We have a MozyPro reseller account and have been testing the service with around 10 customers. Our biggest requirement is to backup a SQL Server (2000/2005/2008/2008r2), personal/express, standard or enterprise; basically our customers have different SQL Server versions.
Requirements:
- Be able to automatically (i.e. no SQL Agent involved) backup SQL Server (any version/edition) >= 2000, while the database is in use.
- Have a reseller program where we can create users and configure the program for them, assign space (if needed) and bill them as we please.
- Support any OS that the above SQL Servers support (Windows XP —> Windows Server 2003/8 -> W7)
- Possibility to add other folders to the backup in case the user needs to backup an Images folder.
Truth is MozyPro (reseller) does all of the above, you can buy “licenses” and “gigabytes”. Then assign them to any “group” (which they recommend you create per customer).
So you can have 5 customers, which will be “5 Groups”. These “Groups” can have “MACHINES”. Each machine is a License (can be desktop -cheaper, less features- or server). Then to these licenses you assign Gigabytes of storage 1 by 1. (minimum 1gb).
Pros of MozyPro:
- Licencing is very easy to handle, you purchase “resources” (licenses/GBs) and you assign them to your customers (groups). If a customer leaves, you can transfer those “resources” to another customer or even return them to Mozy (and they won’t charge you the monthly fee anymore).
- Pricing is “ok” if you have a small user base, because you only pay “as you go”.
- The software is “ok”, kind of easy to set up, and you can have software profiles where you preconfigure the settings and save it as a profile. When setting up a customer you can assign a profile and the “client” will read those settings and be configured. That’s nice.
- The Control Panel for the reseller is also ok, you can do everything from there and it’s more or less intuitive once you learn to use it, they will also share screen with you to teach you if needed.
- When it works, it works fine, even restore process (which is a little bit weird). (see cons).
Cons of MozyPro:
- Customer Service is very “friendly” (at least with us), but we have three customers (out of our 10 customers pilot-test) that have been unable to backup the SQL Server for 180 days (that’s how much they have been trying to make it work). This means that 3 out of 10 have failed. These are three separate customers, with different computers in different places. Mozy Customer support have been unable to fix it (but have tried). They remotely connect there, install, touch, download logs, etc. Nothing works.
- Restore works by a request: I need to restore X,Y,Z. And the server “prepares” a zip file (sometimes multiples if the data is too big) which you can download. It will contain your information. This is ok, but can be a tedious process to put the data back if it’s a lot (paths are honored within the zip, so the C drive becomes a C folder, then a Program Files folder, etc.).
So Given the above, We’re looking for an alternative. if it would have been one customer of 10, one can say: ok, the customer has something weird on his server… but 3 is too much. I can’t imagine we have 100 customers where 30 are failing. This is critical backup medical information.
I’ve created a reseller program for JungleDisk, only to “see” what it was about, but I’m not convinced yet, I haven’t seen the program but they don’t mention SQL Backup in any product, and backing up a .BAK is not acceptable, because it requires SQL Agent or additional setup to create the BAK in the first place, we don’t want that.
What other experiences/alternatives can you share?