Hi all,

I didn’t do backups till now! What changed?

Not a long time ago, making backups was a task that I had to burn some CD/DVD or buy an external disk. In both cases I had to buy something and the true reliability wasn’t very good because I sooner or later will need the disk space or I’ll lose the track of by CD/DVD backups. If you think in a SMB (Small, Medium Business) you will not buy a robot like ADIC and Veritas software to do it. You will use tapes and some kind of less expensive backup software. Typically the backups were only made to servers and clients have to push and pull their files into a file server.

This architectural model has its benefices but it has some big disadvantages. One of these disadvantages is that the end user is the one that will choose if he will put the file locally or in the server. Ok, you can use for example Sync Center of Microsoft and if you are, it’s right, because if most of the work is made on ERPs, CRMs, Intranets (SharePoint), Intranet Apps, etc, there are lots of files that are in the chain of business but not on constrained to client-server architecture.  Another huge disadvantage is that if you really want to be certain about your data security you will need real Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and be willing to worry/pay for the infrastructures (co-allocation, outsourced or indoor) – it depend what tier that you chose to work with from your BCP and scalability issues.

Off course we continue to talk about SMB because if you want I can speak about Citrix and other systems that give to an organization a higher adaptability and some “bullet proof” systems.

So, I mentioned some disadvantages about “local” backups and I’ll give some reasons to have an indoor backup system. I think that they are quite obvious. It’s faster to recover the data and apps (depend of the tier); SLA (Service Level Agreement) is mostly at 99.99%; the security worries are mostly physical because typically you have all in tapes or in some kind of data storage equipment.

Back to track! I think I made my point of view and this post it’s not about “traditional business continuance or personal backup systems VS Cloud backup” it’s about Cloud Backup.

Cloud backup is a business that emerged from the Cloud Computing business a technological model. Indeed, I didn’t define Cloud Computing but I’ll do it in a couple of days. Don’t worry… One of the foundations of Cloud Computing is large scale advocate cheap storage and computing. In this case we are only interested in Cloud Storage and more accurate Cloud Simple Storage or as some people call it D2C (disk-to-cloud). To contextualize a little more, in the next computing paradigm universe it will exists two major types of computing: Cloud Computing and Proximity Computing. Cloud the Cloud is a place that storage, process and delivers information and Proximity Computing is more for Human-Machine interaction. This means that your files will be on the Cloud and not in your terminal (PC, mobile, whatever… ) because them will be asked to display information and interact with you. I’m sure that you are not seeing where I’m going!?!

In nowadays, as I said before, you have your files in your PC (any device you use) and in a working context in your company server. So, it will be great if you can make a backup without any effort or even worry about all the issues that I wrote above, isn’t it?

The key points that support Cloud Storage are:

- Is very cheap or free

- Large amount of storage (it can be unlimited)

- Automatic

- Incremental

- Access anywhere

- Simple

- Organize

- Instant

- Secure (encryption 448-bit and so one, datacenter with high BCP tier level)

The Cloud Backup market is growing at a huge velocity and for that I’ll talking about some of these players. Most of the companies that are selling D2D solutions based on an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) of AWS (Amazon Web Services). These companies are ISV (Independent Sales Vendors) of IaaSs providers and even if it isn’t built they can mashup with several IaaS. ISVs mount their business by making a webbase contract with AWS, developing a synchronization software and developing a website that can be using AWS with EC2 too – as simple as that! However, HP (Hewlett Parckard) with the project HP upline already have it own infrastructure and service! Yes, Dell, HP, Sun, IBM, Microsoft and other are turning their business to the cloud…

Mozy, Carbonite, PutPlace and HP upline are some of the companies offering D2D solutions. Architecturally it’s quite different, though, and it has a different pricing structure. Mozy and PutPlace (beta for now) are given 2Gb of backup storage but with PutPlace you can share your files through the web (they are expanding their services). Carbonite, HP upline, MozyPro, PutPlace provide Cloud Storage for a price and they have a pretty good pricing plan!

The biggest disadvantage it can be the bandwidth and latency of the connection for making the backup and the restore. However, in some of these services you have a web application (SaaS) to where it possible to browse the backup files and download use them.

Ok, but how Cloud backup works? I’ll let for later how IaaS are working therefore I’ll talk how a SMB and individual user can use it.

As an individual user I’m using Mozy! I had to sign up in their website, the usual registration procedure, and install an application “MozyHome Remote” that’s responsible of making the management of my files. Before, I had to configure “MozyHome Remote” declaring what kind of files and folders that I want to backup! Now, Mozy will be responsible for time to time seeing if there were some modification on my files and make the respectively synchronization. As simple as that.

As SMB IT Consultant, first I’ll do the same above for each collaborator. Afterwards I’ll calculate if my bandwidth and amount of data to backup can be synchronized in the established timeframe for backups. If not, I have two choices: is possible backup only the critical data or data that can’t be used in a nom VPN to share; or hiring others ISP to performed the upload in different networks. Even so, it’s possible that, for now, making this kind of backup doesn’t bring the glamour that brings for end users. As application are being built, I’m sure, that will make the synchronization with servers-clients.

Microsoft developed Live Mesh and I’m anxious to see it working not just because of these features but because of the implementations of S+S

Ohh… If every data will be processed, storage and delivered by the Cloud why do we need backups? Our Cloud provider should be the one that has to worry about it! I don’t think so! Now you see where I’m going!?! In the Cloud you are able to make mashups and this approach can be the 99,99% of reliability that everyone is asking for. You will be able to have your Live Mesh, Mozy, EC2, Google App Engine, online CRM/ERP, etc and still when you want to change of service provider you will be doing that in a click! That’s the future… halleluiah…