Small business backup solution

I've been consulting for a small business throughout the year (3 computers) and the owner is wanting to have a backup solution setup. He's wanting the computers backed up and saved to a computer offsite (at his home) because the last person that did IT work for him put their backups in the cloud and never told them where it is, etc. So he's not a fan of the cloud.

I am going to show him the benefits of having it in the cloud instead of setting up a job to FTP the backups overnight to his house... Whats TE suggestion for backing up 3 computers (I'd like to have individual file restore capabilities along with a full backup/restore)?

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Comments

wes allen

I know you said no cloud, but you might look at crashplan - you can do local, cloud, and to another pc over the internet backups. Pretty easy to set up, encryption, etc.

rsutton

Do you have an onsite server? Is this a Windows domain?

effekted

I'm going to try and change his mind of the cloud, he doesn't like it because the previous folks he used for IT work didn't show him how to access his backups (or showed any confirmation that they ever setup the backup, etc). No servers local, very low tech small business, just 3 Windows 7 computers connected to a home router.

Initially I was going to get something like a Pogo plug and connect a 2TB external to it and connect to his network and have the Win 7 backup write backups to the HD but he wants something offsite so if someone came in and robbed the place or it burnt, they'd have a backup.

Does anyone have any experience using Carbonite? I might try the 30 day free trial of the business plan ($229 per year for 250GB storage, unlimited devices; Carbonite Business Online Backup | Cloud Backup for Small Business) to let him demo it.

rsutton

Without an onsite server, you will need a backup agent installed on each client. Realistically, cloud based backups are the only option in this scenario.

ptilsen

You could use LogMeIn Backup or DropBox or any kind of sync'ing software between the office and home computers. FTP works, too, but is actually less secure and more difficult to setup (using FTP/S along with your standard SOHO NAT router is generally impossible, so I stand by "less secure"). However, this method leaves a lot of room for problems and is generally undesirable, IMO. I would strong recommend an actual backup solution.

Cloud-based backup from computer agents is really going to be the best bet.

demonfurbie

i have a small office setup to run a script that copies the "file server" directory to a dropbox every day at 6, it normally takes all night and its always a full back up (well as full as it can be)

but its free with a little scripting... it all depends on how much space they need backed up this location only has about 6 gig of text/documents

J_86

effekted wrote: »

I'm going to try and change his mind of the cloud, he doesn't like it because the previous folks he used for IT work didn't show him how to access his backups (or showed any confirmation that they ever setup the backup, etc). No servers local, very low tech small business, just 3 Windows 7 computers connected to a home router.

Initially I was going to get something like a Pogo plug and connect a 2TB external to it and connect to his network and have the Win 7 backup write backups to the HD but he wants something offsite so if someone came in and robbed the place or it burnt, they'd have a backup.

Does anyone have any experience using Carbonite? I might try the 30 day free trial of the business plan ($229 per year for 250GB storage, unlimited devices; Carbonite Business Online Backup | Cloud Backup for Small Business) to let him demo it.

I've setup Carbonite before (and use it for my personal stuff). It's very easy to use. With no local server and wanting offsite backup, sometime of cloud solution is going to have to happen.

You can setup a free trail, play around with it, and then show him how it works. Show him how to login to their website, how he can view everything that is backed up, etc.

the_Grinch

You definitely need to speak with the owner in regards to having a cloud based solution. What happens if the internet is his home goes down? The server blows up? Or god forbid, his home burned down or something like that. We use MozyPro here for all of our users and two server we have onsite. Each client automatically backs itself up, updates itself, and you can restore through either the client or the web. The web is nice when you just need one file. I had one of our sales rep leave his laptop in his rental car. I had all his files restored within two ours on a new laptop, he couldn't tell the difference. Plus you'll get reporting features so every week you'll get an email with which machines didn't backup and why. We deployed it to 80 users and about 95% of the ones that haven't backed up were because the machine was off at the time.

KeithC

Where I work we use Windows Home Server for local backups, iDrive for important documents and the boss takes copies of the database files for off site storage.