Monday, March 3, 2014

Virtual Drive is literally here!!


         

 VD stands for Virtual Drive and it is a feature available with GFIMAX Managed Online Backup (MOB) and GFIMAX Backup and it gives additional functionality that works well with either backup solution. It is a separate download so you didn't miss it in your backup manager. (I thought I would mention this just in case you stopped reading to go and find out why you didn't have it in yours) 

        

  Officially, it claims only to be supported on servers but unofficially I've found that it works on workstations as well. I'm glad it does due to the fact that I'm sure most of you have a least  one customer that  has a workstation in the office that they call "the server" and though they didn't purchase a server, that doesn't make their data any less important.
(Most of the contents of this article are attributed to the link below)

Virtual Drive Functionality Guide


Virtual Drive Functionality

            Our Virtual Drive Technology is remarkably simple and intuitive. It works and behaves just like a physical hard drive, however it exists only virtually. You can verify data synchronization by switching to the Backup Manager and expanding the restore tree. We can see that the folder structure in the application and in the VD is absolutely identical. With our unique Delta Restore technology, the amount of data transferred will be minimized. Virtual Drive also supports Restore on Demand technology, which allows only necessary data to be transmitted over the network. For example, you can view video clips with options to play, stop, pause, rewind, or skip through the content. By transmitting only necessary data, greater network efficiency and maximized file transfer speeds are assured.


Virtual Drive gives you the following additional abilities:
 
1. Ability to restore a single mailbox from Exchange versus having to restore the entire mail store just to retrieve one individual mailbox.  

2. Ability to restore files back to a machine with drag and drop type functionality.

3. Ability to restore individual files out of VMware virtual machine.  


VD Installation


1. Before installing Virtual Drive, please create a virtual drive product on the server in the Cloud Management Console. Then create a user with the Virtual Drive product and install the Backup Manager. (This step only applies to GFIMAX Backup; it is on by default in GFIMAX Managed Online Backup)
 
2. In order to take advantage of your new Virtual Drive feature, you will need to download it on the target machine  download here.




3. To install,  open it and hit "Next"


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3. Select your destination folder if it is going to be anything other than the default and when ready, click  "Install".


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4. Due to the fact that the Virtual Drive is a kernel mode application, you will be asked to restart your operating system. Select "Reboot now" and click "Finish": 



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5. Once restarted, the new network drive will appear. (Usually Drive B:)