Online Backup Partners: Don’t fight ‘em. Join ‘em!

All these cheap and free online file sync services like Mozy and Carbonite seem to frighten some RBS Partners. But don’t worry! They’re actually really good for our business. Here’s how you can join them instead of fighting them!

You know these guys – Mozy, Carbonite, Dropbox, and now Microsoft’s OneDrive. There are many of them giving away high capacity storage services for free or next to free. They spend a lot of money on advertising, which helps RBS Partners by raising the public’s awareness of Online Backup as a safe, reliable means of protecting files.

They are pretty good for backing up personal computers – your pictures and songs – but they absolutely are no good for business backups.

They’re reasonably fast and reasonably reliable, and they have a ton of storage space. So what’s their downside? THEY DON’T HAVE SMART CLIENT SOFTWARE!

Most of them have just a simple file transfer engine that watches a directory and just backs up whatever shows up there. They can back up simple single files that are not locked or in use, and for many of the services, the backed up files are not encrypted.

They are no good at business backups like Exchange, Sharepoint, Active Directory, System State, NTFS permissions, and many other file and database types that your RBackup software is really good at.

Luckily, your RBackup software is REALLY smart, so smart, in fact, that it can send backups to these other services, too, maintaining RBackup’s military grade encryption.

Now you can back up Exchange, Active Directory, locked files, and all – compressed and fully encrypted, digitally signed, and verified – using these cheap services for storage, and your RBS Server for authentication.

In fact, RBackup can use as many online storage services as you like – hundreds if you want, all at the same time, one for each Backup Set. You can actually access hundreds of gigabytes of free storage from multiple services, tying them all together with RBackup.

The RBackup Client’s unique hybrid backup system can send backups to your RBS Server, to a local drive, and to a cloud location, all at the same time. It can also use just one of the locations.

Here’s an interesting application for this capability.

Regardless to which location the Client is sending backups, the Client must always authenticate with the RBS Server to get permission to run. This keeps you in control of your accounts.

Set the Client’s Cloud Backup location to one of the free services. UNCHECK “RBS Server” so the Client will not send its backups to your RBS Server. Now you have a system that makes the Client authenticate with the RBS Server, but send its files to one or more of the free services.

Your RBS Server acts as an authentication server only.

We tested three such services, using RBackup to back up and restore files, using the RBS Server for authentication only, and the free services for backing up files. Here’s how we did it.

 

DropBox

DropBox is easy. Install the DropBox application. Set RBClient’s  Cloud Backup Folder to the DropBox location.

 

Carbonite

Create a directory for Carbonite to sync. We’ll call it “Carbonite Sync”

Install the Carbonite application. Uncheck the default file selections (if asked.)

Open Windows Explorer and browse to your new Carbonite Sync folder. Right-click on it and select Carbonite -> Back This Up.

Set the RBClient Cloud Backup Folder to the new Carbonite Sync folder.

Optional:

Install the Carbonite Sync&Share application. Uncheck the default Desktop and Documents selections.

In the Carbonite Sync&Share application, browse for your new Carbonite Sync folder and select it.

Finish the Carbonite Sync installation.

 

Mozy Stash (Mozy Sync)

To back up using Mozy, we have to use a Post Process Command File. This example shows you how to use that file with Mozy, and how to use Post Process Command Files to spread your backups around to as many different online services as you like.

Mozy Sync sets its sync directory to Read Only, so our RBClient application cannot write to it directly. The workaround is to create another directory (we’ll call it “sync”) and set that directory as your Cloud Backup folder.

Then, create a post processing command file that copies your backup files from the “sync” folder to the “Mozy Sync” folder. Here’s an example:

xcopy “h:\ sync\CB_DEMO\*.*” “h:\Mozy Sync” /E /C /I /H /R /K /Y /S /D

In the above example, “CB_DEMO” is a folder that is automatically created inside the Cloud Backup Folder. It always starts with “CB_” and ends with the account name. In this case, the account name is “DEMO.”

Open up Notepad. Type in the above line, changing the file and folder names to match those you have set up on your computer.

Save this as a plain text file to the application folder for your Rbackup Client software, typically C:\Program Files\Remote Backup.

Name the file post-{backupsetname}.bat. Replace {backupsetname} with the name of the backup set you want to run.

For example, if your backup set is named “default” then the post processing command file will be called post-default.bat.

The RBClient software will automatically run this command file after it has done its backup, copying all the backup files to your Mozy Sync folder. The Mozy Sync application will sync all these files with your Mozy account.

If you are testing, remember to remove the post processing command file before you test with other cloud services. This command file will run after each backup that is done with backup set “default.”

You can use the Post Process Command File to back up to other services. Just define a Backup Set for each service you want to use, and give each Backup Set a different name, like “SendtoCarbonite,” and “SendtoDropBox.”

Then create a command file that copies your backups to the appropriate folder for syncing with the online sync service. For Example, name this one post-sendtocarbonite.bat:

xcopy “h:\sync\CB_DEMO\*.*” “h:\Carbonite Sync” /E /C /I /H /R /K /Y /S /D

Here’s a bonus application for using the free storage services with RBackup. (We get extra points for figuring this out!)

Point an RBS Server’s data directory at one or more of the online services to have your RBS Server automatically replicated offsite in free storage space!

Each customer can even have his own individual replication offsite by pointing individual client folders (on the RBS Server) to the sync services.

OK now the caveat – Using the free services like this may violate their Terms of Service, so do it at your own risk.