Happy New Year and a very merry 2022!

We’ve been busy adding new features to RainyDay Backup as well other improvements and we thought it was time that we shared what we’ve been working on.

Here are headlines:

.NET 6.0

.NET 6.0 was released in November 2021 and provides the next evolution in the .NET story. Not only is it the next long-term support (LTS) version of .NET, it also offers increased performance, improved stability and enhanced cross-platform support (Xamarin has been folded into the main .NET).

Using .NET 6.0 also allows us to upgrade to the latest generation of Entity Framework Core, which we are currently working on and will further improve the performance and stability of our RainyDay Backup system. 

Git Backup Support 

From the beginning of RainyDay Backup development we have provided the ability to download your code repos into zip files.   Whilst this works well and allows you to capture a snapshot of your code at the backup time, it does not backup the commit history, so you lose some of the details.  

With the Jan 2022 update to the RainyDay Backup beta, we have added the ability to backup using Git.  This allows you to capture all the details from your git repos and will allow you to restore a lost repo to a high degree of detail, rather than just the code. 

We offer three different strategies for Git backups that allow you to decide which approach suits you, and backup up the data the way you want. 

Git support is a great addition to RainyDay backup, but there is currently an issue with long file paths. Files with paths longer than 260 characters can cause an issue when checking out backups. We have created a blog post to help mitigate this issue until we can provide a full fix.

Tag Backups

Tags are a great way to take snapshots of your code at different points, such as releases of the software. There are branches on the Git repo, but they are treated differently and exposed in a different part of the Azure DevOps API, so they have not been included in the backups in RainyDay Backup.  

We have now added support for tags and they can now be backed up the same as regular branches, using either Zip or Git storage modes.   

Multi-threaded downloads

Downloading of NuGet packages has always been a part of RainyDay Backup, as has download of work item attachments and images, but it was a linear process. 

In the latest update we have switched to a multi-threading process which allows multiple files to be download simultaneously. These speeds up the NuGet package downloads by up to 20x and work item attachments by up to 5x.  We are looking to extend this approach to other aspects of the system to speed up the backups even further. 

Logging Improvements and notifications

Logging has been improved in the latest update to provide detail around issues that may occur as well as reducing unnecessary messages that clutter the log. 

Additionally, we have worked to improve notifications (via email) that you receive if there are any failures and what the causes might be. 

Small Enhancements

This update includes a number of small enhancements to make the system easier to use and more helpful. 

These changes include checks to see if the backup service is running (and start it if not) and the ability to launch the Service Configuration Editor directly from the Desktop console.

The Service Configuration Editor has been updated to optionally restart the service if the configuration has changed and now looks more in keeping with the Desktop console. 

Bug fixes

This release fixes a number of bugs and issues that we have found during the development of this update.  This makes RainyDay Backup more stable and performant which ensures your backups are secure.

One big fix is the configuration of the SMTP service for sending notifications.  This can now be configured and tested.

More coming soon…

We are continuing work on RainyDay Backup and will be adding further features and abilities in the coming weeks and months.

If you have a new feature you’d like to see or a suggestion then please let us know.