CLOUD-to-CLOUD backup: A chasm-Spanning leap

Cloud storage company Spanning's story is simple enough; you back up your apps and on-premises data, don't you? (everyone say "yes"...) You should back up your public cloud apps and their in-cloud data, shouldn't you? (let me hear you say "yeah!") Your existing backup software won't work there, will it? (everyone look down and …

[StephenH]

Great sales pitch

"We have unlimited storage for unlimited cost."

Unlimited costs - sounds like a Defence contract

[Phuq Witt]

I don't get it. ???

So, in case your cloud backup goes 'titsup' [to use El Reg's Mot du Jour], you should have it backed up to another cloud backup?

1: Why do people need to pay a 3rd party potentially "unlimited" fees to do this for them? Can't they just back up to two different clouds for themselves?

2: What if this lot's backup goes titsup? Should folks make an additional "Cloud Backup Backup Backup", just to be sure?

3: If Google and Amazon et al are using this company to backup their own clouds onto Amazon S3, then who are Amazon using to backup up these S3 backups to?

Is this what's meant by an "infinite loop"?

[frank ly]

Re: I don't get it. ???

My Dropbox folder is a subfolder inside my synchronised Google Drive folder. That seems to work nicely for me but I doubt if it's an 'enterprise class' arrangement.

[TReko]

Re: I don't get it. ???

Nothing beats a local backup, cloud to cloud is fine until you have a network outage, or the auditors come. We use Syncdocs to backup Google Drive and Google Apps locally.

[TReko]

Re: I don't get it. ???

Nothing beats a local backup. The cloud server might going "titsup" is probably not the only reason you lose access to your data. The Internet connection going down or going slow is another.

We use SyncDocs http://syncdocs.com to backup all our Google Docs and Drive files to our server NAS. It converts them into Office format too.

You never really know how good your backup is until you try to restore it, so having a local copy can give an extra level of confidence. Call me old fashioned.

[cortland]

LOVE the Hed

http://www.ahajokes.com/hunt016.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally, I'd recommend CloudHQ.

I'm not connected in any way, but I've used them for a year or so to sync my own Drive, OneDrive and DropBox, along with the wife's DropBox.

Why? Mainly because I don't trust documents stored in Google Docs format as unless you switch on offline support for your Drive account all that gets backed up locally is a plain text link to the online version. With CloudHQ (and presumably Spanning?) I get an almost-realtime OneDrive clone in Word/Excel format with no extra effort.

It also means the wife's photos appear backed up in a subfolder in my cloud accounts, so when she accidentally deletes them (inevitable) there's a copy.

Useful stuff these cloud syncs and, if you are buying certain hardware, you often get several years of much gigabytes free too.