Currently the next major UrBackup version is kind of close to getting finished. There are a few major work in progress areas. Once they are finished and I have done some overall testing I will release a beta version.

The major changes in the new version are:

• Completely reworked the file deduplication and file backup statistics calculation. This should be much faster, scalable and reliable now.
• The Copy-on-Write image backups on btrfs mentioned in the last post. Synthetic full backups for the VHD/VHDZ file format and settings for basing image backups on the last full or last incremental backup (differential/incremental).
• File backups include file metadata including file modification time, ACLs, alternate data streams etc.
• Backup of streaming data. E.g. the output of “mysqldump”/”pg_dump”. I plan to add basic backup scripts for popular Open Source databases to the client
• New file restore feature which restores file backups and properly restores the file meta-data
• The ACLs/file permissions are used to enable users to directly access backups on the web interface from the explorer on the clients (via right click -> Access/Restore backups)
• Proper backups of symbolic links. Symbolic links which point to folders/files which are backed up are backed up as symbolic links and symbolic links which point outside of the selected backup set are followed/not followed depending on a setting
• The web interface has been bootstrapified (http://getbootstrap.com/ – mombojuice did the work) and looks much more modern now
• Simultaneous image and file backups
• Backup and restore EFI boot sector and partition on UEFI systems. Restore CD that boots with UEFI firmware
• Client for Mac OS X
• Forward secrecy for Internet clients via ECDH and Internet client security improvement by using AES-GCM
• Switch from DSA to ECDSA for client update and server identity signatures

Still to do:

• Lot’s of testing and bug fixing
• Backup and restore of file meta-data on Mac OS X and Linux
• Symbolic link backup handling on Mac OS X and Linux
• Automatic client update for Mac OS X like for Windows
• Restoring files which are in use on Windows (via restarting)
• Update Documentation

Remaining UrBackup limitations (to be done after with a subsequent version):

• Recognize hard links and backup the files only once
• Backup only used areas of sparse files
• Continuous file backup

Once the “to do”s are done this is a big step forward for UrBackup. Having streaming file backups and incremental, differential, synthetic full and full image backups basically allows you to implement pretty much every backup strategy with UrBackup. The only thing missing is the continuous file backup and I already started work on that.

For example you could use UrBackup instead of TimeMachine on Mac OS X and do a full system restore via the file restore feature (this is not implemented at all – it is just an example what it might be able to do). You probably don’t even need an image of your Windows system partition but can restore it via the file backup restore (albeit inefficiently, because the hard links in C:\windows\winsxs are not handled properly).