled task, it will send a report to the desired email address, so that the administrator of the host will be able to know if anything went wrong with the scheduled task.

– > Selecting which all partitions on the Host machine needs to be backed up.

– > Selecting which all files or folders need to be restored from the available backup.

About the Author :

Unnikrishnan works as a Senior Software Engineer in Bobcares. He joined Bobcares back in Oct 2008. During his free time, he watches movies, and listens to music

Co-Authored by Sankar.H