Dedicated Server Providers
SoftLayer.com’s Backup Features
SoftLayer.com is a relatively young server provider as of writing this, only being 2-3 years old compared to the likes of RackSpace and ThePlanet which seem to have just always been around. Although, age is no concern when looking at their services, features, and reliability. SoftLayer.com offers webmasters a number of backup features and are very tight on security which is a very good thing for the prevention of data loss.
Currently SoftLayer.com is where all my websites are hosted (including this one) namely because of the backup features they offered. Here’s a quick overview of what they offer in terms of backing up data:
RAID 1, 5, and 10 configurations
Most dedicated server providers will allow you to set up RAID, and it’s definitely a very useful and recommended feature. With RAID your hard drive can be mirrored so nothing will be lost in case of a hard drive failure, and your site will continue to run without any downtime.
If you’re not using RAID then you’re already behind. It’s not too expensive and after all the horror stories of hard drive failures I’m never going back to non-RAID again.
eVault
Another great feature that I haven’t seen at the other major server providers is access to eVault storage.
“EVault features a simple, Windows-based or web-based graphical user interface to initiate all backups and restores, and to configure all backup and automation options. Administrators can set backups to follow an hourly, daily, weekly, or custom schedule, and to target full systems, specific directories, or even individual files. Individual software agents are available that enable EVault to target more specific data in Exchange, SQLServer, Sharepoint, MSClusters, and Oracle servers.”
Seriously, what could be better? If that doesn’t give you peace of mind I don’t think anything will. Granted, I wouldn’t want eVault to be my only backing up method, but it’s definitely a great addition that I currently utilize on this server. It’s only $20 p/month for 10GB of storage, which is a very small amount for what you get.
I have to admit I had a slight difficulty getting eVault setup, as you need to connect to Soft Layer’s Virtual Private Network which was giving me authentication issues. However, once that was sorted it was just a matter of launching an online application and following the steps.
iSCSI
Not as automated as eVault, and not offsite (but not located in your server either, just another part of the datacenter), iSCSI offers a lower-cost alternative to eVault at the start, although when you get to the 1000GB stage it’s significantly more expensive.
“iSCSI offers a low-cost alternative to traditional fiber-channel storage solutions. It allows access to enterprise-grade Storage Area Network (SAN) storage over Ethernet, and is easily provisioned, highly scalable (it can be expanded on-demand without human intervention), and outperforms internal disks.”
FTP/NAS Storage
The most basic, and therefore cheapest form of backup storage. FTP/NAS storage is very useful to those who use control panels such as WHM & cPanel. You could set up WHM’s automatic backup feature and then just set it and forget it. It’s probably not the best form of backup to use by itself, but for it’s minimal cost it’s a great backup to the other backup solutions.
“File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and Network Attached Storage (NAS) provide fast, reliable and cost-effective storage for maximum data retention and storage.”
Security Features
Prevention is always better than the cure, which is why I love SoftLayer’s security features. Everything about your servers is located in one easy-to-use control panel. This could be seen as a security risk, but in fact it works quite well as SoftLayer.com requires you to renew your password quite often, and they have many rules of what a password may be making them impossible to guess. Instead of writing down all your servers passwords (which is just dumb to be honest) you can just focus on remembering this singular one and then gain access to all your others in the control panel. Another nice little touch is you’re required to answer one of those “What is your mothers maiden name?” questions every time at login, adding an extra layer of security.
Overall? SoftLayer.com is a great choice for those needing a dedicated server with great backup features.