It seems like only yesterday that I was writing my review of Dmailer’s online backup service. It was actually almost a year ago. That was long enough, apparently, to convince the folks at Dmailer to get out of the crowded online backup market. They’re handing their online service over to YuuWaa.

I haven’t mentioned YuuWaa before, but they have been around for a while; they’re on my list of companies whose pitches I haven’t gotten to responding to yet. Their claim to fame is flash drives plus—in this case, plus online storage, though their other plus is file sharing.

Users of the Dmailer software will be able to back up to YuuWaa through Dmailer by logging out of Dmailer and setting up a YuuWaa account, but will have to transfer their data themselves.

Joel Maki at Zetta has been sending me pitches for about a million years. The problem is, Zetta provides enterprise storage services, which isn’t want most of my readers are looking for.

Most recently, however, he sent a copy of the report Zetta VP Products Chris Schinn gave at the November 2010 Cloud Expo. There are some useful statistics about the growth of data and storage needs, incidence of data loss, and the like, that I thought readers might be interested in.

Download (PDF, 370.41KB)

Zetta is pitching cloud-based sync and replicate as the wave of the future—with versioning to prevent replicating those dreadful “Oops!” moments when you manage to destroy the project you’ve spent weeks working on. This is not so different (in fact, you’d have to talk to representatives of the two companies to know precisely how different it actually is) from the Continuous Data Protection first  advertised by LiveVault in their Backup Trauma Institute video in 2005. LiveVault has since been acquired by Iron Mountain, which is also offering cloud-based backup.

Enterprise services like these definitely have their advantages over tape and disk-to-tape, but I have the same doubts I did in 2005, for the same reason: we have terrible broadband infrastructure in this country. Retrieving a few lost files, or searching them, is certainly going to be easier with cloud-based backups than with tapes. And you have protection against fire, theft, and natural disaster. But are you really going to be able to restore terabytes, perhaps even petabytes of data via a network connection?

Schinn’s report suggests that in the event of a disaster, a company can simply “fail over” to the cloud-based files instead of actually restoring them. This is an interesting proposition and would certainly allow employees whose office had, say, been flattened in an earthquake or washed out in a tsunami, to continue to work remotely from anywhere they could get a connection. (Possibly not so easy to do following said earthquake and tsunami, as we’ve recently discovered.) Mounting storage is a bit different from mirroring the web server and mail server, but not all companies keep those on site, anyway, so chances are decent those machines are in a secure data center at a different location.

There are types of data I don’t back up online for security reasons, yet I find transfer speeds and possible outages a much greater deterrent to converting all my backup to a service like Zetta’s. For one thing, it’s not very logical for me to be unwilling to back up my Quicken data online when I file my taxes online and do my banking and most of my shopping online, and for another, serious security breaches involving financial and other institutions almost always involve the physical theft of physical backup tapes.

But infrastructure bottlenecks are a real issue. In most parts of the United States, small businesses and consumers alike have one choice for cable Internet and one choice for DSL. According to NetIndex, California has an average consumer download speed of 10.91 Mbps, and an upload speed of 2.24 Mbps. (Speedtest.net gives me a download score of 16.67 Mbps and an upload score of 4.21 Mbps, a bit above average.) Compare that to the Netherlands, where the average download speed is 23.51 Mbps. The average. The Ur-guru has Internet in excess of 100 Mbps downstream.

If I follow the math correctly (see Wikipedia on why the math of bits and bytes is never simple), a megabit is 1/8 of a megabyte. So if you had an 8 Mbps connection, you could move one MB (megabyte) per second through it. My connection is about 16 Mbps, so I can download 2 MB per second.

I have about 274 GB of data and software on this computer right now. That’s 274,000 MB. If I had to download that over my current connection, it would take 38 hours and change. (That’s assuming I actually maintained that download speed, and let me tell you, nothing I download ever downloads that fast. Official download speeds and actual download speeds are not the same thing.) A day and a half for the contents of one laptop.

If I had to upload all that…well, I wouldn’t. This is why some cloud storage companies, including Amazon S3, give you the option to make your first backup by sending a physical drive. (It’s not clear from Zetta’s website whether they do something like this.)

So until we have considerably faster upload speeds available to us, I don’t think the enterprise has really come to the end of backups, even though we might be moving from a disk-to-disk-to-tape model to a disk-to-disk-to-cloud model. Which does, I have to admit, sound like an improvement.

