Regardless of whether you sell your service to individuals or businesses you will want to have your customers agree to your Terms and Conditions of Service. This is a legal document also referred to as an End User License Agreement (EULA).

Some Service Providers who offer a fully managed service like to install the Online Backup software themselves during an on-site visit with their customers. These Service Providers deliver the most personalized service and command the highest prices.

Typical Online Backup Services allow end users to restore data themselves using an intuitive graphical user interface that presents a file and folder tree structure and some way to select files and folders to restore. Some, like Mercury, also allow restoring files by application name.

There are many considerations for designing your Online Backup Server. You can spend a little or a lot, depending on where it is hosted, security, redundancy, speed, power, and Internet connectivity.

I am using the term “firewall” to refer to any software or device that protects a computer from viruses, Trojans, external attacks, malware, evil websites, and other threats.

Let’s have a look at a typical small Server that contains a mix of critical data (Exchange Server, System State and Active Directory), important data, and archival data.

Data can be categorized into three tiers: critical (integral to ongoing operations), important (valuable but not mission critical) and archival (required but not typically retrieved).