Mozy in the UK – and – Check your Backups
I couldn’t think of 2 “issues” that go together so well. I’ll do the second one first (what?). While it may not appeal to everyone (but the subject is not the point), there exists a huge number of computer users out there who invest a lot of time in SecondLife and virtual worlds of a similar nature. The scene is huge, to the point where there are massive projects, like “Open Sim” which provide the software for hosting such a virtual worlds. In “Server crash, backup failure destroys Aesthetica build By: Maria Korolov” we learn that just last week, a “hosting” company damaged some disks during a routine move of equipment, and in doing so, lost some data. No big deal, right? Well, unfortunately, their “backups” were no good. Not only was there no known good backup to use to restore, but the backups themselves had not been checked in months! So, the customer lost many hours of work. Most tragically, he had been operating with a false sense of security for 5 months, assuming that useful nightly backups were being completed (because he was paying for it as part of his hosting plan).
What can you learn from this?
1. Check your backups. Do a test restore. I’ve said it before, and I’ll likely say it again. After all, what is a backup without a plan for recovery?
2. If you are relying on the hosting provider to also be your backup provider, CYA! That is, make at least one copy yourself from time to time.
For me, this is particularly interesting given the much bigger news that was just announced: Mozy has launched in the UK and Europe. This is a big deal, because Mozy is one of the largest players in the remote backup industry. Most troubling though is something an article by Daniel Robinson attributes to their chief marketing officer:
“This is accomplished using a “set and forget” model, according to Stockdale”
NO!!! NEVER set and forget with backups. Autosave in Excel works, too. Does that mean you shouldn’t bother to save real files? NO. If your data is important, then you, or someone you pay, should be heavily invested in testing it periodically, making sure the backups run, and understanding the recovery process. Set it and forget it is a horrible idea and Mozy should be ashamed to be linked to such an statement. As one of the largest and most influential voices in the market, they should promote better awareness. JEESH!
Zmanda releases update, Quest offers free backups!
Zmanda, from Sunnyvale Ca, released a major upgrade to their suite of backup products. Big points include support for Exchange 2010 and VMWare backups. A really interesting feature is the option to replicate the backup server itself, making portability for disaster recovery easier. They claim to do all this at 1/10 the cost of standard backup options. Check out the release.
Quest, an ISP/Phone provider for many, has joined the fray and is offering backup servicesfor free to home users. @ GB for free, $5 per month for 50 GB. Pretty decent an realistic rates. They do have a captive audience, and they do control the network, so it could be a growth option for them. For home users, this might be a good alternative to Mozy and the like, although I haven’t seen the software (at this point, for all i know it could be a rebranded version of Mozy).
Syncing is not Backup
Dave Greenbaum points out, quite well, that syncing is not the same as backing up.
http://theappleblog.com/2010/03/26/syncing-does-not-a-backup-make/
It is a really great post, which notes the distinction between making something available in multiple places and actually backing up. MobileMe, DropBox, and Sugarsync, for example, are not online backup services, they are sync services, and while they offer some potential to use file versioning to retrieve files, there is no guarantee! Of course, Mozy doesn’t guarantee anything either. But some folks do, like The Backup Plan 
Fileslinger review of Cloudberry Online Backup
Fileslinger has a great and thorough review of Clouberry Online Backup…which is not actually an online backup service. It is a slick and well designed client that helps the end user do their backups…and the destination is the Amazon S3 storage cloud. So, you buy this software, and then you also pay the (rather small) fees to Amazon for storage. Check out the article, it is well written and quite useful, as usual.
I do wonder sometimes about the business model in situations like this. I would personally lean towards distributing the software for free and wrapping the S3 service into monthly billing…it may have some more issues in terms of collection, but recurring income is better than 1 time income.
At $30 a pop, if you sold 100 licenses you’d bring in $3000.
If you were able to up charge the S3 service by about $1 a month, the same 100 customers would net $100 a month. But, over 3 years, you’d bring in $3600…and possibly much more if their data requirements expanded over time. Free downloads also remove the initial obstacle of purchasing software. This is the model Vembu is following for their @home service. This is NOT the model that Mozy or Carbonite follow….their models make almost no long-term sense, given that unlimited use generally means that costs will get bigger while revenue stays flat…so i guess they hope to make a lot of profit early on?
All that said, the Cloudberry Online Backup software does look really solid, and they have other offerings that also make use (and sense) of the sometimes confusing S3 interface.
Backup News Roundup, March 2010
The Computer Technology Review posted an article by Eran Farajun of Asigra about backing up via the cloud. Asigra, not surprisingly, offers cloud-related backup and recovery services. Itdoes point out that it doesn’t really make sense to just use your old backup model and point it to the cloud or even offsite. Thearticle also also points at virtualization as an important recover path.
NovaStor has launched a SaaS aimed at the end user. Their new Storageline.com is a site that provides free local backup software and connects you to their network of Offsite backup providers, where you can pay for remote backups. the only problems….well, for one, Vembu announced pretty much this model with Vembu @ Home a while back, and two, NovaStor is too expensive…most of their resellers are charging in the $2.50/gig per month range. MSPs and Resllers through The Backup Plan can beat that.
Google has announced that all Google Apps customers now benefit from a totay top-notch and enterprise-level backup system, Google Advanced Backup, which is how they can guarantee 99.9% uptime. Makes you wonder, though, if they announced this today…what did they have before this?