Should I Move to Online Backups?

A Backup Article Contributed by Daniel Jones

Beginnings of Online Backups

About five years ago online backup began to emerge as an alternative method of backing up your data. Taking advantage of the fact that most of corporate bandwidth goes unused during the same hours that backups usually take place, it appears to be a perfect fit to upload your data to some off-site server and out-source the storage and maintenance of your backup. This has even been incorporated into some shrink-wrapped software packages like Quicken that offer instant online backup of your data.

Advantages of Online Backups

First and best of all, online backups are by definition, off-site, so if a fire burns down your tape library you will still have a backup to roll back to. The second most important is the separation provided between your local IT department and the staff that supports the online backup. Whatever hardware, or procedure that may cause your local or online backup to fail, this physical and procedural separation should keep the other from failing as well.

Also nice is that any of the online backup companies worth your time and money will provide 24/7 support and availability. This is important as it seems that restores, like births often occur at odd hours. Finally, and least important is the fact that online backups can decrease the amount of media you need to keep track of, since you are offloading much of the backup storage to the off-site storage.

Problems with Online Backups

The biggest problem with online backup is that it can take forever to accomplish. As fast as bandwidth grows, hard drives and software packages are growing even faster. Online backup companies have several solutions to try to get around this, including compressing your data, and doing only more incremental rather than full backups. These steps tend to decrease the value of your backup and increase the time it takes to restore.

This leads to the fact that online backup solutions are often packaged by the amount of data you need to backup. This puts pressure on the system administrator to get their backup to fit into the space allocated by the package you've purchased. The final and in my opinion lest important issue, is security. In theory, anytime your transmit your data off site you run the risk of it being intercepted or accessed in the off-site storage facility.

In reality the transmission is encrypted and the off-site storage facility typically has better security then the on-site storage location.

Executive Summary of Online Backup Solutions

For all but the most paranoid, online backups can be a valuable addition to your total data protection solution. They should not however be seen as a replacement for manual, on-site backups and storage of backups performed regularly by your system administrator.