This is a guest post by Stefan Didak, who tested Mozy 2.0 for Mac back in November on his new iMac and wrote about it in December. And yes, it is February now that I’m posting it, and have no one to blame but myself.

Installation was quick, easy, and took up an estimated 65MB.

After entering your user e-mail address and password you get to sign up for an account or use a product key if you already have one. I had one provided by Mozy for the purposes of testing.

During the first time configuration you will be asked whether to use the MozyHome’s key or your personal key for encryption purposes [5]. Mozy will encrypt your data with a 448-bit key to keep prying eyes from sniffing around in your data, which can be especially useful if you’re on a public or local Wi-Fi connection that can easily be intercepted and sniffed for packets. (That means capturing your data as you transmit it over the network.)

I created an encryption key of my own and saved it to a safe place because Mozy does not have access to the key so if you misplace it or flake out and forget it you will not be able to restore your files! Make sure you have a backup of your key in more than one place.

After going through the setup and configuration I directed MozyHome to some folders I wanted it to use as the source of the backup.

The main interface (which you hardly ever need to look at because Mozy will do all its work in the background) shows the schedule of the next backup, when the previous backup was made, how many files are selected and how many are going to be backed up on the next scheduled interval. And, of course, how much storage space you are using for all these files.

Mozy allows you to define the backup schedule and how much network bandwidth you will allow it to use (so it won’t interfere with other network traffic).  set the schedule to do its backups every day at 3:30AM and decided not to limit the bandwidth at all since there’s not a lot of network traffic on my internet lines around 3:30AM.

Once Mozy started doing its backup the main dialog for MozyHome can show you that a backup is in progress. It’s unfortunate that MozyHome did not take full advantage of the 20 Mbps upload (upstream) speed on the internet line that the iMac is using. The speed of performing the backup of the selected folders varied greatly ranging anywhere from 2KB/s to 250KB/s but at no point provided a constant speed. There is some CPU usage going on because of the encryption being performed but when looking at the processes involved with the Mozy backup it didn’t seem like those were a bottleneck on a 2.93Ghz Quad Core i7.4.

An earlier version of MozyHome was also tested because this newer version has higher upload speeds. Unfortunately it was difficult to reach a conclusion because of the inconsistent upload speeds and lack of consistency but it does seem that the new version is generally a bit faster. However, on a powerful enough system it does not appear to take much advantage of a 20 Mbps upstream in bandwidth.

Once I had a few GB’s worth of data backed up (and that took a few days, mostly incrementally because the iMac was not powered on 24/7) it was time to try restoring (that is, downloading) some files. Selecting the files and the destination where you want to restore them is about as simple as it gets. And it got the job done even though I did cancel the restore after a while of testing. But again the bandwidth used (out of a 120 Mbps downstream bandwidth) was far below the capacity of the internet line and as you can tell from the screenshot, restoring files peaked at 326KB/s. That’s not bad at all for most users with consumer grade internet lines but quite a lot below the 12-14 MB/s I often get from the 120mbps line.

During a real crisis scenario, the performance may not matter as much getting your precious files back again—or every minute might be costing your business money.

In conclusion, I would recommend a local, high speed, backup, for the Mac, preferably using the included Time Machine and an external hard drive (a FW800 drive is really very spiffy), but that means both your system or laptop and its main backup are in the same physical location. But if you want a secondary backup that’s off-site, easy to configure, requires very little involvement or manual action to get it going, MozyHome does provide what you may need for that purpose. Just don’t expect extremely high speeds and fast backups and restores.

Stefan also forwarded me several Mozy News messages containing helpful tips like this one:

When I first tested the Windows version of Mozy, somewhere around 2007, slow upload time was the major drawbacks I noticed. But that seemed to be an issue with most online backup tools. And everyone knows the so-called high-speed Internet in the United States is a joke compared to what’s available in Asia and in Western Europe.

So I was surprised—particularly given what Todd Esplin said in the interview about greater upload speeds—that a fast Internet connection didn’t result in fast backups. I had some discussions with the Mozy team about this, but they weren’t conclusive. Naturally a process that requires encryption and other kinds of encoding (for versioning, say) is going to be slower than a straightforward FTP transfer. But it doesn’t seem logical that it should be that much slower.

As long as speed is not of the essence—and after that first backup, things do go more quickly—Mozy has a lot going for it. They’ve been around a while, and have EMC behind them. They’ve got a great sense of humor. The software is easy to use. You  can choose your own encryption key. It gets your data off-site, which helps protect you against theft and natural disaster.  And there don’t seem to be that many other options for online backup for Mac, though there are lots of competitors in the Windows market.

