Helios has announced two new backup software tools to enhance Apple Time Machine backups to Helios EtherShare UB+ network volumes. Helios TM Image Builder and Helios TM Browser together offer customized backup disk images and status monitoring.

The new Helios TM Image Builder lets admins limit the size of each backup disk image to optimize the disk utilization of the Helios EtherShare backup volume. Creating individually sized backup disk images enables network admins to use a single EtherShare volume to back up many Mac clients. The ability to set the segmentation size of a Time Machine backup disk image provides optimized integration with server-based backup solutions.

TM Image Builder also adds encryption support for backup disk images, to secure backup of confidential and mission critical data. Now unauthorized users, including system administrators handling backup systems, can't access or retrieve content without a valid password.

The Helios TM Browser application supports system administrators with status overviews for administration of Time Machine-based network backups of all Macs within any network. The dashboard includes information about when backups were started and completed. Special warnings advise if backups are overdue. Helios TM Browser is designed to frees admins from having to visit every single Mac workstation to perform a backup overview.

Since Helios EtherShare UB+ volumes are detected by Apple's Time Machine and utilized as backup disks for networked Mac workstations and mobile MacBooks, fail-safety and data integrity are further increased because the Time Machine backup disk images can be integrated into the server backup system itself. Helios tools were created specially to help admins optimize performance in such an environment.

The new Helios TM tools for EtherShare UB+ are available for free download from the Helios WebShare server: http://webshare.helios.de .