A company I am consulting for would like to use a more contemporary back-up service for their data. They had been using a back-up tape and that has causes some issues, they are seeking somewhere offsite that could offer decent storage and backup of their files, security, security, security and easy of access. They have less than 100gigs of info tha twould need to be stored. Anyone know any reputable places for this kind of thing?
I couldn’t tell you what is better. Both my current company and my previous company backed up to tape. They stored the tape with Iron Mountain.
It looks like Iron Mountain also has an online backup solution similar to what you are looking for here. From what I have heard, Iron Mountain has a good reputation.
I was looking at personal backup solutions, and I came across adrive. Here are their “enterprise” plans. I don’t know anything about this company, but it looks like they have plans that fit you space needs for a decent price. You will have to research their security and reliability.
I’m assuming you’re looking to back up your data over the Internet to a secure remote data storage site. If so, many of the larger offsite records management companies now do this (Iron Mountain, for example). Other players like Symantec and EMC are also entering the market. The usual configuration is that you configure a local NAS and do backup to disk to the device. The NAS is then configured to securely transmit data to the offsite location whenever there is free bandwidth. It works okay so long as you aren’t moving around huge chunks of data at one time, but most services have ways of dealing with the large initial backup job and large restores; it usually involves shipping USB drives overnight.
If you currently have offsite data storage for things like business records, financial documents, and backup tapes (and you really should), check with your storage company to see if they offer such a service.
We don’t currently have offiste backup. We are backing up to tape and the entire database is less than 100gigs. It’s about 75g. I’ll check into iron mountain.
Offsite or tape isn’t an either-or: Offsite is a location, and tape is a medium. Any good backup plan will include multiple media and multiple locations. You don’t want your backup tape/DVD/whatever to turn out to be one of the 1 in 100 or whatever that are defective, so you use multiple media. And if you keep your backups in the same building as your originals, then you could lose both in a fire or the like. Backup is cheap enough, and the consequences of backup failure expensive enough, that you always want redundant backup systems.
Well, you are switching the risk from your own attentiveness to the backup task to the attentiveness & financial stability of the online backup vendor.
See this story from the Chief Technology Officer of Ziff-Davis Media (PCMag, etc.)
Online Backup Nightmare: I’ve Lost Everything!
That guy was trying to put together a DIY solution with a web hosting account. The company probably killed his data for TOS violations.
If you are going to back up on site ask yourself these questions:
[ol]
[li]Do we back up on a regular schedule?[/li][li]Do I have multiple backups?[/li][li]Does my current back up go off site each and every night?[/li][li]If the answer to that was no, does my current back up go into a data firesafe?[/li][li]Do I keep a backup off site?[/li][/ol]
If the answers to these questions are no, then scrap your data back up plans all together. Because Mr. Murphy will make sure you will get fucked.
If you are serious about this, back up on site and off site. Have backups scheduled, and make sure that schedule is kept. Keep the on site back up in a data fire safe, not in the computer room.