We think the best backup strategy available today is a 2-step process based on the principle of BUDR (Backup Up, Disaster Recovery, often pronounced bud-r):
1. BU – protecting against critical hardware or software failure by backing up to a network storage unit that is directly connected to the network; and then
2. DR – protecting against a disaster event like theft or fire by backing up from that disk sub-system to an external source – either across the internet to a physically separate location, or to removable hard drives that are then manually taken off-site daily.

NetCare Remote Backup (powered by Acronis)
NetCare Remote Backup is a comprehensive backup and recovery service that ensures backups are done consistently and reliably. It provides regular backups of your server every night, so that the amount of data potentially lost is always minimized. This is complemented by an overnight backup of changes in your data across the internet to a secure offsite location (for instance your branch office server or a NetCare-approved third party backup provider). The whole backup process is monitored by our system and automatic alerts are generated if any problems occur.
 
This effectively means you’ve got two restore options available to you at all times – the on-site copy and the off-site copy.
 
We believe NetCare Remote Backup is the “absolute best” backup option. But, it can only be used when there is an SHDSL (synchronous) internet plan in place – the upload speeds of an ADSL plan are simply not fast enough to back up the amount of data that is stored on a server. Pricing for these faster internet plans have come down significantly over the last 12 months, and with the NBN rollout in the years to come, this option will become more and more viable.

NetCare Onsite Backup (powered by Acronis)
If the only cost-effective option for internet access at your location is an ADSL link, then our “second best” option is NetCare Onsite Backup. We still backup your servers every night so there is always an onsite disk backup available. But for the second step, instead of backing up across the internet, we backup to a series of external drives.
 
These drives are then swapped out every day by a trustworthy employee who also takes responsibility for taking the external disk media off-site, just like they may well do now with tapes. The big advantage over your current tape-based solution though is that even if tapes don’t get swapped over every day, a backup is still done every night to the onsite disk system.

The price for peace of mind
Both NetCare Remote Backup and NetCare Onsite Backup are provided as a service and can be cancelled at any time. The monthly service fee is $33, and includes all monitoring, configuration changes and software upgrades.
 
Additional off-site storage fees typically apply for NetCare Remote Backup, whilst our clients also need to purchase the appropriate removable disk drives for NetCare Onsite Backup. An indicative price for our standard disk backup hardware solution is $1600, including installation.

In my final blog post on server backup I'll post the answers to some common questions we get asked about our NetCare Backup services.