What would you pay for data backup?
Poll: What would you pay for data backup?
Total Members Polled: 35
Discussion
I've picked up a couple of customers recently (IT Support) who've wanted me to provide a back-up facility for them.
There's a fair bit of interest from other existing clients so I think I might push it a bit more but was just wondering how much you'd be willing to pay for such a service?
So, gentle reader, what sort of cost would appeal to you?
Cheers.
There's a fair bit of interest from other existing clients so I think I might push it a bit more but was just wondering how much you'd be willing to pay for such a service?
- Backup via existing internet connection to our storage server
- Intended for disaster recovery/security rather than simply extra storage space
- We configure & control the backup software
- Prices assume upto 5GB of data storage
- Intended for the Domestic & SME market
So, gentle reader, what sort of cost would appeal to you?
Cheers.
I am now using www.mozy.com been fine so far! Lost 2 hard drives in the past, and at nearly £1k each to get the data back I have learnt the hard way!
cs02rm0 said:
You should offer shoe lace tying too.
If they can't cope with doing their own backups they'll probably have no idea how much to pay for it either. Just be as cheeky as you can.
If they can't cope with doing their own backups they'll probably have no idea how much to pay for it either. Just be as cheeky as you can.
If they'll pay a specified hourly rate I'll even clean their wellies too!There are some very cheap online services about that's true but I'm looking at harassed small biz owners who don't want to be bothered with what they see as the geeky stuff but who are scared of the consequences of something going bang...
I usually flip this question on it's head when people start complaining about backups...
1) How long would it take them, now, to recover their data/files if their HDD went bang.. How much work would they lose, i.e. when
was the last time they did a backup? How much would that time cost them?
2) They should look to back data up once a day, incrementally. With a weekly and monthly backup taken as well. So you end up with about 10 disks/tapes per month, but 9 of those get re-used. i.e. Mon - Fri, each one gets used on that day of the week and only that day of the week. Week 1, gets done on a Fri (or other single day, effectively a copy of that days data and doesn't get used again until the first week of next month). The monthly backup gets used on the last Friday of the month or other nominated day, this means that you don't have to do the backup for the week. This one must be stored off site, not reused and kept in a fire safe or similar.
3) Backups should be kept both onsite and offsite. If the building burnt down or someone stole the computer and backup it's no use. Ideally backups should be kept in a fire proof safe.
4) Recovery... Unless you are using a generic approach to backup and recover the data, you should check that the recovery process works and data can be recovered, either full or partial recovery. Taking backups is all well and good, but all parts must work, especially this one, otherwise they're coasters.
5) Incremental or Mirror backups.. Can be very useful and give a belt and braces approach.
Of course all of the above depends on the size of the business in question. We do a daily backup, so have 3 copies of the data (including the original). Typically we store a quarterly DVD of all data, two copies, stored in separate locations. Then again we're only a tiddler.
1) How long would it take them, now, to recover their data/files if their HDD went bang.. How much work would they lose, i.e. when
was the last time they did a backup? How much would that time cost them?
2) They should look to back data up once a day, incrementally. With a weekly and monthly backup taken as well. So you end up with about 10 disks/tapes per month, but 9 of those get re-used. i.e. Mon - Fri, each one gets used on that day of the week and only that day of the week. Week 1, gets done on a Fri (or other single day, effectively a copy of that days data and doesn't get used again until the first week of next month). The monthly backup gets used on the last Friday of the month or other nominated day, this means that you don't have to do the backup for the week. This one must be stored off site, not reused and kept in a fire safe or similar.
3) Backups should be kept both onsite and offsite. If the building burnt down or someone stole the computer and backup it's no use. Ideally backups should be kept in a fire proof safe.
4) Recovery... Unless you are using a generic approach to backup and recover the data, you should check that the recovery process works and data can be recovered, either full or partial recovery. Taking backups is all well and good, but all parts must work, especially this one, otherwise they're coasters.
5) Incremental or Mirror backups.. Can be very useful and give a belt and braces approach.
Of course all of the above depends on the size of the business in question. We do a daily backup, so have 3 copies of the data (including the original). Typically we store a quarterly DVD of all data, two copies, stored in separate locations. Then again we're only a tiddler.
swerni said:
ginettag27 said:
I usually flip this question on it's head when people start complaining about backups...
1) How long would it take them, now, to recover their data/files if their HDD went bang.. How much work would they lose, i.e. when
was the last time they did a backup? How much would that time cost them?
2) They should look to back data up once a day, incrementally. With a weekly and monthly backup taken as well. So you end up with about 10 disks/tapes per month, but 9 of those get re-used. i.e. Mon - Fri, each one gets used on that day of the week and only that day of the week. Week 1, gets done on a Fri (or other single day, effectively a copy of that days data and doesn't get used again until the first week of next month). The monthly backup gets used on the last Friday of the month or other nominated day, this means that you don't have to do the backup for the week. This one must be stored off site, not reused and kept in a fire safe or similar.
3) Backups should be kept both onsite and offsite. If the building burnt down or someone stole the computer and backup it's no use. Ideally backups should be kept in a fire proof safe.
4) Recovery... Unless you are using a generic approach to backup and recover the data, you should check that the recovery process works and data can be recovered, either full or partial recovery. Taking backups is all well and good, but all parts must work, especially this one, otherwise they're coasters.
5) Incremental or Mirror backups.. Can be very useful and give a belt and braces approach.
