Hopefully starting a project for a new client that will take 14 months to complete. The job involves scanning in the region of 3 million documents (sounds a lot but not excessive given the timescale).
We store our scanned data on a raid NAS and backup to tape also, but I’m also thinking about adding some cloud backup as well. Ideally this would involve an app that would run automatically overnight, everynight.

My requirements are not huge….. 5-10 gig would probably do it as every 4 weeks the data would be sent to the client.
Although I have an Amazon cloud account they don’t have any automatic backup system. I’m also looking at IDrive as well as iCloud to see if they can do what I want, but has anybody already inplemented this?

I do all my work in Dropbox – $100 per annum for 50Gb space.

Highly recommend it – it mirrors your local work space to the cloud, keeps 30 days worth of versions of every file so you can go back and undelete files etc.

Works very very well and all stored on Amazon’s S3 system – so pretty bomb proof.

http://www.dropbox.com

Or you could just use an S3 client eg http://www.dragondisk.com/

Think carefully about the sort of data you’re talking about.

Is it sensitive? Data Protection related? Commercially or financially sensitive? Classified under a government methodology?

When you cloud data, you have no control over where it is stored (in the world) or what protection is built around how it is stored. Taking DPA information as an example, if the company suffers a breach the data policies will come under scrutiny by the ICO, if due dilligence has not been performed against the cloud provider, the company could be looking at a large fine.

Just saying.

There are apps for Dropbox which add a shim to encrypt / decrypt your data so the Cloud never have access to the raw data:

http://lifehacker.com/5794486/how-to-add-a-second-layer-of-encryption-to-dropbox

What Samurai said, if you put your data into the cloud; you need to ensure its secure and you have performed due diligence, simply encrypting it may not be enough; especially considering providers like dropbox history on security.

I’ve been using Backblaze with no problems for over a year. (100+ gig) encrypted etc too

http://www.backblaze.com/

I really don’t get why Dropbox gets so much flack – other than its very successful. If you have sensitive data you encrypt it before syncing (which is pretty standard and very easy to do). Any cloud / storage space provide should be considered to be weak / vulnerable eg any US related company has to make all your data available to the Feds on request (without telling you). All the cloud services encrypt your data, but obviously they have the keys as they have to let the Security Services have access.

It really boils down to cost and ease of use. Dropbox wins out on ease of use and letting 3rd parties write apps to enhance it e.g. http://sendtodropbox.com/ etc. The UI is just so simple and reliable – pretty much everyone at work uses it instead of our work servers as it ‘just works’.

As for worrying about Cloud reliability – most of them (eg Apple, Dropbox) use Amazon S3 under the good as they are pretty much the market leader in Cloud storage and allow third parties to re-brand and re-sell the service.

sharkbait – ygm

Ahhh, didn’t know that there where apps for automated upload to Dropbox…. I’ve been using them for a while now and yes, it’s really very good. I may just expand my storage there.
The data is sensitive in the clients eyes so encryption would be carried out.

This might be teaching your granny to suck eggs, but you do know encryption isn’t the whole solution, you have to look at how you store the keys, and how you change and management them and how this fits into your backups.

All obvious stuff.

I really don’t get why Dropbox gets so much flack

They get flack, as they lied about there security controls and when lots of users had there data stolen they then had to confess that the security model they said they were using, was what they intended to do, not what they actually did.

Hence people don’t trust them anymore (once bitten twice shy). As you are again being asked to ‘trust’ them

– pretty much everyone at work uses it instead of our work servers as it ‘just works’.

You have a very relaxed workplace, everywhere I’ve worked that’s a sacking offence if I’ve even seen one.

Thankfully yes, we all have Admin / root access to our machines and pretty much install what we like….

We use Dropbox extensively for sharing project between sites and also with clients (large data sets to share).

To be honest, I wouldn’t work anywhere that wouldn’t give me root access to my machine – but then as a developer I have to have root / Admin to create tools….

root wouldn’t be a problem for most engineering companies, storing your data on external unmanaged servers, and encrypting without a central key recovery process in place would be!

How does your company remove access to *their* data when you leave? and what do they do if you get pissed of with them, delete your encryption keys and walk out the door?

I really don’t get why Dropbox gets so much flack

Personally, I got royally cocked off with getting 47 unsolicited referral requests a day from halfwits I barely over every possible digital format available. At one point, it was almost as regular as people telling me I should use Apple products.

Think carefully about the sort of data you’re talking about.

Is it sensitive? Data Protection related? Commercially or financially sensitive? Classified under a government methodology?

When you cloud data, you have no control over where it is stored (in the world) or what protection is built around how it is stored. Taking DPA information as an example, if the company suffers a breach the data policies will come under scrutiny by the ICO, if due dilligence has not been performed against the cloud provider, the company could be looking at a large fine.

Just saying.

This.

Personally, I think you’d have to be mental to do it with clients data (i.e. not your property really) compared with the cost of getting a couple of 1Tb USB disks.

EDIT: Just read you already do tape – take copies offsite (ideally make it someone elses problem like Iron Mountain), test a restore every so often.

To be honest, I wouldn’t work anywhere that wouldn’t give me root access to my machine – but then as a developer I have to have root / Admin to create tools….

sudo much?

I use CrashPlan unlimited and that works well. I have tried pulling stuff back to test it too.

Cheap for unlimited data.

I use http://www.livedrive.com for storing files in the cloud and syncing between PCs / phone / iPad etc. They charge £100 / year of 1TB.

sudo much?

sounds a solution to a problem he doesn’t want fixed.

Software developers and engineers can be nightmares large installs as they *always* know best, and security is always bypassed for convenience (one software engineer I worked with insisted on running chmod -R 777 / on every machine he used to save time)

Without careful management of keys, and client data I wouldn’t touch cloud data storage, as if it **** up, you will have a nightmare proving due diligence and then you have the fun of getting all your data back.

All these cloud storage solutions seem great, however I am not sure I would bet my career on it, for the sake of a couple of NAS devices and a tape drive. As if you lose your client data and you recommended and managed the system, its your ass on the line! Then again I don’t like blackbox solutions, where I am relying on a developed system to do what the marketing department says it does, especially when I know the code will have been written by the lowest bidder.