Amazon Web Services for Backup and Disaster Recovery

Since the launch of the Amazon Web Services platform in 2006, many companies have decided to offer solutions on top of it. We collect a list of these solution providers, being them System Integrators (SI) or Independent Software Vendors (ISV), on our main AWS website.
These Solution Providers offer a vast range of solution for many different use cases.

Backup and Disaster Recovery scenarios are great to highlight the advantages of the Cloud versus traditional solutions: if you need Backup and Disaster Recovery for your business, you can avoid the expensive burden of relying on physical tapes and tape management in favor of cloud-based storage.
Data written on tapes typically goes in a vault somewhere and remains useless until the tape is transported back in case of a disaster. Cost of over- or under-provisioning in this case is very high.
On the Cloud, however, you can get rid of tapes and use Amazon S3, a highly durable storage solution: it provides a simple web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web. All the complexities of scalability, reliability, durability, performance and cost-effectiveness are hidden behind a very simple programming interface.

Amazon S3 is intentionally built with a minimal feature set, and if you have very specific needs, that's where our Solution Providers can help.
For example, If you want to use Amazon S3 to backup Windows servers, desktops and live applications such as Microsoft Exchange and SQL Server to Amazon’s highly dependable online storage, you might consider using a solution from one of our Solution Providers, Zmanda.
Their Zmanda Cloud Backup automates the steps needed to backup your data to the cloud, through a GUI based backup configuration and management.
They just announced their third generation Cloud Backup, which fully supports the AWS Asia Pacific Region (check out the pricing list).




I've seen many customer interested in Backup solutions here in Asia Pacific, and I'm sure that they'll be interested in the solution offered by Zmanda.

But what happens when large amounts of data need to be transferred, and the internet simply isn't fast enough to do it in a reasonable amount of time?
AWS Import/Export accelerates moving large amounts of data into and out of AWS, using portable storage devices for transport. AWS transfers your data directly onto and off of storage devices using Amazon’s high-speed internal network and bypassing the Internet.
For significant data sets, AWS Import/Export is often faster than Internet transfer and more cost effective than upgrading your connectivity.

If you are using Amazon S3 and/or AWS Import/Export for Backup or Disaster Recovery, let us know your story and tell us what do you like the most about these services.
You might also be interested in reading Best Practices for Using Amazon S3.

- Simone Brunozzi (@simon)

Comments

[Charlie Wood]

Everyone who uses Spanning Backup to back up his Google Apps data (calendars, contacts, and docs) is in effect using Amazon S3 for backup. Spanning Backup runs on EC2, uses SQS, and stores data using S3 and EBS. http://spanningbackup.com

Regards,
Charlie
Spanning

[Andy, CloudBerry Lab]

Hi,

There is another option to backup data to cloud storage powered by Amazon S3. Check out CloudBerry Backup. It is one time fee and the rest what you pay for Amazon S3. There is also a special version for Windows Home Server

http://backup.cloudberrylab.com/

Thanks
Andy

[Bill Mitchell]

If you’re looking for a cost-effective and hassle-free alternative to traditional backup and storage solutions, look no further, CloudBerry Backup has the solution. We found CloudBerry during our search for a Software interface to Amazon's S3 service. We find the combination of S3 and Cloudberry Online Backup protects all the data we have chosen to backup with effiecency and speed. CloudBerry's support team is top notch and they understand the consumer needs. If you are looking for a solution to utlizing S3 to it fullest, I suggest you give these guys a try. I did and very happy for it.

[Alec]

The new CloudBerry Backup is awesome. It is simple, easy to use and effective. I was searching for an automatic backup planner, and I didn't find anything simple than CloudBerry.

I recommend it for backing up to our personal files to web server files. I love how you can schedule automatic backups without having to do anything! All for one simple price, no monthly pricing in addition to your S3 Costs. I completely agree to Bill Mitchell's post, look no further CloudBerry has a great set of software.

[Vincent Li]

I too recommend CloudBerry Backup. I spent a lot of time looking for the best S3 front-end solution and decided CBB was the best fit for my need. It has all the bells and whistles a backup solution should have (versioning, scheduling, compression and encryption). I especially like the email notification feature when a backup is complete.
One other thing I like CloudBerry is their awesome support. Andy has been extremely helpful with answering all of my inquires. Definitely worth checking out!

