Even with Windows Home Server storing and protecting my data and backing up my PC’s, there is still a need for an online backup solution. The risk of disk failures and accidental file deletion makes backup up your valuable data a must. After trying a few other online backup solutions, with varying degrees of success, I found CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server. With CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server you are able to backup your Windows Home Server data to Amazon S3, Azure, Mezeo, Dunkel, and Walrus. This provides a wonderful data backup and restore solution designed to leverage many of the best online storage provider.
CloudBerry Online Backup Features
- Easy Add-on installation and Setup
- Integrates with WHS Console
- Secure online storage (Amazon S3, Azure, Mezeo, Dunkel, and Walrus)
- Hourly and Daily Scheduling capabilities
- Email Notification (Success or Failure)
- Data encryption and Compression
- Data versioning and Purging
- Restore files from previous versions or dates.
Install and Setup
Installation is easy, it installs like any other Windows Home Server Add-on and works seamlessly with Windows Home Server Console interface.
Configure Backups
Configuring your backup plan is easy, first thing is to choose your cloud storage provider. I debated between Azure and Amazon S3, but eventually went with Amazon S3 since it had the more understandable pricing plan.
By default CloudBerry Backup for Windows Home Server detects your Windows Home Server shares, making for easy selection of your most valuable data. Although you also have the option to backup based off physical drive paths and even network shares. With all these options it makes it easy to choose what you want to backup, no matter where it is on your server or network. You can also add excludes and many other filters to the limit what you are backing up.
Other great options are encryption, compression, and the ability to use S3’s Reduced Redundancy Storage(Money Saver). Next you have many options for versioning and purging files that are deleted locally, purge old versions and setting version limits.
Next is Scheduling and notification. Pretty straight forward, you can schedule backups to run every x minutes, x hours, or recurring. You can then setup email notification for either failures or successful backups.
Backups and Logs
After a backup you will get an email detailing what was backed up and if there where any errors you can easily view the logs on the Windows Home Server console interface to find out about the problem. You can also browse the file that have been upload to the cloud.
Restores
Restoring files is just as easy as backing them up, a simple restore wizard allows you to choose what to restore and where you want to restore it to, This makes recovery plan simple and reliable.
Conclusion
After setting up and using CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server for more than 2 weeks I am much more confident that my valuable data is safe and secure. CloudBerry has put together a great service and product with quality and reliability at the top of the list. I look forward to future versions of CloudBerry Online Backup for Windows Home Server when the next version of Windows Home Server is released.