MozyPro ... support and a call from a VP

I mentioned in my last MozyPro post that for some reason I couldn't get MozyPro to correctly run a SQL backup.  So rather than calling tech support I decided to just shoot an email to support with a link to my blog post ... thus they could see screen shots and whatnot.

Within 6 minutes I had an email reply back from Bryan asking to send me the log file.  About 10mins after I sent the log file Bryan said it looked like there wasn't enough disk space for Mozy to encode the files.  Sure enough, the C drive on our SQL box had about 1.5GB free space and this particular SQL database was 2.3GB ... doh!  By default MozyPro uses the C:\windows\temp directory for all it's file mojo ... not enough room and it won't run completely.  Makes perfect sense.

Bryan also sent directions (see below) on how to change the default directory ... which after following made the SQL backup work like a champ.  Kudos for rapid tech support!

That same day I also got a call from the VP of Product Development at Berkeley Data Systems ... the makers of Mozy/MozyPro.  Vance wanted to hear my experience, both good and bad, and seemed genuinely interested in my feedback.  He was catching a plane at the time so we had to cut the conversation off before we had a chance to fully dialog ... another chat is being planned.

While I feel they have a sweet solution for a sweet price, 2 major areas I feel they need to address are:

• Some mechanism to get your data to their data center BEFORE sync'ing.  At $.45/GB I'd be game to backup 500GB or so to them ... but that would take forever just to get the initial upload done.  Other online backup solutions will send you drives to populate and return, I strongly urge Berkeley to do likewise.  Shoot, just send me cheap-o USB Lacie drives or similar.  The Mozy client could encrypt and dump to the USB drive instead of uploading over the internet.  Then I can just send them the drive(s) back ... the data is encrypted so even if the drives get stolen during shipping I'm not going to sweat it that much.  A tech could contact me once they have the data ready for online sync and now I'm just sending block changes to their servers which shouldn't be that large of a data set per day (excluding large A/V files).  There should also be a way to get the data shipped back to me should disaster occur.  Should the church be wiped out, I can't wait weeks for our data to download.
• The MozyPro app must load faster.  When you open the app to do anything, you must wait for it to populate the backup sets you've flagged for backup.  For what I can tell, this means that the app must crawl the entire drive(s) looking for the files with the appropriate extensions.  On our 400GB file server this can take up to 5 minutes or more.  When you want to make a single quick configuration change, or say check the history log, this wait period just doesn't make me happy.  Perhaps make the app only do new backup set refreshes if you hit a refresh button or something ... don't make it scan drives during app startup ... please!

Address those 2 issues and they've got a killer solution for the price.  Granted, I've only been testing MozyPro for a week now and thus may uncover other issues with more testing.  For instance, I've not tested a single restore yet mainly 'cause I'm waiting for everything to get uploaded first.

Like most folks, I fully agree that online backups will not replace your D2D and tape backups ... upload speed is just not fast enough.  However, as a low cost supplement to your backup strategy, online backups have certainly gotten my attention and curiosity.  And I should also mention that our IT buddy Dean over at ACS is still pursuing online storage solutions in addition to their LiveStor product ... so something sweet may become of that as well.  Stay tuned ...

How to change the default temp directory for MozyPro:

1. Make sure you're running Mozy 1.8.2.3 or later.  (You can the latest version at http://mozy.com/downloads/mozysetup.exe)

2. Create a new folder for Mozy to build its files in. Most people use something like D:\mozytemp\
3. Open your registry editor by click the Start menu, then Run, and typing 'regedit'. Click OK.

4. Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Mozy\options

5. Right click the right pane and click New > String Value 6. Change the new value's name to 'tempdir'

7. Right click the value and select Edit.

8. Change the value to the name of the folder you created. (If you created D:\mozytemp\, make the value 'D:\mozytemp\')
9. Save the changes and close the registry editor.

10. Open a command prompt (click the Start menu, then Run, and type 'cmd'. Click OK.)
11. Type "net stop mozybackup" and hit Enter
12. Type "net start mozybackup" and hit Enter.

NOTE:  steps 11/12 didn't work for me so I just went into Admin Tools>services and restarted the mozy service.

Comments

[Austin Spooner]

Jason- I did some research and it does look like (for a small fee of course) they will send you DVD's of your data should you need to do a huge restore.

[Jason Powell]

Kewl ... thanks Austin

[Jennifer]

If anyone is wandering how to choose an online backup company, start here:

http://www.backupreview.info/index.php?pid=read_article&article_id=9

The top 25 online backup companies are here:
http://www.backupreview.info/index.php?pid=top25

It now makes sense that Mozy is ranked as the top online backup company.

Cheers,

[David Szpunar]

The DVD option Austin mentioned is something I saw, but I'm not sure how DVDs of 500GB of data, for example, would be all that much better than downloading the same. That's still over 60 DVDs, assuming dual-layer discs with 8GB per CD, which they may or may not be.

Thanks for the temp dir tip; I was about to contact Mozy again about my Exchange backup but you may have found my problem. Retrying now, no report for a while :-)

I haven't seen your load time issue, but my datasets aren't huge so far (they will be when I'm done testing on the Exchange server). A pre-backup on an encrypted drive would be awesome, I agree!

[dave]

Superb tip.....using with mozy pro.

[Alan]

The Mozy app speed when populating backup sets is an absolute joke and is making the app unusable.

Mozy are going to lose a lot of larger clients if they don't get this sorted asap.

Apart from that as you say they are competitive and it's fairly simple and does the job. The recent exposure on techcrunch is a good thing for them lets just hope they don't over saturate and that getting a decent number of clients will allow them to fix the slow lame app!

[michelle79]

I discovered a Memopal (www.memopal.com) "cutting edge solution for online
backup"

They merged online backup, online storage and file sharing services into one product.

If you try this service you will notice that (contrary to most competitors):
- You can access your files in (true) real time with a web browser
- They really offer 250 GB (some competitors offer a fake unlimited web
space, they say "fair use")
- You can share a file or many files with the 1-click-share functionality
- Some of your files will be uploaded very very fast (turboupload)
- The service and website are in 10 different languages

I've also found two useful guide to online backup on Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_backup

[Patrick Siefe]

When restoring, Mozy Pro Can take 24 hours (or more, as I sit waiting at hour 30) on a weekend (weekdays would take longer) to simply GATHER the files that you need to download before you can even start to download them. (50k files or a VERY SMALL server) This makes it worthless for Dr.s lawyers, dentist, hotels,... or anyone who needs their data restored rapidly.

Further, I have been on the phone waiting simply for someone to answer the phone for over an hour so far with no response.