Remote Data Backup

jamoor · 11 Jun 2008 at 11:22

Anyone know the best way to go about this, is colocating a server and connecting to it a viable solution, or are the companies that charge for it a good idea?

Biffa · 11 Jun 2008 at 12:46

Depends how much data you have, how important it is and how sensitive it is, those would be the three things that would affect what sort of service you use.

The "use your own server" is good on the keep your sensitive data safe model if you take adequate precautions, but you are going to need some redundancy in RAID and some sort of tape backup procedures at the other end to make sure your data is protected.

If you data isn't that sensitive/important etc you can get away with it.

Using a 3rd party, if they are decent, gives you peace of mind in terms of redundat data, backups and security of your data, balanced against giving your senstive data to the 3rd party to look after, however most of the big guys in the sector are used to handling all sorts of sensitive info and often encrypt it anyway.

oddjob62 · 11 Jun 2008 at 13:29

We've currently got MS DPM sever at our DR site backing up our head office servers. although the 100meg link makes like a lot easier.

Have used Asigra in the past which is pretty good (backing up some of our clients over the internet), but it is rather expensive.

bigredshark · 11 Jun 2008 at 16:32

We're one of the biggest Asigra vendors in the UK, anyone using asigra can't actually see the customers data. You choose an encryption key when you install the software, without that key there is no way of getting the data...it's completely secure - even from us.

Unsurprisingly, the number of people who loose the encryption key and end up completely ****** is pretty high.

oddjob62 · 11 Jun 2008 at 16:41

bigredshark said:
We're one of the biggest Asigra vendors in the UK, anyone using asigra can't actually see the customers data. You choose an encryption key when you install the software, without that key there is no way of getting the data...it's completely secure - even from us.

Unsurprisingly, the number of people who loose the encryption key and end up completely ****** is pretty high.

Yeah the place i used to work sells off a backup service using Asigra. I was pretty impressed, but i stayed well away... no way i want to be the one responsible for losing 100 clients' backups hehe.

zetec452 · 11 Jun 2008 at 18:56

I've used Ahsay at a previous place. Probably not as "corporate" as the likes of Asigra but worked wonderfully for us.

bigredshark · 11 Jun 2008 at 21:30

oddjob62 said:
Yeah the place i used to work sells off a backup service using Asigra. I was pretty impressed, but i stayed well away... no way i want to be the one responsible for losing 100 clients' backups hehe.

You did well to, looks good but is horrific software at times. If it gets confused it tends to start eating data in it's 'self heal' routines and there are some beautifully quirky features (negative generations being the one they just sprung on us recently...)