Of course all of the above depends on the size of the business in question. We do a daily backup, so have 3 copies of the data (including the original). Typically we store a quarterly DVD of all data, two copies, stored in separate locations. Then again we're only a tiddler.
the only problem your back up policy gives you is if you want to revert back to an older version of a document that may have been changed during the week.1) How long would it take them, now, to recover their data/files if their HDD went bang.. How much work would they lose, i.e. when
was the last time they did a backup? How much would that time cost them?
2) They should look to back data up once a day, incrementally. With a weekly and monthly backup taken as well. So you end up with about 10 disks/tapes per month, but 9 of those get re-used. i.e. Mon - Fri, each one gets used on that day of the week and only that day of the week. Week 1, gets done on a Fri (or other single day, effectively a copy of that days data and doesn't get used again until the first week of next month). The monthly backup gets used on the last Friday of the month or other nominated day, this means that you don't have to do the backup for the week. This one must be stored off site, not reused and kept in a fire safe or similar.
3) Backups should be kept both onsite and offsite. If the building burnt down or someone stole the computer and backup it's no use. Ideally backups should be kept in a fire proof safe.
4) Recovery... Unless you are using a generic approach to backup and recover the data, you should check that the recovery process works and data can be recovered, either full or partial recovery. Taking backups is all well and good, but all parts must work, especially this one, otherwise they're coasters.
5) Incremental or Mirror backups.. Can be very useful and give a belt and braces approach.
Of course all of the above depends on the size of the business in question. We do a daily backup, so have 3 copies of the data (including the original). Typically we store a quarterly DVD of all data, two copies, stored in separate locations. Then again we're only a tiddler.
If you only have your weekly fulls to refer back to then you have lost any older revisions that have been worked on during that week.
just a thought
For many, many years I used to use a small, London-based provider. Their service was quite good, with a piece of software which sat on one of the PCs and backed-up, compressed and transmitted anything we told it to on a nightly schedule. We paid per megabyte transmitted - storage was unlimited.
All data was copied off onto two pieces of hard media per backup, as well as being held online. One piece of hard media was stored in London, whilst the other was taken (once per week) to a former nuclear bunker somewhere well outside the M25.
Their current pricing is:
SETUP
Single user: £39.50
Network: £130.00
MONTHLY FEE
Up to 200MBytes transmitted: £38.00
Thereafter sliding scale: 24p/Mbyte down to 2p/Mbyte
They also offer reduced rates for regular backups of very large individual databases, such as Exchange, etc.
I stopped using them a couple of years ago (when their pricing was rather a lot higher than that) because the cost was too high. Their software couldn't do bitwise incremental backups, and they didn't offer the large database discounts, so backing up mail stores etc was getting prohibitively expensive to do.
We switched instead to an in-house solution which was able to do proper incremental backups and so on. But it would be good to go back to out-of-house.
The software client our supplier used would allow us to pick any previously-saved version of any file and restore it, online. Encryption was provided at our end, so the backup provider had no access to the data, and nor was it transmitted in-the-clear.
However, it relied on archive bits being set, was Windows only, couldn't cope with total path lengths >256 characters (a real problem), and was pretty slow and sometimes unreliable.
At the time, we were by far their largest (in terms of data transmitted) client; most of their clients were small professional firms who absolutely couldn't cope without backup, but didn't have too much data and were prepared to pay a decent premium for total confidence.
For initial set-up, they simply came on-site and did a full backup of all files (that we wanted backing up) onto a portable hard drive to establish the baseline data set.
I would suggest that you either need to invest in properly foolproof systems and price it as a commodity, or offer a fully-managed service and target professionals. The middle ground is probably where the pain is.
My experience of setting up an in-house solution was that there are many, many pitfalls in trying to run reliable, automated backups. What software are you proposing to use?
All data was copied off onto two pieces of hard media per backup, as well as being held online. One piece of hard media was stored in London, whilst the other was taken (once per week) to a former nuclear bunker somewhere well outside the M25.
Their current pricing is:
SETUP
Single user: £39.50
Network: £130.00
MONTHLY FEE
Up to 200MBytes transmitted: £38.00
Thereafter sliding scale: 24p/Mbyte down to 2p/Mbyte
They also offer reduced rates for regular backups of very large individual databases, such as Exchange, etc.
I stopped using them a couple of years ago (when their pricing was rather a lot higher than that) because the cost was too high. Their software couldn't do bitwise incremental backups, and they didn't offer the large database discounts, so backing up mail stores etc was getting prohibitively expensive to do.
We switched instead to an in-house solution which was able to do proper incremental backups and so on. But it would be good to go back to out-of-house.
The software client our supplier used would allow us to pick any previously-saved version of any file and restore it, online. Encryption was provided at our end, so the backup provider had no access to the data, and nor was it transmitted in-the-clear.
However, it relied on archive bits being set, was Windows only, couldn't cope with total path lengths >256 characters (a real problem), and was pretty slow and sometimes unreliable.
At the time, we were by far their largest (in terms of data transmitted) client; most of their clients were small professional firms who absolutely couldn't cope without backup, but didn't have too much data and were prepared to pay a decent premium for total confidence.
For initial set-up, they simply came on-site and did a full backup of all files (that we wanted backing up) onto a portable hard drive to establish the baseline data set.
I would suggest that you either need to invest in properly foolproof systems and price it as a commodity, or offer a fully-managed service and target professionals. The middle ground is probably where the pain is.
My experience of setting up an in-house solution was that there are many, many pitfalls in trying to run reliable, automated backups. What software are you proposing to use?
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