If you know of a better tool for backing up your Mac online—and particularly a faster one—write in and let us know. Leave a comment on the blog or send a message to sallie [at] fileslinger [dot] com.

Last Friday I had the opportunity to talk to Todd Esplin, principal product manager at Mozy, about the just-released Mozy 2.0 for Mac.

As a PC user, I can’t review this product myself, but the Ur-Guru has recently started investing in Macs because he’s getting into iOS development, so he’s testing it out and will have a review for you soon. Meanwhile, I’ve waited long enough to publish the interview, so I’m releasing it separately. (I’ve just changed web hosts and switched to a multi-site installation of WordPress, which involved a big domain-mapping adventure, among other things, but never mind that, I’ll write about it somewhere else for those who are interested.)

This is not quite a word-for-word transcription of the interview, but I have not changed anything material.

What was the most challenging thing about developing the Mac version?

Although we were one of the first in the market with a Mac client, it’s been slightly behind or moderately behind the Windows client from a feature standpoint, just because of its maturity , so we’ve had to do two or three things to catch up, as well as take this from a usability and UI (user interface) perspective that was focused on a Windows platform and then create a Mac UI environment. We really worked on our performance, and that was a challenge. One of the biggest complaints we hear is that backups take too long. People don’t understand that if they have a lot of data to send through a small pipe, it’s going to take a while. But we also had to take a look at what we could do to speed up the process. We’ve taken some pretty significant measures over 6-9 months of development time to optimize our transfer process, what we do to prepare the files before they leave your computer and go up to our cloud. We do less work on the client, on the desktop, and we pushed a lot of the work we do back to the server. We scan files, prepare a list of files and the changes that are going to be backed up, and then we just send the files. Previously we were doing more analysis and more structuring on the desktop. That’s reduced the amount of data that needs to go through the bandwidth, and a lot of our users will see immediate benefits from that.

The second thing we did around performance has to do with scanning for changed files to back up. Prior to the 2.0 release we were limited by Tiger operating system because they required us to use Spotlight to do the scanning. With Leopard and Snow Leopard, we don’t have to scan the whole drive, so every time a backup kicks off, it’s faster.

The Ur-Guru reports that Mozy doesn’t seem to be taking full advantage of European upload speeds? Why not?

Try the 1.7.3 version for comparison and see whether 2.0 is significantly faster.  Also, a European user should back up to datacenters in Europe to avoid latency backing up to US datacenters. Of course the encryption and creating the list of files that have and have not changed do mean that Mozy backups take longer than straight FTP uploads. Customer reports so far do indicate that the 2.0 version backs up faster than the 1.7 version.

Are there significant differences between the Mac and PC versions of the program?

We’re at 90-95% parity between the two versions. There are differences in the UI, but the core features of setting up my backup, scheduling my backup to run,  the flexibility I have with setting a specific time or a frequency—those are all the same.  The way that we now process the backup is the same now; it wasn’t before. The way I  can throttle my bandwidth (use less or more bandwidth for the backup) is the same.

One thing that is different, and it’s noteworthy to us, is that in the 2.0 product for Windows we added a local backup feature that we call 2x protect. It means that I can now decide which files I want to back up both to a local hard drive and to the online service. For the Mac, we consciously chose not to add that, because as we gathered customer feedback, we found that everyone preferred just to use Time Machine for local backups. Users didn’t want to have two places to go and manage a local backup. We looked at integrating with Time Machine, but there were technical hurdles we would need to overcome, and the majority of users we talked to aren’t asking for it.

Is there anything Mozy doesn’t back up? Are there files Apple doesn’t let you back up?

You can take the default backup sets, like “My Photos” or customize them and put any file extension you want in there. But there are server-like database files that you can’t back up with our desktop version, but you can back them up on the server version. We don’t back up applications, but we do back up application information like browser favorites. We back up everything you’re commonly using and a lot of things you don’t even know that you’re using. If a customer looks at everything we’re backing up, they’re going to be surprised, but if you set it as a preference, we have to back it up. There aren’t many things we don’t back up apart from applications. And we update file types quickly. So every time, say, Quicken comes out with a new file extension, we go in and add it to the default backup set.

What percentage of your users are on Macs?

