by Andy Brudtkuhl on November 17, 2009
I had some inside info that Rackspace would be announcing this and it’s significant for many reasons. First off this is all powered by JungleDisk – software Rackspace purchased that created automatic backups to cloud storage systems – including competitor’s Amazon S3.
Another reason this is big news is that it totally legitimizes cloud backup and storage for Small to Medium size businesses (SMB’s) which is something Amazon has yet to be able to do within its web services division.
So what does it do and how much does it cost?
- Store and share files between other employees and/or team members
- Synchronize folders across one or more computers
- Use Rackspace Team Sync to ensure that team members are always working with the most recent version of a file
- Set up automatic backups of your data to the Rackspace Cloud and easily restore that data in the event of a hardware failure
- Secure your data with built-in AES-256 encryption, using a key controlled by the user
At only $4 per user per month this is a great solution and alternative to tedious onsite backups and network sharing. We’re going to try it out at 48Web and let you know how it works but we think this is going to be a great tool to add to our internet business arsenal.
They are also introducing a server backup solution that seems like a win/win for IT people. As someone who used to manage a network of web servers I know backup is a pain in the ass to manage and monitor. This alleviates most of those issues by having it automagically pushed to the cloud.
Rackspace Server Backup enables you to automatically backup your Windows or Linux based server data to the cloud. Chances are, if you have a server in your closet, you also have backups running on that server already, most likely with a tape backup. Every few days or couple of weeks you have to go into the server closet and switch out the old tape for a new tape. Sound familiar? It can be a painful, manual process.
Say Hello to Rackspace Cloud Drive & Rackspace Server Backup
by Andy Brudtkuhl on January 20, 2009
At 48Web, we use Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) for all of our business file storage, backups, and as a content delivery network. In past at startups I have been involved with we have had to purchase file servers for backup and network storage as well as media streaming servers. Now we have “cloud storage” that, buzz words aside, is really quite a rermarkable solution for a small startup business. There are no startup costs – you just sign up and pay for what you use.
So how do we use Amazon S3 for our business? First off we use it for file storage. If you have ever worked in any size business – you are likely familiar with “file servers” or “network drives” where a bunch of files are located that are accessible by authorized users in your company. We use Amazon S3 for that. It’s accessible anywhere – on any pc or mac – and has authentication and authorization roles so you can lock it down.
We also use Amazon S3 for all of our backups. We backup our WordPress sites to Amazon S3 regularly. Our Subversion (source control) repositories are automatically backed up to Amazon S3. And last, our PCs and Macs are backed up to Amazon S3. We are all taken care of – in “the cloud”.
Last we use Amazon S3 as a content delivery network. This CDN serves our images, videos, and podcasts to the websites we host. We do this for several reasons. Their Amazon CloudFront service:
“..gives businesses an easy way to distribute content to end users with low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments”
Well said. In addition to that Amazon CloudFront uses an “edge network” – distributed locations – for content delivery to ensure the best peformance. Think of this edge network like there are servers storing your multimedia content in Seattle, Chicago, and Boston. If I request your content here in Des Moines, IA it will grab the data from the Chicago server – because it’s the closest geographically.
If you have any questions about using Amazon S3 or CloudFront in your business, let us know!
