Online back up prices?? Very large

alternatives

Hi, I am just wondering if I am being very price sensitive about an online back-up quote I got from eircom net. They want to charge 300 per month to back up a 57 gig server, so €3,600 per year which is huge for a small SME. Does anyone know of a better value product that would work in the event of data loss? Cheers Ed.

Sponge Bob

A 57 Gig server can be backed up onto an external SATA usb hard drive (cost €150 including drive housing and cable) and the drive can be moved on and off site by the IT manager as necessary .

Cost €150, one off.

cgarvey

Moved IoffL > Net/Comms

Slaanesh

I use a batch script to incrementally backup the 600-700 + gig of data here in work onto 2 USB hard drives that get stored in a fire box in work. Then every month a backup is done onto a large USB hard drive and stored off site.

jesus_thats_gre

Or get a tape drive and go nuts...

azzeretti

Is this a hosted server on a remote site? You are hardly being expected to transfer 57Gigs to Eircom as backup :eek:

I assume it is hosted or you wouldn't be asking the question - its a crazy price BTW.

Cabaal

At that price a bunch of hard drives at different site would save you a fortune

LoGiE

Good lord a tape drive and a copy of Arcserve would be all you need. Eircom are complete rip off merchants!

Kali

alternatives wrote:

Hi, I am just wondering if I am being very price sensitive about an online back-up quote I got from eircom net. They want to charge 300 per month to back up a 57 gig server, so €3,600 per year which is huge for a small SME. Does anyone know of a better value product that would work in the event of data loss? Cheers Ed.

Damn thats an expensive quote, assuming you have the necessary large bandwidth anyway for online backups you could buy a server with the required diskspace and put it in co-lo (~€1300/yr).

alternatives

yeah, we back up with tapes but want to move it online. Tape is unlikely to result in full restore after a disaster and online allows you to back up all the OS and applications for a vanilla install. plus it is one less job to have to do.
The co/lo option looks good. Thanks

alternatives

azzeretti wrote:

Is this a hosted server on a remote site? You are hardly being expected to transfer 57Gigs to Eircom as backup :eek:

I assume it is hosted or you wouldn't be asking the question - its a crazy price BTW.

Yeah, we want to move away from tapes and have a hosted back-up facility for a full vanilla install. It is a once off 57 gig transfer and then changes are automatically uploaded on a weekly basis.
I was hoping other providers might have a more competitive offering. Thanks

blorg

I was looking into this myself a while ago and $300/month seemed to be around the going rate; I wouldn't think Eircom's pricing sounds ridiculous on this TBH. Looking at it again so interested if anyone can come up with suggestions.

EDIT: Specifically for this time, I need something that will backup with only FTP access, e.g. can't install anything on the computer to be backed up (shared hosting.)

steve-hosting36

There are plenty of online/network based backup solutions, and you should definitely be able to get prices of around 150-200 per month for 57GB on a good service. How are you connecting to the NET (transferring the data?)

Stky10

I'm looking at this as well now.... new boss... new headaches.

Can anyone recommend an online backup provider from experience. I see
Biznet and Eircom do it, but are there any other Irish ones, or if not UK
would do.

Oh and Slaanesh, how do you get power internally to a fire box, without
lowering the heat resistant properties of the box?. Are there fire box's
that offer this?

steve-hosting36

http://www.hosting365.com/servers-extras-backup.php

I assume he means they put the media in the fire box after the backup has been taken. AFAIK it's not possible to run cables through them and retain the fire rating.

fastedmund

The tape route required us to dump the system and tapes and replace all every few years anyway. The way we have gone is more expensive and hard to justify but not in my case cause I dont pay for it and my ass is gone if data is lost.....

I too was shocked at the general pricing when you get over the 10 gig mark. We use backupanytime.com I wouldn't call it cheap but when we priced (Feb this year) it they were cheaper than Eircom. Another thing I learned during my research is that some providers (Eircom included) have a data retention period of five to thirty days whereas some including our provider charge for space used not time and default at 365 days leaving you to extend or reduce as you wish.

Online backup is not cheap but you cant reasonably compare it to the price of a couple of hard drives. Online backup for 57 gigs over a year requires archive of many lto tapes. Yes you could buy a system including all of the tapes for the price of a few years backup but that just provides something for someone with no backup. It does not automate and report.

Blaster99

Stky10 wrote:

Can anyone recommend an online backup provider from experience. I see
Biznet and Eircom do it, but are there any other Irish ones, or if not UK
would do.

This is the glorious internet, does it matter where it is? As I mentioned in the other thread that the originator posted in another forum, I use ibackup.com. I'm sure there are shedloads of other ones. Looks like Hosting365 is €50pm for 5GB. ibackup is $10pm for 5GB if I recall.

fastedmund

I think there is a lot of misunderstanding here. Dumping your data on to a spare drive is not a backup. It is a single copy without any information lifecycle management. If this is all your online backup company are going to do then yes it is much better value to do it yourself. If however they are going to run it on a raid server and keep a seperate clone drive each day and run a tape backup, then you have to consider the asset and labour cost of doing this. So, when you price online backup, ask what they do with the data and seek a written comittment. That is what I did. I wanted an Irish provider (I'm not sure why, I just wanted them to be local)
We ended going with backupanytime.com
They were reasonably priced compared to other Irish offerings but not the cheapest and somewhat deat by international standards. However, I liked their comittment and methods and again that they are based here.
The best internetional offering I found (overall) was ibackup but while they were happy do tell me all the wonderful things they did with data (on the phone), written comittment of same never arrived.

I am happy with my choice but I intend to treat it like any utility. Annually I will put it out for tender and based on price and service I may change...

pjokk

This is an old post and things have moved on since then. I was asked mid 07 to gather data about online backup for our company.

Here is what we came up with.

carbonite - International and cheap (cheap as in good value for pers data)
backitup.ie - Irish, commercial option. My mates company uses, v.good.
MOZY.COM -Internation. Free-cheap. now an emc co. Good home option
backupanytime.com - Irish business backup, the one we use, v good.
mamut.com - I use this at home. Never tested but good google feedback.
rocksolidsystems. International. Used by my club, v.happy.

The list can be amended to list hundreds, these are the ones I know something about and all are at least ok, some excellent.

PJ

steve-hosting36

Many hosting providers, ourselves included, also offer backup solutions.

pjokk

The reason I was told to get online backup for my company is we lost our website and all content. This scare resulted in a complete organisational shift with regard to backup and all tapes were thrown out and online backup was put in place. No offence intended and your company is not the one we had an issue with but they are a large, well known and otherwise ok host who told us that protecting site data was our responsibility. Given the site ws on their servers, I see this as a trifle unfair. So, themoral of my story is, hosts for hosting and backup companies for backup. A backup company just cant weasle out. Their job description leaves no room for wriggling out.....

PJ

fergal.t

Lots of different backup companies out there, check out www.arion.ie for online data backup, good costs and v good service