ArGest™ BRU™ Core - Unix and Linux CLI (Command Line Interface Backup Software)

For the user or OEM/integrator who prefers to script and control BRU™ functions from the command line or to integrate the BRU™ I/O engine into your app without the overhead of a graphical environment, BRU Core™ is available.

 

ArGest® BRU™ Core uses the small footprint ultra-fast and reliable BRU engine for all backup and restore operations,  BRU Core is available to support a multitude of platforms, and protects data via NFS, AFS, SMB, and NetAtalk mounted filesystems.

 

The ArGest® BRU™ Core v18.0 is the actual I/O engine that powers all our BRU-based solutions.  For full BRU functionality with extensive GUI controls, choose the BRU Server or Argest Backup lines instead.

 

Linux system backup software

About ArGest® BRU™ Core

Options and Pricing

System Requirements

Documentation

Using any of the BRU™ solutions, you'll know upfront the status of the backup - not when the data is needed the most at a critical time later.  BRU™ employs mechanisms that allow you to verify the accuracy of the backup, either immediately following the backup, or off-line to shorten the backup window. You can even verify your backups on a different system! Knowing your backup is accurate provides peace-of-mind that you can successfully recover your data.

 

After the backup has been verified and is archived, data bits can still become corrupt. BRU™ comes to the rescue again. Should bad data be detected during a restore, BRU™ attempts to re-read it. If unreadable after multiple passes (user defined), BRU™ reports the error location, advances the tape, and continues to read until good data is found. BRU™ then continues the recovery, returning the maximum amount of data without summarily aborting the recovery process like other backup applications.

 

BRU™ never assumes that the data you write to disk or tape is data that is actually recoverable and provides the assurance that the data you think you have backed up can actually be restored. BRU™'s error recovery algorithms used when writing to tape provide reliability mechanisms unlike any other backup product on the market. BRU™ can even restore data from the readable portions of a physically damaged tape.

 

These features are discussed in depth in our white papers titled: The BRU Advantage and Reliable Verification with BRU.

 

 

 

What makes BRU better than all other solutions?

 

Speed.  BRU™ is the fastest software available.  Streaming LTO-6 at 180MB/sec and SSD disk at over 1GB/sec, BRU™'s speed is unmatched.

 

True cross platform recoverability.  All BRU™ archives are verifiable and restorable on any OS BRU™ supports (there are currently 60 of those), and with any version of BRU™ regardless of the OS they were created on.  BRU™ is fully backwards compatible, and BRU™ will never leave you with archives tied to a data set, specific OS, version, or type of hardware.

 

Verifiability and error recovery for restore.  BRU™ archives are properly and fully verifiable on any OS BRU™ supports at any time, and is the only backup tool that can recover from errors–if a bad bit is detected on your media, BRU™ advances in 2K increments until it can read and restore the data once again without aborting your restore.

 

Accountability.  With BRU™, you have a source for help and a company that has been committed to data backup and restore since 1985.

 

Special needs.  All special characters, ACLs, special attributes, permissions, and foreign language characters (including left to right languages) are correctly handled by BRU™.

 

  • Exceptional Reliability

     

    Data Verification — BRU ensures that your backup is correct by verifying archives in two different ways, using checksums or by performing a bit-by-bit comparison with the original file in contrast to tar-based solutions.

     

    Anytime Verify™ allows you to re-verify your data at anytime.

     

    Error Detection and Recovery — BRU detects and recovers from most errors that occur while reading or writing. Unlike other utilities that stop on errors, BRU makes several attempts to read and recover the maximum amount of data from damaged archives.

     

    AUTOSCAN™ Verification — BRU will automatically scan each archive tape and verify it for errors immediately after it is written. Customer-proven detection of problems caused by hardware or software errors works like an "early warning system" to detect problems before they become serious-like a tape drive that is just starting to fail.

     

    Sparse Files — BRU will properly backup and restore large sparse files.

     

    Long Pathnames — BRU will backup and restore files with pathnames up

    to 1023 characters long. This is useful for networked systems or for file systems with deep directories. 100 characters is the limit of other backup utilities.

     

    Automatic Execution Logging — Because backups are serious business, you want to know immediately if anything went wrong. BRU automatically writes any warning/error messages to a special execution log file. The file also contains time stamps of when BRU started and stopped

     

     

     

  • Complete Reliability

     

    Support of single archives of up to 8 Exabytes (8,388,608 GB) in size.

     

    Data Encryption — Encryption Module add-on available for encrypted BRU Workstation archives written to disk and any tape technology.

     

    Supports 64-bit File systems.

     

    Unattended Backups — A special background mode lets you schedule BRU to run under cron, allowing backups to be performed overnight.

