Two Backup Options: Create Your Own Online Backup Solution or Distribute Your Data Locally

Securing your data from hackers is only one part of a strategic plan to

completely secure your data. What makes the other half is to backup

your data so that if the data is compromised you can get back in

business and retrieve your backed up data.

For my personal computer, I use Carbonite.com

to backup my data, which I pay $50 a year for. I now have 5 computers

in my home office, including my blue Dell Latitude E6400 (on loan from

Dell) and like many growing businesses, wondering if another storage

solution is best for my growing storage needs.

There are so many backup solutions on the market that are ideally

suited for growing businesses. Two solutions I recently looked at

provide quite different methods of data backup - 3X backup appliance and Symform.

3X uses a backup appliance that connects to the

Internet. You can get an unlimited number of licenses (for your desktop

computers, servers, notebooks) to enable them to backup their files to

the 3X appliance. Instead of having your data backed up to the servers

of 3rd party provider, like Carbonite, you can become your own online

backup company.

The cost is $2,500 for an unlimited number of users and there are

three different sizes ranging from 250GB to 125GB to 100GB of data. If

you need to backup Exchange or a SQL database 3x can backup these

systems as well.

You could have a 3X appliance in another state, and ensure that your data is not only backed up, but backed up off site.

Symform has an entirely different solution. They

charge $15 (the price for channel partners, your price will be a bit

more) for unlimited data storage. Your data is stored on your own local

network via secure and redundant hard disks. The encrypted data is also

distributed throughout the internet and stored in a distributed format

on storage systems arrange in a storage "collaborative".

Symform's principle is that the same amount of data you require, you then give up that amount of space for

the "collaborative storage" and share your storage with others in the Symform network.

Symform does not store any of your information on its own servers,

but manages the "directory" of where your data is located - on your own

local storage system and double-backed-up on an array of storage

systems throughout the Internet.

The advantage of Symform's system is that your data is locally

accessible, low cost, and geographically dispersed to enhance disaster

recoverability.

There are so many solutions to backup your data, whichever one you

choose, make sure you are PROPERLY backing up your data and that in the

event of a disaster you can quickly recover your data and applications.

Having 10,000 customer records is no good if the computers, servers and

programs you need to use to access the data are not up and running.