which is the best cloud storage solution for pc backup

[james_mascarenhas]

Hi Everyone,

The Market is flooded with so many cloud storage provider and i am really not sure to which one to opt for, I have done some research and have come up with 5 to 6 company that are specialized in Cloud Storage Services.

My requirement:-

1) To take backup of everything that exist in my organization
2) Backup of every devices that we have provided for our employee

So basically i need to backup everything and store and secure it in some trusted site, your guidance will be appreciated. Here is my list that i searched :

Google Drive http://www.google.com/drive/about.html
Amazon AWS http://aws.amazon.com/
Ubuntu One https://one.ubuntu.com/
SugarSync https://www.sugarsync.com/
EndPointVault http://www.endpointvault.com/

These are some of the sites, if there exist some other sites that matches my requirement i will be glad to go for it

Thanks In Advance

[coffeecat]

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[mastablasta]

there is Skydrive soon to be Onedrive from Microsoft
dropbox
spideroak (this one is kind of slow but data is encrypted)

you can also make you own cloud... which might be a cheaper solution or not. it depends... how much data do you estimate you will backup? a few GB? a few TB?

[SeijiSensei]

Are you really sure you want to place all your confidential business documents on a publicly-accessible server even with encryption? Have you discussed this plan with your attorney and accountant? Documents stored on your premises might have greater protections than ones stored on a cloud server if you end up in litigation. Do these data include things like credit-card numbers? If so, you'll need to comply with the PCI DSS standard.

This sounds like an awful lot of data, more than any free service will provide. How much are you willing to spend for an archiving service? Perhaps that money would be better spent on a machine that does backups in your office.

If you're concerned about surviving a fire or flood, you're probably better off writing tapes and taking them home or storing them in a safe-deposit box.

Just a hint that managing backups isn't only an IT task. They're integral to the operation of any business, and their management needs to be treated as a serious business decision.

[ssam]

you could look at http://rsync.net/

another option is to run something like owncloud which provides the features of something like drop box but can be run on your own servers. https://owncloud.org/

[Habitual]

the S3 bucket service at AWS is free to move data in but then you are charged for data out.
S3 Prices
DragonDisk for employees can copy to Amazon or Google Cloud.

1) To take backup of everything that exist in my organization

That's a pretty broad paintbrush and could consume a lot of time and resources.

What are the companies requirements?
You said "my"...

[PJs Ronin]

I would recommend any cloud not resident on US soil.

[Roasted]

The only cloud I trust is my ownCloud, nestled safetly in my basement with 3TB accessible to me any time I want.

[mastablasta]

unless the basement cathces fire or get's flooded.

i htink there are some backup guidelines which state that for serious backup the facility should be at least 50km away from location that needs backup.

[Don_Stahl]

On security, as SeijiSensei mentions: although American NSA and British GCHQ are in the news right now as data snoops, the Russian, Chinese, and Israeli security agencies are probably well versed in data capture too. If complete privacy is a concern, I think no cloud service can be trusted no matter where the server farm is located, or what path the data travels to get there. For that matter, laws protecting or unprotecting data can change in ANY nation. And who's to say that every Mossad or FSB operative is above selling snooped data on the sly?

Evaluate the data to be backed up, maybe. For instance, is there any one of your users -- even just one -- who stores passwords in a plain-text file?

Well, anyway. Not to throw cold water on your plans... if you trust encryption (and aren't paranoid), then you can make sure all your backups are encrypted before they hit the data highway.

A dedicated onsite server, as several people mentioned, might be one choice. It has it's downsides, too, of course -- it means you handle the security, and if there's a breach it's your baby. And, as mastablasta writes, it's not the best disaster-recovery choice.

To safeguard against onsite disaster, I put a couple of data files on Microsoft's service (was SkyDrive, soon to be OneDrive) when I do weekly backups. But the files are just process numbers, and include nothing sensitive. And they're small -- after compression they total a few hundred mb. So you're dealing with a different proposal.