     

    Support For Any Type of Device — BRU is device-independent and works with any native OS supported storage device. If your system can see it, BRU can write to it.

     

    Handles Special Files — BRU will backup and restore all types of files, including special device files, links (symbolic and hard), pipes, empty directories — all the files that are skipped by utilities like tar. BRU will backup and restore every file on your disk.

     

    Faster Crash Recovery — Since BRU will backup and restore all files, this saves time and makes it easier to restore your system in the event of a crash.

     

    Protective File Restore — Restores files only from the backup tape that is newer - protects you by NOT overwriting files that have been recently updated (unless you force it to overwrite all files).

     

    Easy Integration — Dozens of options and environment variables make it easy to include BRU as a shell script or menu system. With BRU, you can do backups your way — exactly how you want to do them.

     

    Translate-on-Restore™ — Rename or move files when restoring.

     

    Root-only Restore — Restores just the files in the root directory, excluding files from other file systems.

     

    SmartRestore™ — Restore active shared library and executable binary files without crashing the system.

     

    Multiple Volume Archives — With BRU, archives can span more than one tape, allowing you to do backups of any size.

     

    Faster Backups — BRU is "tunable" for peak performance, so you can run your tape drive at its maximum rated speed.

     

    Back Up Live File systems — It's not necessary to go into single-user mode. You can backup all the mounted file systems. or choose individual file systems.

     

    Incremental/Differential Backups — Sometimes you don't want to back up everything. You can save time (and tape) by backing up only the files that have changed. Other options let you select by owner or type of file.

     

    Raw Data Partitions — Backup and restore raw data partitions (often used by database programs like Oracle).

     

    Select by Directory Depth — With this option, you can specify how many directory levels you want, which enables you to backup or restore ONLY the files in a directory, but NOT the files in the directories below it.

     

    Include/Exclude Files — You can direct BRU to include or exclude certain files or directories in a backup (or restore). By specifying certain patterns (wildcard or regular expressions), you can perform customized backups.

     

    Data Compression — BRU can save space on your archive tape by compressing data as part of the backup operation. Files are usually compressed by 10% to 90% (depending on the type of data). Like all BRU data, the compressed files are saved in a special error-detection format. Compression is done in memory (no temporary disk space is used), so files of any size can be compressed. BRU speeds up the backup by not attempting to compress files that are already compressed.

     

    Works with all tape drive formats, removable disk technology, disk-files, MO, DVD and more

  • Smaller Network Support

       
    Network Backups — BRU supports many different network protocols, including NFS, SMB, and NetAtalk. BRU also properly backs up filenames that include strange characters and spaces*.

     

    Remote Tape Drives — Write backup data across the network to a tape drive located on another machine.

     

     

  • Tape Support

     

    Tape support accomplished by scripting and command line operations, for large tape library support and full GUI controls, use BRU Server instead.

     

    Tape Labeling — For easy identification, all tapes are automatically labeled with date/time information when BRU writes to them. An optional label containing up to 63 characters can also be specified by the user. To make sure the correct tape is used, label functions can also be used when restoring.

     

    Full support for WORM media–if you have data that needs to be archived in a non modifiable, non erasable manner, LTO WORM (write once read many) tape technology ensures that once data is written to a tape it can only be removed or deleted by physical destruction of the tape itself.  All BRU products recognize and support this technology.

  • ArGest® BRU™ Core Encryption Module Add-On

     

    The BRU Encryption Module add-on encrypts archives as they are created.  Unlike the existing end-to-end encryption, archives remain encrypted while on tape or stage disk. Encrypted archives are not compatible with older versions of BRU which will report an empty archive.

     

    The BRU Encryption Module uses the high-speed Phelix cipher developed by Whiting, Schneier, Lucks and Muller. Phelix includes a fused MAC (Message Authentication Code) that is used to confirm archive integrity. TOLIS Group uses the original x86 assembler implemention and has additionally implemented Phelix for x86_64 and PowerPC processors, donating these implementations to the public domain.

     

    The throughput of the x86_64 implementation was measured at 2.6 cycles per byte, or an astounding 384 megabytes per second on a 1 GHz machine. Typical AES implementations encrypt at 50 megabytes per second. Because modern tape drives, networks and disk file systems have throughputs of ten to a hundred megabytes per second, encryption can easily become a substantial part of a backup running at these speeds.

     

    Technical Description

     

    Although Phelix is a symmetric stream cipher, using the same key for encryption and decryption, the Phelix key is itself protected by an Elliptic Curve Integrated Encryption System (ECIES), using the standard FIPS-186 P-256 elliptic curve. A user supplied passphrase generates a public/private key pair — the public key for encryption and the private key for decryption. At archive creation time, a cryptographically secure random number is chosen for the Phelix key, and is encrypted in the archive itself, requiring the private decryption key to decrypt it.

