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Create a cloud backup for small MSP

I work for a small MSP and we are looking at our options for offsite cloud backup solutions for our customers. We can obviously go the route of utilizing a service, but some people above me really want to look at building our own off site backup cloud for our clients. Personally, I'm not sure if I'm a fan of this but I need to explore this option.

Has anyone done this? What type of hardware do you suggest implementing? How was/is your experience and would you recommend it?

scraby

you can accomplish this with just about any dedicated backup solution such as barracuda backup. but here are some things that you need to consider besides the technology side:

1. customer requirements on retention periods
2. backup frequency
3. it is moving away from tape storage to disk storage, consider the cost of this
4. connectivity pipes between customers and your cloud need to be able to handle backup data set throughput
5. your cloud needs to be housed in a weather proof datacenter, remember the cloud is really not in the cloud but hardware sitting in a building somewhere so you better make sure your building is disaster proof
6. consider dulicating your backup datacenter to a colocation for disaster recovery
7. once you take on other peoples data, you better have your ducks in a row along with detailed contracts that cover everything
8. what is their expectation in case of disaster, what data, how long to recover?

Metaltree

ASKER

scraby,

Thank for the reply. We'll most likely be using StorageCraft. My main question I'm trying to wrap my brain around is what type of infrastructure I'll most likely need in our own cloud backup solution, which will be in a datacenter. Are we talking multiple SANs in a giant storage pool, or should we be considering servers with multiple drives in like a specific raid and just keep creating servers? i'm just looking for a starting point and perhaps a forecast of what I need to expect

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scraby

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Metaltree

ASKER

Thanks for help. Looks like StoreGrid is most likely our solution. They have an extremely kick ass web based interface, its cheap, scalable and their support has been fantastic.