A cheaper cloud backup solution?

Late August 2012 Amazon announced their new storage offering called Glacier (link). With Amazon Glacier you can get storage for as low as $0.01 per gig. Depending on the data center you choose it might a tad higher,  Tokyo is $0.012 per gig.

Their are tons of backup solutions out there. Mozy and Carbonite are two I can think of. I have used them both. Mozy used to be unlimited space for 1 price. I believe Carbonite still is unlimited space for one computer.

The unlimited space pricing for Mozy and Carbonite go out the window for office environments and if you have a server you automatically have to pay more (not a bad thing, just more features for businesses)

But what if you are tired of the pricing from Mozy and Carbonite and want to reduce your monthly outlay? Or you have multiple computers and don’t want 3 subscriptions to mozy/carbonite

Now is the time to try Cloudberry Lab Backup for Desktop software and Amazon Glacier. You can backup 1 desktop for $30 in software and then backup 1tb of data for approx $120 per year. Your first year cost will be $150 but after that the software is paid for. I’m unsure if you have to buy a license for each computer to backup.

If you have a server then Cloudberry Backup for Servers is $80.

How is this different that other solutions?

The big difference is Amazon Glacier. It’s more of an archive type of backup than it is an easily accessed backup. With Mozy/Carbnoite/Dropbox/Sugarsync solutions you have immediate access to restoring files. Glacier is designed with the expectation that retrievals are infrequent and unusual, and data will be stored for extended periods of time. You can retrieve up to 5% of your average monthly storage (pro-rated daily) for free each month. If you choose to retrieve more than this amount of data in a month, you are charged a retrieval fee starting at $0.012 per gigabyte. Learn more. In addition, there is a pro-rated charge of $0.036 per gigabyte for items deleted prior to 90 days.

Is this solution for everyone?

No.

Glacier type of solutions are really meant for those who understand backup archives and what it really is for. Backing up data you only need in an emergency, not quickly.

I’m going to use this in combination with Sugar Sync. I have a main computer in the house with a 2tb hard drive that everyone uses to store important data. It will be backed up to Glacier. All other important immediate use files stay in normal file system and synced with Sugar Sync.

Small business example:

An accountant client has a Windows 2008 Small Business Server. All his data from the server will be archived to Glacier. But the data he needs quick retrieval if needed is on DropBox.

His costs will be $80 for software and monthly costs approx $1.20 (1 dollar and 20 cents)