Small Office "cloud" backup

[loyukfai]

I'm also researching for a NAS solution for a small office. Besides the NAS itself (which I've settled on a Synology DS209j at the moment), I'm wondering how the backup should be done as well.

I would like it to be as automatic as possible so online backup is preferable. A 2nd NAS at another location can also be considered...

ReadyNAS Vault sounds good but it's quite expensive ($19.95 for 20GB and additional 1GB/$0.5), not to mention the NAS itself.

The rest of the NAS manufacturers don't seem to offer much at this area, at best they support rsync so, are we left with s3rsync and Jungle Disk?

s3rsync claims to be very efficient on bandwidth but I can't quite figure out its pricing scheme. Since the office is located in Asia and uses ADSL service, I wonder if rsync session will last too long. Furthermore, there's some "bucket size" limitation that sounds not so good.

Jungle Disk's pricing is easier to figure out, $2 monthly plus storage/bandwidth fee. And if you use Rackspace, there's no bandwidth fee at all...

Any comments...?

P.S. Since there is no dedicated IT support I would prefer a simple off-the-shelf solution.

 

[thiggins]

There are two issues here, NAS-to-NAS backup via network and NAS to "cloud".

At present, only NETGEAR and HP offer cloud backup integrated into NASes. NETGEAR offers ReadyNAS Vault partnering with ElephantDrive and HP offers Amazon S3 with its Windows Home Server-based MediaSmarts.

Using any other services would require that you run the service's client on a PC to backup NAS shares.

Take a look at the HP LX195 and EX485/487.

 

[loyukfai]

Thanks for the insight. I did consider the HP WHS but there are a few concerns.

The office is a branch utilizing a Cisco VPN setup and I'm not sure if a WHS can fit into the picture nicely. And AD maybe involved. Can a WHS used by a PC which is logged-in to a domain?

However, the bigger concern is that, the WHS are just not locally available here.

For ReadyNAS Duo, a barebone costs about $340, excluding drives and remote backup fee. With that budget, one can get a DS209j with 2 x 500GB drives, or 2 x low-end 1-bay NAS already.

I'm kind of surprised that so few vendors have addressed this issue so far.

 

[thiggins]

WHS doesn't allow joining AD or NT domains. But that just means that the MediaSmarts can't use domain user permissions to control share access.

And yes, the ReadyNASes are pricey.

I think you will see more vendors add cloud backup to NASes in the next year or so. But, for now, NETGEAR and HP are it if you want it built into the NAs.

 

[loyukfai]

Found some rsync backup services. Think that as a poor man's alternative to built-in online backup service in NAS?

BQ's pricing sounds attractive but I'm not sure about its reputation and reliability. The rest are quite a lot more expensive compared to Amazon S3.

Of course, some of them offer additional features like snapshot.

http://www.rsync.net/ ($0.48-1.20 per GB)
http://www.ibackup.com/ ($1 per GB)
http://www.bqbackup.com/ ($5 for 10GB, $20 for 100GB)
http://iicinternet.com/onlinestoragesolution/ ($19 unlimited?!)
http://www.evbackup.com/ ($0.30-1.00 per GB)

 

[loyukfai]

Thanks for your reply. I'll think about it and see what can I recommend so. : )

 

[loyukfai]

After evaluating the options, it seems that NAS-to-external disk and NAS-to-NAS are more favourable in this situation.

Look forward to better "cloud" backup services in NAS in future.

Cheers.

 

[loyukfai]

Few months have passed, and more online backup services have emerged. But are there anything new for NAS...?

 

[claykin]

Few months have passed, and more online backup services have emerged. But are there anything new for NAS...?

http://blog.jungledisk.com/2009/08/24/jungle-disk-whs-beta-withdrawn/

I really like Jungledisk. Security is top notch, supports delta file backup, its been very reliable for me, etc.... Now that they are part of Rackspace that only means a lesser chance of them going under (which concerns me with some of the other services). Once they release some NAS plugins, it will be an even better solution. So far they've acknowledged that Readynas and Qnap are on their radar screen. The question is when....

 

[loyukfai]

Now that they are part of Rackspace that only means a lesser chance of them going under (which concerns me with some of the other services).

Well said.

I was mistaken at first and thought that Jungledisk supports rsync, it doesn't. However, it seems to be one of the more "active" players who are really developing new functionalities. The WHS plug-in is an example.

I would also like to see the 4GB limit gone.

 

[claykin]

I would also like to see the 4GB limit gone.

With Jungledisk its actually a 5GB filesize limit. The JD team claims they are working on a solution, but no word on when it will be released.

 

[loyukfai]

My bad. I mixed up with the 4GB RAM limit in 32-bit OS. The 5GB file size limit is due to the limitation at Amazon S3 and Rackspace Cloud.

 

[vnangia]

Have you considered a remote machine?

After a disaster with FreeNAS, I set about building a replacement backup system. Like you, I went through the considerations of cloud backup and such. One option that I considered was colocating a small machine somewhere else. I very nearly actually went with http://www.macminicolo.net/ using a PPC Mac Mini I have lying around with both the internal hard drive and CD rom drive replaced with large capacity drives. I didn't eventually because (a) the limit on IDE drives is about 320GB (giving me <300GB of usable RAID1'd space); and, (b) the cost was fairly steep for what I was getting.

I ended up with JungleDisk on a newly commissioned WHS-based machine. So far, so good, no problems. I do backup to Amazon S3, not Rackspace, even though the cost is likely to be less at Rackspace, because I have more faith in Amazon being around than Rackspace in ten years, and I have seen Java-based tools that allow me to recover data from S3 storage even if JungleDisk disappears. You can also mount S3 as a disk on most OSes using FUSE. But I do wonder about how long S3 and JungleDisk are going to be around and whether I should still send that PPC Mac Mini in...

EDIT: And apparently today JungleDisk is announcing a new server-oriented plugin: http://blog.jungledisk.com/2009/10/05/announcing-the-jungle-disk-server-edition/

 

[loyukfai]

I don't think we can rely on companies never going under (heck, our lives is a vapour as well). My thinking is that we need to keep a copy of the data ourselves, and pray that when these companies go down, they don't go down suddenly, so we have time to migrate to another solution.

Or more importantly, that our copy (drives) doesn't also go down at the same time, leaving no way to restore the data.

If the data worths it, a redundant backup solution shall be used.

Cheers.

 

[OneClickHelpDesk.Net]

Check out Egnyte's Local/Cloud Service

We have also been researching various Cloud based backup solutions that integrate well with a NAS for our small business customers.

One service we have been evaluating is Egnyte:
http://www.egnyte.com/corp/business_plans_and_pricing.html

Their service works as both an online backup as well as a virtual file server. Your NAS (or USB drive) acts as your "Local Cloud" and automatically syncs to the "Cloud". Each time a file is changed locally, the Cloud stores the change automatically as a different version of the file.

Their software supports the ReadyNAS NVX and Pro. The folders on your NAS are kept in sync with the Cloud, either in real-time or on a scheduled basis. It also supports both PC and MACs.

If you have a lot of data, for a onetime fee, you can send them a USB drive with you data to "seed the cloud".

There service is HIPPA and SAS 70 compliant

When I did a quick price comparison (5 users) between Egnyte and JungleDisk, Egnyte was cheaper. Egnyte $95/month for 1TB vs JungleDisk $170/month for 1TB.

Try it out for yourself