Simple Backup Follow up: Part 1

Having ditched Mozy Pro after trials and tribulations described in an earlier post, I've started looking at alternatives.

I've had no response from MBW or Mozy regarding my password reset or product code requests so couldn't get any further with the uninstall / reinstall process. Needless to say that I haven't got time to spare dealing with the problem, so am looking at other solutions.

Anyone facing a similar choice of offsite backup solutions may find the results useful, but I found this comparison quite a useful starting point. Personally, I'm always a little suspicious of who paid for advertised reviews and which reviews are genuine; so found this list that contained a wide range of solutions.

From my perspective, the term "cloud" is a sales buzzword for architecture that has been in existence for at least a decade. "Cloud", "cloud hybrid", "private cloud" essentially just means "hosted" - With a combination of outsourced hosting or private / internal hosting infrastructure.

Moving past this, the objective of the exercise is to find an offsite / cloud backup solution for personal use - perhaps even a vendor that provides appropriate personal and enterprise-grade solutions. Obviously this is a very specific set of requirements, and yours will be different.

I'm aiming for the following drivers in order:

1. Ability to synchronise and schedule backups, potentially even machine restores
2. Price
3. Security (I'd like a secured backup that only the key-holder can open)
4. Capacity

Optionally, some secondary drivers would be nice:

1. Capable of backing up specific folders / files from a number of devices or VM's
2. Capable of restoring specific files to a device of my choosing

So where to start? Well Mozy Pro is discounted immediately. Whilst it seems to cover the main drivers it seems to miss out on the secondary drivers. Also my own experience has been tainted by the difficulty in solving a problem originally reported in 2010. If I had problems with Windows 8.1 Enterprise I'm not prepared to wait it out or see what happens with Windows 9 upgrades.

After doing some research I'm going to cut the list down to 2 candidates, although I focused on the following roadmap candidates to begin with:

• Carbonite
• Backblaze
• Datto
• OneDrive (Sky Drive)
• SpiderOak

For me, the whole OneDrive / Google Drive / Dropbox mechanism is great for a specific purpose - storing a bunch of files and folders online (or "in the cloud" if you must), and sharing across devices. We have a large proportion of Microsoft devices in our household, along with an iPhone, a few Linux boxes and some other kit I use in my sandbox.

OneDrive is great for allowing the share of files I've acquired on a PC to a sandbox machine on a different VLAN. Its also perfect for being able to capture, modify sales documents written in MS office on Surface Pro, desktops and Windows Phones.

However I've discounted this type of technology almost straight away because I'm looking for a dedicated backup & disaster recovery option for some very specific file sets. Windows 8/8.1 already takes care of things like apps and settings. I've also discounted them because it would be conceivable that MicroGooHoople^TM could allow access (by subpoena, for example) to those backups - don't forget that everything is based in the US your data is liable to US law.

Obviously that last statement is really within tin-foil hat territory :)

I'm also eliminating Datto as it's clearly an enterprise-grade solution (and has no prices on the website!). EtE encryption, Atom 2.4 Ghz 8 core processors on the backup servers, backup chain recovery, bare metal restores, etc.

In part 2 of this post I'll look at the remaining roadmap candidates:

• Carbonite
• Backblaze
• SpiderOak

 So far I'm also seeing encouraging alternatives for all the MBW features I use and will speak to one of the vendors to take the services outside of the MBW package. Great when its all working but appalling when you need assistance.