Backing Up Your Data Online

 Remote backup services remove some of the risk associated with local backups — like external hard drives, network drives or removable media. If your office falls victim to a disaster such as a fire, flood, theft, or even a virus on your network, your backup storage could be lost along with your primary one.  And remote backup doesn't have to be expensive -- online options like MozyPro, Carbonite, or Jungle Disk are within the reach of even small nonprofits.

Remote backup tools transfer data from your computers to shared storage centers via an Internet connection. These services also have the added benefit of automating your backups, eliminating the significant risk of human error. A number of vendors offer services in this area. Which one most reliably and affordably meets your needs? Based on conversations with three experts who routinely consult on, install, and configure these systems for nonprofit organizations of all sizes, here are a few good remote backup tools, followed by some information to help you choose among them.

MozyPro
The small-business version of the popular Mozy Online Backup service, MozyPro offers a powerful, easy-to-use software interface and solid reporting features. The service automatically detects and backs up new and changed files, and supports bandwidth throttling, file versioning, and multiple restore options (including online, or by a mailed DVD, which you order through the vendor).

Mozy supports Windows 2000 and newer operating systems, and Macs running 10.4 and 10.5. It can also backup common applications running on Microsoft Windows and Mac servers. These can be tricky to configure, however. It’s recommended that you work with Mozy’s support staff to make sure you’re backing up the right data for these applications.

The monthly cost is $3.95 per license and $.50 per gigabyte of data for individual computers, or $6.95 per license and $.50 per GB for servers.

Carbonite
Carbonite doesn’t distinguish between home and business users, or individual machines and servers. Though you pay a flat per-computer rate for unlimited storage, restores are available online only, and can take a long time for more than a couple GBs of data. Similarly, the initial backup can take days, or weeks, to run. Like MozyPro, Carbonite supports bandwidth throttling, automatic detection and backup of new and changed files, and file versioning, although a file deleted from your computer is deleted from Carbonite after 30 days.

From a cost perspective, this service is more affordable on a per-computer basis, and might be a better option if you’ve only got a few computers in your office and they’re not networked. The software is less-configurable than MozyPro’s, but supports Windows XP and newer operating systems, and Intel-based Macs running OS 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6.

The cost is $54.95 per year, per computer, with unlimited storage.

Jungle Disk
Jungle Disk is a backup-management software application that partners with two third-party storage vendors – Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (S3) and Rackspace Cloud Files. You choose which you want to use — both charge a small per-GB fee, with the first 10 GB of storage for free. Jungle Disk essentially turns these online storage services into a remote backup solution, and is the most affordable of the options discussed here. It treats the storage like a local drive, assigning it a drive letter for ease of use.

It supports Windows operating systems 2000 and newer, servers running 2003 and 2008, and Macs (both PowerPC and Intel-based) running OSX 10.5 or newer. The vendor also provides open-source code, and offers reporting via email, web, or RSS feed. File versioning is supported, but bandwidth throttling is not, nor is automatic new-and-changed-file detection.

The service costs just $5 per month per server. A Workgroup edition for individual desktops and laptops costs $4 per month. Both Amazon S3 and Rackspace charge $.15 per GB after the first 10 GB. Beginning in July 2010, there will also be a $.10 per GB data transfer charge for Amazon S3.

Since backup management applications are used to manage local backups, it’s possible you already have one in-house — there are a number of competitive software options, including Symantec Backup Exec, ArcServe, or Retrospect, that range in price from a few hundred dollars to more than a thousand. You can use one of these applications on top of the Jungle Disk/Amazon S3/Rackspace solution for a more robust backup management feature-set than Jungle Disk alone offers — especially in the areas of managing Microsoft Exchange and SQL servers.

For More Information
 

A Few Good Tools for Online Data Backup
The full article from which this tip has been excerpted, with considerably more about considerations and how to choose.

Backing Up Your Data: Tools and Strategies for Protecting Your Organization Against Data Loss
A useful and accessible guide from TechSoup covering strategies and both hardware and software solutions to data backup.

Local Backup for Your Organization
TechSoup takes on the opposite of hosted backup -- local, generally hardware based solutions.