Backing up Google Apps™
Post date: 26-Mar-2012 16:47:49
Do you backup your Google Apps™, if not maybe this is something you should consider?
I would guess most people move to Google Apps initially for the benefits they gain for email, it is a highly reliable and cost effective solution with availability at 99.9% so you may think your data safe.
This is where you could be wrong, ask yourself what would happen if:
- You accidentally deleted a document or folder in Google docs, or deleted and email and then emptied you bin
- A malicious employee decides to delete your data
- A employee leaves so you delete their account only to suddenly realize you have deleted all the data they owned.
- Some one hijacks your account
Are you worried now?
Data is safe in Google, safe from virtually any disaster with multiple copies of your data across multiple data centers and regions, however when you delete it and empty that bin, it is really deleted and gone for good.
This is where a several solutions providers are providing backup tools for Google Apps, these can found in the Google Apps "Market Place" , they have filled what they perceive as a gap in the market.
For the price it is worth checking out some of these solution, from as little as $2.50 per user, you can get your, email, documents, contacts, calendar and even Google sites backed up to another cloud service provider. Some solutions will allow you to backup data to your on-site server.
Personally I would say for medium to small businesses a monthly fee per user would be the best option, however if you have several thousand accounts to backup then maybe you would be better backing up to your local server.
I take the "belt and braces" approach and backup my data safe in the knowledge if something did go wrong I would still be able to restore it. The following products worth look, Spanning Backup, Backupify and SysCloudSoft.
Chris Barrow
Aragorn Consulting - Google Apps™ Authorized Reseller