Online Backup Services

So a bunch of nasty storms blew through our area Tuesday afternoon ... tornado warning sirens, trees getting blown down, news channels saying to seek immediate shelter, much excitement.  In the end just a very small "tornado" and lots of high winds, rain and hail wreaking havor on vegatation, roof shingles, and gutters.

Unfortunately, we're still in the process of completely overhauling our backup strategy and the thought of a tornado hitting the church gave me a rather large pause.  (We're getting close to finishing the overhaul, but there are still gaps we've yet to fill.)  Our server rack is on the upper level ... if a sizeable twister hit there's a higher than I like probability that the rack would be gone.  Uggh, I get a sick feeling in my gut just thinking about it :-(

So tonight I started looking closer at online backup services as a possible suppliment to our current backup strategy at least until we fill in our gaps.  I'd rest a little better knowing our uber critical data was off in a nice datacenter should both the church and my home meet their doom (I live only 3 miles from GCC).  Here's a nice plug for using Fellowship One ... I don't worry about our membership and contribution data as it's all hosted elsewhere ... that rocks! :-)

So, I've heard of several people using Mozy at home and giving it big thumbs up.  I installed their free 2GB limit version tonight and it is very slick.  The unlimited version is a mere $4.95/mo.  Now that we have a new digital camera, I'm thinking $5/mo is a good deal just to backup all our digital photos.

MozyPro is aimed at businesses, even has Exchange and SQL capabilities ... nice.  Information Week did a recent review of 5 online backup services ... but they didn't test any exchange our SQL capabilities ... grr.  After reading the reviews and checking the websites for each option, I'm leaning towards MozyPro ... at $.50/GB it spanks the other options price wise.  Right now I'd just like to get our SQL financial stuff going and possibly build from there if it makes sense.

I haven't given up on the "let's all rent some datacenter space" idea I mentioned a while back, but as an immediate fill-the-gap solution MozyPro is looking very sweet.  I'll monkey with it yet this week and let ya know how it goes.  If you're using or have investigated online backup services please leave some feedback ... especially if you're using MozyPro with SQL.

UPDATE:  Erik was kind enough to send me an email asking for my referral code ... apparently I get some extra free space if people sign up for Mozy using my code.  So my code is 5SNFN1 or you can just use my email address of gccjason (at) gmail ... thanks in advance :-)

UPDATE 2: Non-profits get a 10% discount for MozyPro ... nice!

Comments

[Brett Anderson]

Been using MozyPro for several months now in addition to my disk/tape backups - highly recommend it! I've had a few minor issues, but their support has been fabulous.

[Andrew Mitry]

We stated using Mozy Pro two weeks ago, currently we are backing up our file server and a laptop. We haven't set it up for Exchange yet. Overall is seems to work pretty well. I want to spend some time testing the recovery process but I haven't hada chance yet.

[austin]

we just started using it last week and only use it to backup SQL and Shelby. It does a nice job- i still have not tested a recovery with it thought. I hope to do that soon.

[Jennifer]

For online backup news, information and articles, there is an excellent website:

http://www.BackupReview.info

This site lists more than 400 online backup companies and ranks the top 25 on a monthly basis.

Any one can add their company in the directory. Just click on the "Search" button found at the top.

Cheers,

[David Szpunar]

Thanks for the deets on the 10% non-profit discount! I'll have to make sure and get that; it looks like we may start using MozyPro pretty soon! I'm running the free 2GB now like you...well, 2.2GB thanks to your referral code :-)

[John]

Mozy is ok, I use disksave.com. The charge is not that much more, but from a technical standpoint it blows Mozy away, not to mention the restore function is a breeze. Just my thoughts...