Rekall Backup Vs. Carbonite & Mozy: Firm Data Protection
A situation I find myself in with clients is comparing Rekall Backup to Carbonite & Mozy. If your interested in learning more about backing up and securing your firm data, give a listen to chapter two of our audiobook, “The Lawyers Guide to Technology.” Truthfully, there is no comparison, it is like comparing a broom to a vacuum cleaner.
Trollying
All these backup providers will backup your data, but the two in question will not backup your Exchange email store or your SQL database NATIVELY. For those who don’t know what SQL is, it’s the back-end database for law firm software like Amicus Attorney & PClaw, just to name a few. They make you backup your exchange mailboxes to a local drive on your server and then trolly the backup to cloud. In the end, you have 3 pieces of software performing 1 backup.
Same goes with SQL, they make SQL perform the backup and then they take that backup and trolly it to the cloud. This form of backup makes the end user have to purchase third party software to perform the original backups. In the end, you have 3 pieces of software performing 1 backup. If the backup is unsuccessful, guess what, your I.T. has to troubleshoot 3 pieces of software to fix the problem. It’s just not efficient.
Revisions
A file revision is considered any changes to a file that a user makes. Carbonite & Mozy support a maximum of only 3 months backup and 12 revisions per file. Rekall Backup has the option to backup an unlimited version history of each and Backup has the option to backup an unlimited version history of each and every file on your server.
every file on your server, and there is no limit on backup. Lets say you type up a document and save it. Lets also say that over a period of 2 weeks, 50 people alter that document once. With Rekall Backup, you will have 14 revisions of that file, each revision being the last change before the backup job was executed. You also have the option for continuous backup which means that all changes will be backed up on the fly as you save. In reference to the previous example you would have 50 revisions rather than 14.
For those of you who have Exchange mail, both will perform a successful backup, but that depends on your definition of successful. With Rekall, specific portions of a mailbox can be restored – calendar items, tasks, or messages.
Carbonite & Mozy only backup the entire mail store, every mailbox in one LARGE file, this is because they rely on Exchange to do the heavy lifting of the backup, Carbonite & Mozy simply trolly that file to the cloud. If a user needed a portion of his mailbox or just a few messages, there would be no other option but to download this tremendous file, which would take hours to restore the data. Rekall backup not only backs up the information store, but it backs up on a mailbox level. Portions of a mailbox can be restored – calendar items, tasks, or messages within minutes. This form of backup saves restoration time and gets your firm users all the info that they need, quickly.
Vacuum or Broom?
When deciding which backup to go with for your firm, understand that all backup companies will in fact backup your data. Don’t get sucked in by cheap pricing, there’s a reason it’s cheap.
The question is in the details and restoration. Everyone thinks its wonderful that Carbonite & Mozy will backup their data at a very cheap rate, but what about when you need to restore data in a business environment? These solutions are not for businesses with email servers or SQL databases, or servers for that matter.  The Carbonite & Mozy solution is for the home & home-office user in my opinion. Don’t get sucked in by cheap pricing, there’s a reason it’s cheap.