[Corey Broderick]

I'll put in a recommendation for CloudBerry as well. The application perfectly met our requirements for a online backup solution: intuitive use, low maintenance, automated notifications. It was a all-round winner for us.
Not only did the software have all the features that we needed, but support was just incredible. Even during our trial period, the promptness and and coverage of their support simply astounded us.

[Jamie B]

Just wanted to add (another) quick recommendation for CloudBerry Backup. Having spent a good week researching all the various backup software and interfaces for Amazon S3 I settled on CloudBerry. It's fast, simple and does exactly what it says on the tin. It has a highly configurable interface and scheduling system giving you complete control over your backup system. If you need a clean, elegant solution for keeping your files safe - look no further.

[Jamil Zaman]

After doing an exhaustive search, downloading and installing numerous applications I finally came across CloudBerry Backup and what a relief. Amazon S3, although a fabulous service is not yet inspiring quality applications with the exception of CloudBerry Backup. The way it interfaces with Amazon S3 is clean and the scheduling capabilites are great.

[Gordon]

Thank you Cloudberry! We are using Cloudberry Backup and the S3 Explorer Pro. Both products are very good and the company replies very fast on emails which I really like.

[Conrad]

I'll echo the comments of the previous posters. Amazon S3 critically needs a good software packakge to make disaster recovery as easy as it could be. I had tried NovaBackup and Cloudberry's competing product, based upon the above recommendations, and found both to be excellent products.

However, Cloudberry's support and constant updates, along with the cleaner interface, won me over.

[Ben Barrett]

I'd just like to say that I'm really impressed with Amazon's S3 and our organisation is making use of it through Cloudberry's Backup software. Their software was a significant factor in influencing our decision to go with S3, so thanks to you both for making excellent (and cheap) products!

[David Ware]

Finding Cloudberry backup software and Amazon S3 to help us back up files has been great! Cloudberry has been the solution we have been looking for over the last few weeks, it's quick, simple and easy to use software. The email support you recieve is friendly, quick and fast too! I recommend this software and company ! 10/10 Top Marks !

[Brian Kelley]

We're a small organization, with a one person IT dept. We've been using Cloudberry online backup, both desktop and server versions, and are very well pleased. It's easy to use, very well integrated with Amazon S3. An excellent purchase and just what we needed. The backups can be programmed to run at night, which is what we need.

[Dawnielle Miller]

We are a small not-for-profit and we have an IT person who volunteers to help us out. He came up with the Cloudberry solution for backing up our little server. We are happy with the Cloudberry server version and it suits our needs, ensuring the backup and security of our data.

Thanks!

[Malte Zacharias]

I'd also like to put another shoe in for Cloudberry Backup. As part of the German red cross we were eligible for a free license and it seems to be the perfect solution for our windows based backups. We are currently using it to backup a desktop pc but a server version (and WHS addin) is also available. One thing that surprised me in particular was the overall smooth finish. The whole product seems to be extremely well made and is easy to use (If you understand the principle of cloud backup, of course). Basically everything we needed is there and works flawlessly. From installation to finished setup was about 10 minutes for me. Among its features are:
- Continuous Backup (new files are nearly immediately backed up)
- Support for multiple older versions of a file,
- Keeps deleted files for a configurable amount of time,
- encryption

Cloudberry Online Backup can use several storage backends (also local NAS) but we use it with Amazon S3.

[Marin Crook]

I have just evaluated the WHS2011 version of Cloudberry backup and was amazed at how well it is put together. I believe that good first impressions of a product are essential to give you the confidence that it can be trusted, and I was not dissapointed. Installation was straight forward and I was able to setup my first back up plan with ease. Initially I am using the product to take backups to network locations (2nd server in the garage) and also to external disk. My next task is to use the Amazon S3 storage as a fail safe location. The software is able to very quickly determine what has changed in your backup selection and then only backup the minimum amount of data required, so backing up to an internet location like S3 should be very efficient. I recommend taking a trial version. You will be pleased you did !!!!