Running a QNAP TS 219 NAS at work for file sharing and really need to get this sorted with some form of online automated backup.

We are not talking a massive amount of data probably in the region of 30 – 50gb

So it needs to be something straight forward, relatively cost effective and automated.

Any recommendations? Pro’s / con’s?

Look at Box.com or Dropbox.com, both cheap and effective.

If using a ‘cloud’ service be aware of a few things;

1) The data *may* not be secure – everyone assumes dropbox or whoever are ‘trusted’ but if it’s commercially sensitive data would you trust a complete stranger to look after it?
2) It may be in another country – can be an issue if you hold data covered by the DPA.

bandwidth can also be a problem if you are changing large amounts of data regularly.

Have you looked at just having a couple of spare NAS drives that you back up to and take off site in rotation?

Yeh the sensitivity was a concern. Ultimately this is a small office and at the mo we are taking physical back ups and taking them off site but I want to take the pilot error out of this.

If you’re not worried about DPA issues then bitcassa is pretty good. We use dropbox for collaboration now as our global MOSS thing is so useless.

If you are worried about DPA then Microsoft skydrive as their servers are somewhere in the EU (speak to MS to verify this – they were shipping several hundred ‘containercentres’ to dublin port to get round Eu data laws). However, you’ll have to check on the status of m/s support for syncing external devices and filers as this wasn’t initially supported, this may be an issue for all solutions.

Bandwidth is always a problem especially as upstream rates are so slow over ADSL and may clog up your net access, though you can throttle the clients back during the day.

Anything on a server anywhere will be being read by NSA / GCHQ on the way to / from it, along with all your email and phone calls.

If you’re still bothered, you can download apps for Dropbox etc which encrypt everything to / from your cloud account.

NB Dropbox is hosted by Amazon on their server farms.

If your NAS drive supports it then something like Amazon glacier storage could be cheap enough for you so long as you don’t want to restore anything too quickly.

Yea of course gchq/ nsa will read anything they can encrypted or not (whether they have the horsepower to deal with the data output is another question entirely). The bigger issue with putting stuff on servers in the US is that their data protection laws are pretty naff. In theory they’re meant to provide the same protection as in the EU through the extension agreements, in practice they have no idea where your data originates so will just treat it as native US. In which case you’re on iffy grounds wrt EU and UK law by allowing the data to be mishandled. Doubtful there’d ever be an action brought, but a good auditor would find it.

I use rsync.net but I have a truecrypt volume stored on the Swiss instance that I use rsync (oddly enough) to sync with my local copy, good luck decrypting that. Not in the EU though, technically, so it depends how sensitive your data is. Wherever you store it though, make sure you encrypt it *first*, and don’t rely on whatever the storage vendor gives you.
You can install rsync on QNAPs (I used to have one) and can automate the encryption and sync with cron. Your biggest problem is getting it there in the first place, 50GB is a long time uploading unless you have decent upload bandwidth.

Your biggest problem is getting it there in the first place, 50GB is a long time uploading unless you have decent upload bandwidth.

But generally you only change a small amount in any one go. I sync 40Gb with Dropbox, but probably only change 20-50Mb / day.

But generally you only change a small amount in any one go. I sync 40Gb with Dropbox, but probably only change 20-50Mb / day.

Pretty much what the situation is here. 45gb on the server but minimal changes per day, certainly less than a GB.

Server is always on so could automate a backup when the office is closed so bandwith not really and issue.

Another option I’ve just thought of is to install another QNAP at the satellite office. We have fixed IP’s at both of our offices and all files are shared from and stored at the primary office.
If I installed a QNAP at the 2nd office then that could receive the backup every evening automatically using remote replication which is inbuilt to the server. That way we would have two secure copies of the files in two locations on our private properties.

The data we have is sensitive because the nature of the job (Funeral Directors) but not overly sensitive in the fact we don’t store customer financial information, just personal and contact info.

Our main concern is hardware failure or theft / fire damage which we’d be covered in this scenario. We’d have to be pretty unlucky to have both offices firebombed in one night!

Does this sound like a goer? no extra ongoing costs other than a new QNAP nas.

backup between locations sounds like the best plan – you can do the initial syncing locally that way so you only ever have changes across the network.