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Online Backup Services: Page 5 of 22

The LiveVault agent was the only one for which management was totally Web-based, so we could check on our data from anywhere we had a Web connection. To set up the test server, we simply logged in to our test account on LiveVault's secure "MyLiveVault" management site and added the test server to our LiveVault account; unlike other services, we could configure LiveVault only online. After entering contact and server-specific information and configuring the backup environment, we downloaded an agent installer that was specifically preconfigured for that server and unusable on any other system. This was unique among the services tested--in general, we downloaded agents and configured them on local machines. But as we explored the world of LiveVault, the reasons for this difference became apparent.


As you may have deduced, LiveVault's system is extremely Web-oriented. Configuration changes are initiated through the Web-based user interface, passed through the vault system and returned to your unobtrusive local agent for execution. This makes remote backup-management control a breeze--all local-agent functions are available through an SSL browser session on any system. Our concerns about security were eased when we discovered that LiveVault augments its password-protected Web access with 192-bit AES encryption, electronic keys and digital certificates.

Setting up a backup was relatively simple, once we resigned ourselves to the somewhat laggy nature of the Web interface, when tested at multiple broadband locations. We believe the culprit is latency introduced as changes to the configuration are sent from the browser to the online service, then to the host machine and back to the service--and updated on the browser. If you choose to do a complete server backup, the system will configure itself to back up open registry and system state configuration files; this is necessary to LiveVault's emergency system restoration capabilities, and a requirement if you want to use its database-backup capabilities. By default, the agent excluded our backup, temporary and deleted files hanging out in our recycle bin, but we could tweak inclusion/exclusion rules as needed.

We set up our backup scheduling using a simple graphical interface. As with rivals, we could define any combination of hourly, daily and weekly intervals, but only LiveVault supports continuous backups, where file changes are communicated to the off-site backup as they're saved on your local server. This may be useful for servers handling fast-moving transactional data but overkill for a typical remote office or SMB installation. After the initial backup and synchronization, incremental backups were handled using byte-level comparison, with only changes transferred.

LiveVault handles open database, e-mail and system files by means of three tools: proprietary replication technology that captures changes as they occur on the agent computer; software agents that use Microsoft's NT Filter Driver APIs to interact directly with file-system-level functions; and algorithms that run against the data stream to ensure that complete databases, including all associated files, are captured and stored in transactionally safe states. There are also accommodations made to ensure the synchronization of continually backed-up databases, but because of their complexity, these advanced features should be set up during the initial agent configuration with the assistance of a LiveVault technician. According to LiveVault, this functionality works with any relational database.