Review of MozyPro Online Backup Solution

Overview and History
Mozy Backup is the property of the Decho Corporation which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the EMC2 Corporation, a fortune 500 company. Decho was founded in 2005. They currently have head-quarters in Seattle, Washington with offices in Pleasant Grove, Utah; London, England; Shanghai, China; Montreal, Canada; and Bangalore, India.

Mozy currently has over 1 million customers and over 50,000 business backing up a total in excess of  25 petabytes of data – that's 25,000 terabytes or 25 million gigabytes!

Feature Set
Security
Mozy is a very secure online backup solution. All traffic to and from the Mozy servers is encrypted with 128bit SSL encryption which is industry standard. Once on the servers your data is encrypted with either 448bit Blowfish technology or your own 256bit AES private key encryption. There is currently nothing better than this outside the military.

As for physical security, the data centers have 24/7/365 on-site monitoring and security, state-of-the-art fire detection and suppression systems, redundant power distribution and seismic safeguards that can withstand a 7.5 magnitude earthquake.
Mozy is also fully HIPAA compliant.

Backup Features
Mozy provides block level incremental online backups and can be configured to backup either on a set schedule or continually in the background. In our tests, it took under 30 minutes to backup 2Gb of data on a domestic 8mbps DSL line while uploading and downloading other data. Also, because of the block level nature of Mozy's backup technology, open or locked files can be backed up easily.

A progress indicator is available if you click on the icon in the system tray. By default Mozy Online Backup will backup all the current user's profile files such as documents, music, videos, etc. however, it is a simple task to add or remove folders and files to/from the backup sets. 

The Home editions do not allow backup of network drives but the Pro and Enterprise editions do. None of the versions allow backup of removable media.

The business editions – MozyPro and MozyEnterprise – allow online backup solutions for Exchange server, SQL server and LDAP directories such as Active Directory and Lotus Notes.

Restore Features
File restore is by request through the web portal, the desktop app or by right-clicking in a folder and selecting restore. Once a restore is requested, Mozy packages all the files requested into a zip file and emails you when they are ready for restoring. File versioning is setup on all backed up media, so you can choose to restore a previous version of any file you have backed up. Files can be restored to their original location or to any location of your choice.

Mozy is not a Disaster Recovery product and does not allow you to backup or restore whole machines.

Control and Analysis
Mozy Online Backup fits in with your needs by allowing you to control how much CPU and bandwidth are available to the program. These can be easily adjusted from the desktop application. Proxy servers are also supported and Mozy can be configured to use these via the desktop application.

All activity that Mozy carries out is logged and can be examined either from the desktop application or via the web portal.

Interface
MozyPro provides a great deal of information and allows centralized configuration and logging which is ideal for IT Administrators trying to manage backups on PCs and laptops that may not even be in the office. Multiple accounts can be setup as well as multiple devices. A more limited interface is provided with MozyHome.

Device Support
Currently Mozy Online Backup only supports backup of MAC and PC clients. In addition MozyPro backs up MAC And PC servers.

Limitations
MozyHome cannot be used commercially. The basic free account is limited to 2Gb of storage although this can be increased by getting other people to sign up. For every additional signup you get an extra 250Mb of storage. There are no limits set on the size or type of individual files. There are also no limits on the amount of data backed up or restored.

Mozy free allows backup of 2 devices under 1 user account; MozyHome allows upto 5 devices but each additional device will cost $4.95 per month per device. Both MozyPro and MozyEnterprise allow unlimited devices and users but there is a charge for each device (see pricing).

File retention – the amount of time a file remains available for restore after it has been 'deleted' - is 30 days for all account types.

File Sharing and Collaboration 
Mozy is not a file sharing or collaboration tool. It is a backup system. That being said, it does support file sign-in, sign-out and multiple levels of security down to an individual file level.

Synchronization 
You can synchronize multiple devices and the web portal.

Web 2.0 Integration 
Mozy does not provide social networking integration.

Customer Support 
Mozy's customer support is reasonable: They provide excellent user guides, detailed FAQs and a knowledge base. There is also a blog and lots of testimonials and case studies available. Email support is available to all types of accounts, however, telephone support is only available to MozyPro and MozyEnterprise users and live chat is not available to free users.

Ease Of Use
MozyHome is very easy to use. You can go from signup to backup in under 5 minutes and it really is a 'set it and forget it' system. MozyPro has a slightly larger learning curve but this is reasonable since it provides many more features.

Conclusion 
If you are looking for a reliable, set-it-and-forget-it solution that does not cost the earth, can expand or contract to meet your needs and is a breeze to setup and use then Mozy Online Backup is your ideal solution. If you are looking to backup Terabytes of data that changes on a regular basis then there are better and cheaper solutions available. 

If you would like to see a comparison chart of Mozy and other leading Online Backup Providers then check out this site: http://onlinestorage.wolfdenreviews.com
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Stephen McGovern
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