Very recently, I read an article by W. Curtis Preston (at SearchDataBackup.com) about remote online backup services. As this blog, deals with data backups I would like to comment about some points. W. Curtis Preston is an executive editor at TechTarget and independent backup expert. 

Preston starts his article by pointing out the major setback of remote online backups that is the first full backup execution time and mentions the seating option. The seating option is when a service provider offers the customer to shift a complete set of all data through a physical means such as, removable drives. In addition, he mentions the long backup time that the initial full backup job would take and the bandwidth limitations associated with large uploads of data. This is true and I would consider these factors as the only limitations of remote online backups as we stressed out in our previous articles – click here for more articles - In fact, we both agree that home users and SMBs are the ideal customers of these services.

In my opinion Curtis missed one important benefit here, the off-site functionality these services provide! One should not forget the time taken to transfer a backup set off-site using the conventional services! Using tapes to backup all data takes time, having a service provider collecting tapes from different locations means that your backup tapes spend a good deal of time in a vehicle until they arrive to their destination. Then what about the retrieval arrangement? In case, you want to recover some data from the off-site tapes how fast can you get them?

Furthermore, Curtis tackles the backup requirements and mentions SLAs but forgets to add one important requirement! I would definitely include security requirements in the SLA – what type of security mechanism is the service provider willing to offer – are they going to provide me with a security key and how are they going to transfer me this key, etc. In my opinion these are the main concerns and hence, would require major attention than the frequency of backup/restore times. Connection speeds are hard to get them black on white in SLAs, as these are subjective to the full network path from your host to the provider’s location. Here, the best approach would be to test run the selected provider for a trial period and compare with other providers’ overall connection.

One of the major pitfalls as Curtis correctly points out is the restore test runs. If you do not verify that the backed up data can be actually recovered then you are good as having no backup at all. I came across some providers that allow an optional direct access to the backup location. That is, the provider would be managing your account, logging all activity and providing a fast backup mechanism but with the added functionality of direct restores from the backup location. This added functionality would allow you to download/restore your data when the provider is partially down or in some cases completely down. Such case exists where a service provider uses a third-party storage provider (ex: Amazon’s cloud) and they act as the middle-ware between you and the storage location, however, you need to negotiate direct access functionality prior to signing any agreements! In the articles to follow, I will write more about remote online backups :)

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