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I second the tarsnap recommendation--they run off Amazon S3 which has been tried and tested. I personally use a piece of software called Arq (http://www.haystacksoftware.com/arq/) which also uses the S3 infrastructure. Their backup scheme is similar to Git and your backups are versioned, encrypted and can be unencrypted even if the company goes away (they open-sourced the document format the restore software). Finally, to address the question of safe cloud backups: backing up to the cloud should never be your only backup option. You should have these same files backed-up locally and possibly in a third, local offsite facility. Losing your cloud backups shouldn't be an issue because they shouldn't be your only backups. -- Jeff Siarto CAS IT Office http://it.cas.msu.edu On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 2:46 PM, STeve Andre' <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > On 10/25/10 09:58, Jesse Howard wrote: > > I am looking at using Backblaze as an off-site storage solution for server > and possibly workstation backups. Would anyone with experience running > backups to the cloud like to comment on the pluses and minuses of these > services? I would be looking to do about 500 gb a week from a single PC to > start. > > > > Jesse Howard > _______________________ > > I'm probably going to be the Black Sheep again, but I have a lot of serious > questions about storing data elsewhere (the cloud). > > What is the guarantee for your data being there when you need it? I > rather doubt that the contract you will have to sign to use a service is > going to put them at much risk if things go wrong. > > What happens to your data if the company goes bankrupt? What > happens to your data if the company gets gobbled up by a larger > company? > > What happens to your backups if you decide to leave that service? > What kind of guarantee is there that your backups, and *their* > backups of your backups are removed? > > What policies does the company have with regard to requests from > law enforcement etc about obtaining your data? No on can refuse > a court order, but some places have gleefully given out data when > simply asked. > > How is the data encrypted before it's send to the capture machine? > If the company supplies it to you, is it open source? Unless you *know* > what the method is you have no idea what it is that you are using, AND > you have no idea if there is some kind of mechanism to quietly peer > into your data. > > All this is not to say that things cannot be done correctly. There is a > site, http://tarsnap.com that seems to deal with things correctly. Note > that I have not used tarsnap, but I think it deserves a look. > > The attitude I see about "the cloud" makes me uneasy. I see > significant risks with it. I'm sure it can be done safely, but I'm not > sure I've seen many examples of it being done intelligently. > > --STeve Andre' > > >