Finally moving from backup tape to cloud

RangeR

Hey,

I've mentioned in a few posts how I just hate Tape Backups. Yeah, they have their place but I just don't like them.

I've trimmed my data down to a semi manageable level and have also got in a blisteringly fast internet connection.

Can anyone recommend a good online backup provider?
So far I've seen KeepItSafe [Looks good but not fully Irish] and Mozy [Not so much].

Preferences:

• Fileserver - Differential is fine after the first backup.
• SQL Server - I assume this would be a full local backup, then send that backup file to the cloud. Therefore no differential, per say.
• Schedule and forget - excepting weekly spot checks. Reports would be nice.
• Prefer a fully Irish owned outfit with no data centres outside the country. But this isn't a huge deal breaker.
• Prefer data to be locally encrypted before sending to cloud

Mr. Fancypants

Limited options if you want to go fully Irish. KeepITSafe probably the best although are owned by an American crowd.

Symantec's Backup.Cloud is cheaper but no initial seeding and datacentre based in Amsterdam.

If you are interested in having business continuity as well you could look at a Datto Alto or SIRIS device which allow for local backups of physical and virtual machines to a local appliance which allows for powering the backups up as vms, also replicates to the cloud and allows the machines to be powered on there in case of total disaster. Pricing isnt far away from KeepITSafe.

If you are fully virtualized you could look at Veeam Cloud edition and put the backups out to Amazon/Azure.

Static M.e.

We use KeepITsafe and Savenet.

Probably prefer KeepITsafe because they are more proactive and send me emails when they notice things (you deleted XXXX files yesterday, I know thats a critical folder for you guys just checking that you did on purpose.. or backup failed last night can I take a look this morning?).

We moved from Tape to Online about 3 + years ago and have NEVER looked back. I work in Dublin if you ever want to come in a see exactly it looks like from a customer side, message me.

RangeR

Excellent. Cheers Static. What sort of money are they charging? We have 10 day backups with one month long. Each backup is a full one at about 400GB [MSSQL and FS] , although I have no huge issue going differential. Just looking for a guide price before I ring their sales line and then not be able to get rid of them.

Kensington

I'd be very wary of cloud backups as your sole coverage for backup and restoration.
Sure - you have a blisteringly fast internet connection in your building now which is great for transfering bulky amounts of data.

What happens when that building has just burnt to the ground and the only temporary site location you can get is with a 3G dongle for internet?

You'll have rebuilt your destroyed office from the ground up by the time you've retrieved all 400GB of your data back from the cloud. You mightn't have any business left to retrieve at that stage though...

RangeR

Kensington wrote: »

I'd be very wary of cloud backups as your sole coverage for backup and restoration.
Sure - you have a blisteringly fast internet connection in your building now which is great for transfering bulky amounts of data.

What happens when that building has just burnt to the ground and the only temporary site location you can get is with a 3G dongle for internet?

You'll have rebuilt your destroyed office from the ground up by the time you've retrieved all 400GB of your data back from the cloud. You mightn't have any business left to retrieve at that stage though...

Fair point. However, we also have off site storage [1:1 server replication] about 30KM away. that's our "burn down" policy. At least enough give us time to get back up to 100%.

Ctrl Alt Del

Cloud backup is still expensive.
It comes at around €1 per 1Gb.
Make the maths:400Gb comes at €400 per month x 12 month = more than €4,000 per year.

I'll buy backup drive solution based on LTO5,many many tapes for daily,weekly and monthly,hard drives and 2 NAS boxes and still not reaching the cloud based price for a year !

If you hate the backup tape drives,then we cant help you ...
Get the figures right for your boss/manager and see which ones makes more financial sense...Disaster Recovery,i preffer to be the owner of my backup on a tape,on a hard drive and/or a NAS near to me,i plug it in to LAN and start copying data through Windows Explorer if possible.

For a complete recovery / continuity plan, you need to take in consideration the time it takes you to get back online with internet access,servers,applications and data !

Have fun...

lotas

Ctrl Alt Del wrote: »

Cloud backup is still expensive.
It comes at around €1 per 1Gb.
Make the maths:400Gb comes at €400 per month x 12 month = more than €4,000 per year.

Just in relation to the price, Amazon have a service called Glacier (aws.amazon.com/glacier). Glacier is designed to be write once, read very little... its really for Archiving of data... So, you have on site backup (possibly hot and cold on site) and then you have off site, which is also very cold (hence Glacier!). You back up to Glacier (1c per gig hosted per month, not the usual 10c or even EUR1 you mention above) but getting data can be slower or more expensive... Its really aimed at a replacement to Tapes (going to tape is a last resource, i am guessing, and will cost a lot more time and money than going to hard disk).

the maths above would mean your price is about 40EUR per year, not EUR4k!

Hope this helps...

Ctrl Alt Del

Just a little bit off-topic:

How many apps does it take to back up your data?