Your Questions About Business Online Backup

Small Business Backup Solution Suggestions?

I am looking for some ideas for cheap, easy to implement backup system for a small office consisting of 6 PC’s. I have decided I would like to implement a local, automatic backup over the LAN. I have considered going the way of NAS, perhaps with two medium sized hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration. With that I’m concerned over the complexity I would be getting into, the price of the setup, and the quality of the integrated backup software.

The alternative going through my head is to use those two medium sized hard drives, in conjunction with a couple of external enclosures, on the network. With that, I would need to find the right backup solution that would allow allow me to swap out the days hard drive to take home, without interrupting the scheduled backup (which would happen after hours).

After I’ve found the right local solution. I am considering taking it one step further by also backing up to an online service. I could use recommendations of the most reputable online–backup service, as well.

I would appreciate any and all ideas, set up pointers or suggestions. Thank you

Options for personal/home business on-line backup.?

I have personal data and sensitive business information on my computer. I have an external drive for backup, but I am also looking to backup certain fiiles online. I am in a hurricane sensitive state and feel I need more protection. I have had virus issues and I lost data recently and had to recreate it manually even though it was backed up. On an attempt to restore, the backup files were corrupted and not everything was transferred.

I am trying to start a business online, but I con’t know how to direct traffic to my website.?

My worst problem is that I have no capital to work with and
no credit or debit cards either. I need to know if there is a
way to get started with nothing to use for backup money?

What business idea should I pick?

Im 13. I want to start an online business over the summer. My goal is to eventually make six or more figures a year. I know that sounds crazy since im only 13, but its my ultimate goal. I have a few ideas for a business, but I’m not sure which ones are profitable, and which one I should do.

1. A website where users can submit original songs and other users can listen, rate, comment, share, and chat with other users. There will also be a page where users can keep track of their favorite songs, post info, and find new band members with the band member finder. I would make money from the site by selling ad space, and if the site gets really big, i could create a free and pro level membership (pro costs money). Pro members would get extra features. The problem is, since i have no coding or programming experience, I would have to hire a web design firm. A site like this, though, could cost tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, which I don’t have! My other options are hire a coder/designer/programmer from elance for a nice price, or hire my cousin who is at RIT for web design and programming. I think this idea could be profitable. There is not really competition execpt for www.purevolume.com I like this idea a lot!

2. A website where I would sell musical instruments. I would buy the instruments from a wholesale/dropship company and when i get an order, i give the order to the company who will send the item to the customer. I would buy them wholesale and sell them for profit. I, however, think this business is bad since i would be competing with guitar center, sam ash, www.musiciansfriend.com, amazon, ebay, and more.

3. There is a website called www.remote-backup.com. They provide people options to start their own business providing online backup services. They sell you a license to sell their software for $750 and you re sell the software on your site. You could charge a customer $25 a month for 10 gb of storage, and you would make some profit. Many people lose data everyday from viruses, hard drive crashes, theft, etc. This business would provide a solution. But, some huge competitors are mozy and snapfish and verizon’s new storage service. This could end up costing me 750 for nothing in return.

4. A website where a user can start/create a debate on two topics such as mcdonalds vs burger king. Other users can join the debate by posting arguments under the side they think is better. Example, if i like mcdonalds better then burger king, i post my reasons under the mcdonalds column for why i think it is better. This site could be usefull for many people such as shoppers who want to know what brand they should buy. I would sell ad space for this site.

5. I was reading Small Business Opportunities SBO Magazine, and they had a huge article on a new business opportunity. It is a company called www.resellerdynamics.com. They have a software that lets customers create their own website. They custom brand the software and give you liscense to resell the software for only $999. Once you pay you get a resellers liscense to sell the software, a custom website/hostin/and domain to promote the software to potential customers. You could charge $30 a month for the software and resllerdynamics only takes $10 for server stuff. thats $20 profit a month per customer. If you have 400 customers paying you $20 bucks a month, thats around $100,000 a year! This company is not a scam or pyramid scheme since I called the local BBB Better Business Beraue of the location, and they say the company has good reputations. I like this idea a lot since small business are looking for cheap ways to get a nice website up and running.

6. This last idea is one of my favorites. It would be a website/marketplace where people could buy/trade/sell/auction websites. The user could post a picture of the website, post info, and chose to either sell the site for a flat price, or start an auction for the site by placing a base price. There are already some sites that do this, but they are not that good function wise. www.sitepoint.com does have a feature where you could buy and sell websites, but that is not their main focus. I would make money from selling ad space, and charging the poster a small fee once a sale has been completed. I would hire my cousin to create this site, since it would not be hard to create since many auction and marketplace scripts are out their.

Which ideas do you think are most profitable? Which idea should I do? I love the music sharing site, website reseller, and the website marketplace idea (which is my favorite).

Even if you think none of these are profitable, what would you pick if you had to choose?

Thanks!

What is the best way to do an Online backup of MS-Exchange?

I work for a small business that is interested in backing up their Exchange server to somewhere off-site. I recently configured our SQL databases to backup to Amazon’s S3, and was hoping to arrive at a similar solution for Exchange. The major problem however, is that our backup software (Backup Exec) I believe does only full backups, which would be too much data to upload to Online Storage. My question is:

Is there a way with Microsoft’s built-In NTBackup (or with Backup Exec) to do an incremental or differential backup of the MS-Exchange database? And, if not, is there a third-party software solution that does this efficiently?

On a Side-note, I was wondering if anyone knew how Mozy-Pro worked. It advertises that it can automatically back up Exchange, but it is simply a different Front-End for S3, and I’m not sure if there’s any difference in how it does the actual back-ups (full / transactional / differential?) .