Open File Backup Software

Features & Benefits

Open File Manager
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 Open File Manager is enterprise-class software that enables your backup application to back up open files in a distributed Windows® and NetWare® environment, ensuring business continuity and protection of mission-critical data. It is a reliable, easy-to-use, disk-level open file solution that is scalable from workstations to servers.

Open File Manager includes all the functionality you would expect from software responsible for protecting your mission-critical data. Explore its features and learn how you can benefit from the leading open-file backup solution.

Open File Manager supports data protection in high availability environments, enabling your backup software to back up open and in-use files without taking users offline or interrupting systems use. Applications and files, such as Exchange, Lotus Notes, Oracle, GroupWise, SQL, FoxPro, Word, Excel, customer applications and more, can now be available to the user uninterrupted 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Open File Manager enables your backup software to back up all open and in-use files. Often, traditional backup software either skips open files, resulting in an incomplete backup, or forces back up of open files, which is likely to copy corrupt data to tape if the files are changing.

Open File Manager is the only open file solution that ensures data integrity for relational data that is distributed across volumes. Its unique system-wide volume synchronization capability ensures that all transactions on a machine are complete before initiating back up of open files. Most backup software solutions offer only file-by-file synchronization or volume-by-volume synchronization, which does not ensure the integrity of transactional data that is logically related but physically distributed across volumes.

Open File Manager is designed for today's heterogeneous distributed computing environment and supports backup software and applications on Microsoft Windows NT/2000/XP and Windows Server 2003 and Novell NetWare 4.x LFS, 5.x LFS and 6.x LFS and NSS operating systems.

Open File Manager now supports 64-bit Windows server systems for both the AMD and Intel processor families. For more detailed information on this feature, download the Open File Manager 9.4 Release Notes PDF.

Open File Manager seamlessly works with your backup application to provide a complete data protection solution. It is compatible with over 90 leading backup applications from over 50 storage management vendors. Open File Manager seamlessly works with Computer Associates BrightStor ARCserve, VERITAS Backup Exec and NetBackup, IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, Hewlett-Packard Data Protector, EMC/LEGATO NetWorker and many more backup applications. This broad support allows you to migrate between backup vendors without reinvesting in a new open file solution. View the complete list of supported backup software.

Open File Manager supports all business application types, enabling your backup software to backup data across your network, including email systems, web sites, databases, and files, without requiring investment in costly individual application-specific backup solutions.

Open File Manager is designed for the distributed environment and scales to as many machines as you need - across Windows and NetWare. Its client/agent architecture allows you to add additional machines to your enterprise while easily managing them from a central console.

Open File Manager does not require pre-allocation of cache space. It monitors the file system for read requests coming from the backup software and only caches data necessary to ensure an accurate image of open files for back up, and does so in 1 KB increments. Caches are dynamic and can be distributed across volumes.

Open File Manager provides enhanced clustering capabilities for data protection in high availability environments. Open File Manager automatically detects volume mounts and dismounts. If failover occurs during a backup, Open File Manager will automatically un-synchronize and then re-synchronize, allowing the new volume to join the current backup, ensuring the highest standard for data protection.

Microsoft has developed a powerful backup and recovery infrastructure for the Windows Server 2003 operating system, that includes a mechanism for creating point-in-time copies of data known as the Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS). However, there are limitations to VSS if you are running non-VSS aware business applications or are using VSS to back up file-only servers. With the integration of St. Bernard's Open File Manger v9.4, a point-in-time where all data is in a consistent state can be found even if the data from the application is not VSS aware. This eliminates "crash consistency" among legacy and non-VSS compliant applications. Learn more about leveraging the VSS framework.

Open File Manager supports your efforts to reduce potential Windows NetBIOS security risks and can be run in a NetBIOS-disabled environment. Open File Manager supports both enabled and disabled NetBIOS server configurations.

Use Open File Manager to make copies of data for system management purposes other than backup. For example, make a copy of a live database, preserving the data integrity of open files, and place it on another machine for training or testing purposes.


Control Component

  • Windows Server 2003 Standard, Web, Enterprise and Datacenter
  • Windows 2000 Server Standard and Advanced
  • Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Server and Enterprise
  • Windows XP Pro and Home
  • Windows 2000 Professional
  • 10 MB available hard disk space
  • Windows and/or NetWare networking, depending on the System Component(s) to be administered
Windows System Component
  • Windows Server 2003 Standard, Web, Enterprise and Datacenter
  • Windows 2000 Server Standard and Advanced
  • Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Server and Enterprise
  • Windows XP Pro and Home
  • Windows 2000 Professional
  • 5 MB available hard disk space, plus an additional amount to store data changed during backup
  • Windows networking
  • The computer's local disks are accessible to the Control Component through Administrative Shares
  • The computer is visible to the Control Component through the Computer Browser Service
NetWare System Component
  • Novell NetWare 6.x LFS and NSS, 5.x LFS and 4.x LFS
  • 5 MB available hard disk space, plus an additional amount to store data changed during backup
  • NetWare networking, TCP/IP or IPX/SPX-based, with Microsoft or Novell NetWare clients
  • The computer is visible to the Control Component through the Computer Browser Service