Overall Rating

BackupAgent uses a somewhat unique approach by only distributing its services through Service Providers, hosting companies and resellers, and not directly to the public.  Their product has proven itself successful in the Service Providers and  VARs’ market with a substantial and continuously growing base of satisfied partners. The company has been offering reliable backup solutions for its partners since 2003.  BackupAgent’s  solution available let’s partners manage the backups of their customers, mainly SOHO and SMBs. If you are looking to expand your product line offerings you should definitely take a glance at BackupAgent’s partner offerings. 

BackupAgent Features

-Private Label Solution – Sell the software completely private label, under your own company and service name.
-Application Plugins – Integration with many programs, also with Microsoft servers.
-MS Exchange Server Backup – Create secure and efficient backups of your MS Exchange Server.
-MS SQL Server Backup – Create secure and efficient backups of your MS SQL Server.
-MySQL Database Backup – Secure your MySQL Databases on Mac OS and Linux systems.
-Backups of Open Files – The software can make backups of opened and active files.
-Seed-load Technology – Very fast backup and restore of great amounts of data through use of Seed-load Technology.
-Multilingual – The software supports 8 languages.
-Multitenancy – A hierarchic structure in the platform enables indirect sales models.
-Trial Accounts – Partners can activate trial accounts to enable potential customers to try the software.
-Load Balancing – High availability of the online backup service by load balancing or clustering.
-Third-party Integration – The software connects seamlessly with the partner’s infrastructure. Integrates with control panels, provisioning systems, Active Directory, etc.
-WebAccess – Recover data without installing the Client Software with the help of a browser application.
-Pre & Post Scripts – Extend the flexibility by running scripts before and after backups.
-Command Line Interface – Configure and start backups with any third party software.

BackupAgent Security

-BackupAgent uses excellent security-techniques to ensure that the backup data is 100% private and not accessible to anyone but the end-user.
-Secure SSL connection
-All communication between the PC, laptop or server and the Backup Server takes place through a secure SSL (Secure Socket Layer) channel. This ensures the same security level as internet banking.
-Although all the backup data is transferred through a public network (internet), nobody can obtain any knowledge of the information exchanged.
-SOAP and Message Signing
-All communication with the backup server is conducted through a secured SOAP/XML interface. Each request is signed by a unique signature per user. This offers an extra security layer on top of SSL, which not only protects the transfer of the data, but also secures the total integrity between client and server processes.
-Secure encryption
-All the backup data is zipped first and encrypted using AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) 128 or 256 bit encryption technology. Once encrypted, the backup data is transferred to the Online Backup -Server. The encryption key is only known by the end-user, so nobody but the end-user can open the backup data on the backup server.
-The best encryption technology is used. The encryption algorithm used to encrypt the backup data is Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 128 or 256 bit. This standard, also known as Rijndael, is a block cipher that has been adopted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to be the selected encryption standard. It is the used encryption standard of the US government since 2000. It is subjected to frequent public reviews but no known cracks of this encryption algorithm have been reported.

So we gave BackupAgent a whirl using their 20gig Free Test Account, and overall we were very impressed with it ease of use and reliability.  It appears that BackupAgent has adopted the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) principal in their backup offerings, so you won’t see the bells and whistles of some of the other online backup services features such as Syncing/reversioning and file sharing (say of SugarSync which is pushing into the business market place). What you will see is performance and ease of use which for a reseller/partner may be more valuable.

We downloaded the admin client software and away we went. Installation and setup of the software was simple and took just a few moments including setting up a firing off our first backup. The WYSIWYG style setup walks you through initial backup setup, and allows the user to create their own encryption key for securing the data with a hint. Our initial backup went very smoothly, pushing up a full 20 gigs of backup data with no issues.  One thing that we should mention is that the backup took a couple days, which is somewhat common for that amount of data, and of course is affected by internet line speed and reliability.  Other than the time to backup data, the backup occurred easily and flawlessly.  After our backup we started tinkering around with the admin client.  Backing up your information with BackupAgent software is almost as simple as choosing the files and folders on your computer and clicking “Go”.  It is worthy to mention that BackupAgent does provide plugins for backing up servers, open files, MS Exchange and database backup for SQL Server and MySQL databases.  This gives BackupAgent honors for those looking for a reliable, and scalable business infrastructure backup solution.

So of course our final test is the beloved data restore.  Although we did not do a full restore, we chose to restore about 5 gigs of our 20 gig backup, and actually this was the best part of our testing.  Restore was as smooth as silk, and for the proportionate amount of data we backed up restore seemed to occur at least as fast as the backup.  No push to folder and download restore, but pick the folder where you want it on your computer and voila – your files are there (although you will have to wait a bit to see them), and this is the name of the game in internet backup.  Successful restore.  In addition, although we did not actually test this feature, BackupAgent allows for restore without a Desktop Client using a browser application.  Based on security specs provided above, data seems plenty secured, and don’t foresee any security related issues with BackupAgent. Even in the event of data loss, the data would be useless without you providing the recipient with your private Encryption key (don’t do that of course).

For those interested in offering this solution your clientele and/or the public, if you want pricing information you will have to contact the company directly.  Guessing they have multiple different packages available based on the type of partner you fall into. Technical support is available via Internet, email or telephone. If you are fortunate enough to work with BackupAgent as a backup solution for your clientele you can rest assured that the data is in good hands. No fancy bells, whistles, or eye candy here, but nice easy backup, high-end security and it just works.

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