Now Turn Your Head and Cough
To begin our tests, we headed back to our NWC Real-World Labs in Green Bay, Wis. (see "How We Tested Online Backup Services," page 10, for our test-bed setup). We told the service providers up front not to give us any special treatment--as always, we would accept only services offered to ordinary customers.
Our servers' backup/restore agents ensured that our data was compressed and encrypted before it was transmitted to the service providers. This way, the data remained secure on the vendors' servers.
We can't overstate the importance of good password-management procedures to guarantee data access under all circumstances. The online vendors told us that while they can't access your data without authorization, they're prepared to work with you, to the extent their technology allows, to recover data under extreme circumstances, including disaster recovery and employee malfeasance.
The flexibility of disk-to-disk backup and restoration was a great selling point. Most of the providers allowed backups to be scheduled at practically any interval we chose, with LiveVault even offering the option of a continuous backup that transmits information throughout the day as files are modified. We could also set up different backup strategies for fast- and slow-changing data types on the same server and run them concurrently.
Opting to make backups at multiple intervals can also eliminate the need for scheduling lengthy evening backups. This will make the best use of your continuously available IP bandwidth while providing the most current information possible should a server failure occur. Disk-to-disk restorations are very convenient as well because multilevel historical backup data is always immediately accessible, and authorized users can initiate file restorations at their convenience.
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