Small business online backup options

foo · 26 Sep 2011 at 14:03

Hi all,

I do a bit of Tech support for a small company out of hours (6 people). They're Mac-based - iMacs and MacBook Pros with a Mac mini server running 10.6. We currently have Carbon Copy Cloner running an hourly backup task replicating their files to an external HDD for quick on-site backup purposes. I'm looking into options for off-site backup to ensure we have data in two places and are as safe as we can be (should the building fall down etc).

We're not looking at a huge amount of data to backup at present, approx 200GB. Can anyone advise a decent company to store a copy of the data with, please? I plan to keep running the hourly backups in-house and then have a replication job running over night to backup daily changes.

Many thanks in advance!

foo · 27 Sep 2011 at 12:47

Thanks for the replies so far!

I was leaning towards CrashPlan Pro, so it's disappointing to hear that it's not available in the UK, I've dropped them an email to confirm. i365 looks good, however, I can't see any mention on their site to say they specifically support OS X (they appear to support all other OSs!), have contacted them to see if they do or not. Need to have more of a look into the Trend and Spideroak offerings

foo · 27 Sep 2011 at 15:27

Whilst waiting for a response from CrashPlan regarding availability I had a browse through their FAQ - http://www.crashplan.com/business/support/doku.php/faq

"Is CrashPlan PRO available outside of the US and Canada?
CrashPlan PRO is currently only available in the US and Canada."

doh!

Ah well. Have decided to go with Spideroak, I like the fact they're encrypted to the hilt and their client software looks comprehensive enough. Thanks again for the feedback, if anyone pops into this thread and has any recommendations/warnings feel free to post.

Cheers

foo · 28 Sep 2011 at 09:07

I had a brief look at them, they do look like a solid offering with good credentials, but they're out of the budget at £6.99 (and £3.99 for desktop) for a server licence + £0.50 p/GB @ 200GB we're looking at £100 p/month. I've read that Spideroak there can be a bit of a performance hit as it does all the processing client-side but I'm OK with that as I intend to run the service out of hours especially for the initial backup. I like the idea of file sharing as it could/should be a workable solution for remote working, which would be nice and the option to back up as many devices as I please without additional cost which will come in handy for laptops (just in case).