17-18%, predominantly in the consumer market. We’re seeing more Macs appearing in the business market, however. We usually get into enterprises because people are using the home version of Mozy and tell their IT guys to adopt us.

Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you want my readers to know about?

We’re striving to make our backups simpler, because we’re getting more customers who are less technically savvy. In the beginning, we got the “protectionists,” the people who went out looking for security and were highly aware and considered themselves advanced users. When we surveyed our users in those days, 60% or more marked themselves as advanced. I’ve looked at trends, and that percentage is coming down. Some people want to watch how fast the transfer rate is for their backups; others just want to let it run. We’re trying to meet the needs of both user types. We’ve left in the advanced options, but we’re now highlighting and emphasizing the basic options someone needs to know: if my backup is working, when the last backup ran, and can I distinguish the files that are backed up from those that aren’t. We’ve added new screens and new views to make it easier to choose files and to see what files are backed up. If it has a green dot next to it, it’s backed up. If it doesn’t, it’s not, and you can add it right then. So far the feedback we’ve had is that this is a great feature.  It’s instilling the trust we want.

What’s your  favorite feature in Mozy 2.0 for Mac?

I like the speed. That’s the one I’m really focused on and we’re continually trying to make it faster. But as far as the Mac product is concerned, I do like the integration. We used to have two or three views to find your information. Now the menu bar that icon gives you all the information you need, plus the advanced information if you hold down the control button. We’ve merged everything else into the system preferences in the Mac, which is very native-Mac-like. One specific feature I really like is the ability to see which files are going to backed up yet.

Have you been getting much feedback yet?

We have. It’s only been out for a week and a half, but we did a pretty substantial beta test and got a lot of great feedback. What’s encouraging is that I’m not getting a lot of calls from our support team, which means it’s a pretty stable product and they haven’t been getting complaints about it. We do a monthly customer satisfaction survey, broken down by Windows and Mac users, and the most recent survey was more positive than the previous one on the Mac product. That doesn’t mean everyone has converted to 2.0, but probably by next month they will. Generally the feedback has been positive.

We constantly monitor blogs and our customer forums. We have had people say we oversimplified. We tell them how to find the advanced settings. We expected to get that response; anytime you change an interface, you get that response. But the new customers really like it.

Thanks again to Todd Esplin for taking the time to speak to me. Come back next week to read the product review.

This week we have a guest post from Sally Davison from Fire Science Degree. And a good thing, too, because I’ve been so swamped that I still haven’t had time to test the StarTech SATA drive USB dock.

Online data storage is all the rage now; what with cloud service providers vying with one another to provide free storage for all your documents and other data, most people have moved all their stuff online. At the other end of the spectrum however are the naysayers and predictors of doom – they feel that the cloud is tenuous and unsafe and that your data could be seen by prying eyes, stolen by greedy opportunists, or lost due to ineffective backup and security measures. In spite of these varying opinions, the cloud is doing quite well and it seems like it’s here to stay. So the question that you need to ask yourself is, would you move your data to the cloud?

The answer is actually pretty simple – if your needs demand it, then by all means patronize the cloud; in my opinion, it’s the best thing that’s happened to data storage and file management. Online data storage offers a host of advantages:

• You don’t have to carry your data around with you – it’s easily accessible if you have a computer and an Internet connection.
• Most online file management systems sync the data on your system to the files online and vice versa – so when you update the files on your side, the master copy online is also updated when you save them. Similarly, when you download the stored data to your computer, the same file management system is maintained.

There are two kinds of online file management systems, and both have their benefits and drawbacks. One demands that you download software onto your system; however, you don’t have to explicitly upload your files every time you need to move them online – all you need to do is save them in a particular folder and if you’re connected to the net, the job is taken care of behind the scenes. The other does not ask you to download any kind of application, but you do have to upload your files every time you want them saved – it’s like storing attachments on your email, only a lot simpler and more convenient. You log in with your username and password and upload or download files as and when you need to.

If you do decide to store your data online with a random service provider, you must remember that there is a tiny possibility that it could fall into the wrong hands or be deleted for good. Using a second provider as backup is not a bad idea, but there’s still the chance that someone could get at your data if they had the means to. So if your data is very sensitive in nature and cannot fall into the wrong hands, it’s best to trust no one but yourself to safeguard it.

This guest post is contributed by Sally Davison, who writes on the topic of fire science degrees . She welcomes your comments at sally [dot] davison091 [at] gmail [dot] com.