     

     

  • How is the BRU™ I/O Engine Better than the Competition's?

     

    BRU was designed with one purpose in mind: Reliable Restores! Instead of spending many years of development on a fancy frontend and then depending on a weak backup format as a foundation, BRU was designed with reliability at the tape format level as its foremost requirement. As a result, BRU provides a foundation upon which simple system backup or full enterprise data backup can be built.

     

    Also, BRU is very frugal when it comes to system resources. On an average system, BRU will require less than 1 MB of disk space and can be run in under 2 MB of memory with full performance.

     

    Since BRU is device independent, we do not dictate what backup devices you can use. Your choices are limited only by operating system support and your budget.

ArGest® BRU™ Core, out of the box backs up an unlimited amount of data with no additional fees.  It is recommended if you are using larger amounts of data to larger tape libraries, BRU Server with its robust GUI and tape management options be considered.  Otherwise, BRU Core works with existing hardware or cloud services.

 

 

  • ArGest® BRU™ Core for  Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris x86, OpenSolaris from $399USD

    Pricing is listed alphabetically by OS type.

     

     

    Pricing Option 1 with 30 days of support help and product updates

    BRU Core™ includes 30 days of support help and free product updates.

     

    FreeBSD 6.x x86 Part #20003 $399USD

    FreeBSD 7.x x86 Part #20004 $399USD

    FreeBSD 8.x x86 Part #20005 $399USD

    FreeBSD 6.x x86_64 Part #20006 $399USD

    FreeBSD 7.x x86_64 Part #20007 $399USD

    FreeBSD 8.x x86_64 Part #20008 $399USD

    Linux x86 (glibc 201/2.2/2.3) Part #20013 $399USD

    Linux x86_64 (glibc 201/2.2/2.3) Part #20014 $399USD

    Solaris x86 10.x Part # 20017 $399USD

    OpenSolaris 11.0 Part# 20018 $399USD

     

     

    Pricing Option 2:

    BRU Core™ with single system support, includes 12 months of support help and free product updates. When this option is selected, a savings of $50 over ordering support separately applies, if support is ordered later, full price of support applies.

     

    FreeBSD 6.x x86 Part #20003-S $498USD

    FreeBSD 7.x x86 Part #20004-S $498USD

    FreeBSD 8.x x86 Part #20005-S $498USD

    FreeBSD 6.x x86_64 Part #20006-S $498USD

    FreeBSD 7.x x86_64 Part #20007-S $498USD

    FreeBSD 8.x x86_64 Part #20008-S $498USD

    Linux x86 (glibc 201/2.2/2.3) Part #20013-S $498USD

    Linux x86_64 (glibc 201/2.2/2.3) Part #20014-S $498USD

    Solaris x86 10.x Part # 20017-S $498USD

    OpenSolaris 11.0 Part# 20018-S $498USD

     

    Extended Support (includes unlimited phone and ticket system help), part # 10123 $149USD/12 months, renewal discounts apply

     

     

         Upgrade from a previous version of BRU or different version of BRU, please call 480-505-0488 or email bruinfo@owc.com

     

         For Education, Government, ORG discounts or bulk licenses purchases, please call 480-505-0488 or email bruinfo@owc.com

     

    Or ready to order?  Pick the part # desired and visit our ordering page. TOLIS Group accepts Visa and MasterCard.

  • ArGest® BRU™ Core for AIX, HP-UX, Irix, SolarisSPARC from $599USD

    Pricing is listed alphabetically by OS type.

     

     

    Pricing Option 1 with 30 days of support help and product updates

    BRU Core™, includes 30 days of support help and free product updates.

     

    AIX 4.x and 5.x+ Part #20002 $599USD

    HP-UX 10.x Part #20011 $599USD

    HP-UX 11.x Part #20009  $599USD

    HP-UX 11.x ITANIUM Part #20010 $599USD

    Irix 6.x Part#20012 $599USD

    SolarisSPARC 6/7/8/9 Part # 20015 $599USD

    SolarisSPARC 10 Part # 20016 $599USD

     

     

    Pricing Option 2:

    BRU Core™, includes 12 months of support help and free product updates. When this option is selected, a savings of $100 over ordering support separately applies, if support is ordered later, full price of support applies.

