File Insurance or Offsite Backup

8 Feb 2010

You don’t think of it, you don’t want to. I have hundreds of gigs of data on my network at home. I am double and triple backed up with most things, but only among computers that are here. I would rather not even jinx myself by saying “What if I had a house fire?” So let’s go much more realistic and common, “What if a meteor hit my house? Well, I would be screwed. Insurance would replace my computers and music gear, but I have 70GB+ of photos I would never get back.

Currently all of the PCs in the house backup nightly to our Windows Home Server. A company had recently been asking me to try their product and I finally got around to it for this exact purpose. The tool is called Cloudberry and it’s a backup solution for Windows Home Server. Used in conjunction with Amazon’s S3 service, it makes for a pretty simple, worry free, offsite backup solution.

Cloudberry makes a variety of backup tools, but the one I focused on is Cloudberry Backup for Windows Home Server. Once this Windows Home Server add-in is installed, you click the file shares you want to include in your backup, give it your Amazon credentials, and define when you want the backup to go and how much of your bandwidth it can use.

Bandwidth restriction is pretty important if you don’t want the tool to crush your internet connection when it does larger backups. Cloudberry advertises it’s features as:

Easy installation and configuration

Seemlesly integrates with WHS control panel

Default backup plan is designed to quickly start WHS data backup

Scheduling capabilities

Data encryption

Data retention schedule

Secure online storage

Data versioning

Differential backup

The ability to restore to a particular date

Backup verification

Alerting notifications

I can vouch for the ease of installation and setup, as well as the integration with WHS. Most apps get a settings panel where CloudBerry shows up as a top tier panel item.

So far I am very pleased with the service. It’s one I sincerely hope to never need to use, but for a $30 program and a few bucks a month, it’s nice to know that all of my photographic memories are safe and sound with Amazon.

There is a 30 day trial if you want to give it a shot and Amazon is offering free initial uploads until July. If you have a Windows Home Server and some files you just cannot afford to lose, it’s some pretty inexpensive peace of mind.

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