     

    AIX 4.x and 5.x+ Part #20002 $698USD

    HP-UX 10.x Part #20011 $698USD

    HP-UX 11.x Part #20009  $698USD

    HP-UX 11.x ITANIUM Part #20010 $698USD

    Irix 6.x Part#20012 $698USD

    SolarisSPARC 6/7/8/9 Part # 20015 $698USD

    SolarisSPARC 10 Part # 20016 $698USD

     

    Extended Support (includes unlimited phone and ticket system help), part # 10125 $199USD/12 months, renewal discounts apply

     

     

    Upgrade from a previous version of BRU or different version of BRU, please call 480-505-0488 or email bruinfo@owc.com

     

    For Education, Government, ORG discounts or bulk licenses purchases, please call 480-505-0488 or email bruinfo@owc.com

     

    Or ready to order?  Pick the part # desired and visit our ordering page. TOLIS Group accepts Visa and MasterCard.

  • ArGest™ BRU™ Core Encryption Module Add-on

    The BRU™ Core Encryption Module add-on for BRU™ Core encrypts archives as they are created.  Unlike the existing end-to-end encryption, archives remain encrypted while on tape or stage disk.  Compatible with BRU Core versions 18.x and newer.  NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ARGEST® BRU SERVER.

     

    Pricing:

    BRU Core Encryption module add-on #60050 $169USD



         Upgrade from a previous version of BRU or different version of BRU to use the Encryption module, please call 480-505-0488 or email bruinfo@owc.com

     

         For Education, Government, ORG discounts or bulk licenses purchases, please call 480-505-0488 or email bruinfo@owc.com

     

    Or ready to order?  Pick the part # desired and visit our ordering page. TOLIS Group accepts Visa and MasterCard.

 

 

     Pricing subject to occasional changes, please call 480-505-0488 or email bruinfo@owc.com for your customized quote.

 

TOLIS Group proudly accepts

Specialized systems not required

 

BRU™ only requires that you have an OS installed with a working disk or tape drive (see supported tape devices at Supported Tape Devices).

 

For Linux, the current version of BRU for x86 or x86_64 requires GLIBC 2.4 or newer.  The distribution of Linux used is not important.  We recommend the installation of the mt-st package for full tape device manipulation.

Click the following links below to download the PDF documentation appropriate for your needs.

 

If you need assistance beyond what is found in the documentation for BRU Core Worststion/Desktop, please visit TOLIS Group's support page for methods of contacting technical support directly.

 

BRU Core version 18.0

Instructions for BRU Core 18.0

 

BRU Core Workstation/Desktop version 17.0 LEGACY VERSION 17.0 Workstation/Desktop

Complete instructions for BRU Core Workstation and Desktop 17.0

 

BRU Core Datasheet

 

BRU Core EULA

 

General BRU White Papers:

 

The BRU Advantage - Details on the elements that make BRU so effective.

Proving the BRU Advantage - BRU was originally developed because tar fails–see why.

BRU's Unique Availability Characteristics - More details about BRU's unique features.

Reliable Verification - Don't be fooled by foolish verification methods.

LTO — Big, Fast, and Cheap - TOLIS Group is pro-tape, see why.

Tape's Not Dead Tech - Tape is not a dead tech, it is fast, easy to use, and nothing else will protect your stored data as effectively for as long.

BRU Server and Parallels - How BRU and virtual environments such as Parallels and VMWare work together.

Virtual Machines and BRU - Workflow details on using BRU in a virtual machine environment.

TOLIS Group OFM for Live System Backup - BRU backs up open files and databases on Windows.

BRU's Support of Regulatory Governance - BRU ihelps you maintain compliance with government/research/medical regulations for backing up and recovering data.

Implementing Tape Storage on Apple Systems - Special considerations when using tape with Apple systems.

Tape vs. Disk vs. VTL Backup Options - BRU allows you to back up to any device type that works for your environment.

LTFS - One look at why LTFS is not the best choice for long term archival.

Case Study: Austrian Film Museum - Why the Austrian Film Museum chose BRU to protect their irreplaceable assets.

ArGest® Backup vs ArGest® BRU Server - Which one should I use?.

Any guidance or direction TOLIS Group provides to you will only be based on the information provided by you to us as our customer. Many factors in your environment are unknown to TOLIS Group and can affect advice, problems, outcomes, or recommended solutions. TOLIS Group cannot and will not accept any culpability or responsibility due to potential omissions. Also, be advised that technology changes. As a result of these changes in technology, products you are using might be affected both directly and indirectly. TOLIS Group cannot and will not be responsible or liable for any consequences that can occur due to any change in technology, or in conjunction with the use of information provided by TOLIS Group under these circumstances. Proceeding with communications, orders, and interactions between yourself and TOLIS Group is indication that you understand and agree with this statement.   For complete warranty, legal, and return policy notices, please visit http://www.tolisgroup.com/brulegal.html

 

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