Review of MozyPro Online Backup Solution

Overview and History

MozyPro Backup is the property of the Decho Corporation which is a totally owned subsidiary of the EMC2 Corporation, a fortune 500 company. Decho was founded in 2005. They currently own head-quarters in Seattle, Washington with other offices in Pleasant Grove, Utah; London, England; Shanghai, China; Montreal, Canada; and Bangalore, India.
Mozy currently has over one million customers and over 50,000 businesses, preserving a total in excess  of 25 petabytes of files - that's twenty-five thousand terabytes or 25 million gigabytes!

Security Abilities

MozyPro is a totally secure online backup  package. All traffic to and from the Mozy servers is encrypted with 128bit SSL encryption which is the industry standard. Once on the servers your data is encrypted with either 448bit Blowfish technology or your own 256bit AES private key encryption. This is the best security commercially available today. As for actual security, the data centers deploy 24 hour on-site monitoring and security, state-of- the-art fire detection and suppression power distribution and seismic safeguards that can survive a 7.5 magnitude quake.

Backup Features

Mozy provides block level incremental online backups and can be organized to backup either on a set schedule or invisibly in the background. In our tests, it took less than thirty minutes to backup two gigabytes of data on a home 8mbps DSL line uploading and downloading other data. Also, because of the block level nature of Mozy's backup application, open or locked files can be backed up easily.
A progress indicator is accessible if you click on the icon in the system tray. When first setup Mozy Online Backup includes all the current user's profile files including documents, music, videos, etc. However, it is a easy task to add or remove folders and files to/from the backup job. The Home editions do not accept backup of network drives however, the Pro and Enterprise editions do. None of the  packages let backup of removable media.
The business editions - MozyPro and MozyEnterprise - permit online backup solutions for Exchange server, SQL server and LDAP directories such as Active Directory and Lotus Notes.

Restore Abilities

File restore is by request through the web portal, the desktop app or by right-clicking in a folder and selecting restore. When a restore is requested, the system packages all the files requested into a special file and notifies you by email when the restore is ready for restoring. File versioning is active on all backed up media, so you can choose to restore an older variation of any file you have backed up. Files can be restored to their initial location or to any location of your choosing.

Control and Analysis

Mozy Online Backup accommodates your needs by allowing you to control how much CPU and bandwidth are obtainable to the program. These can be easily oriented from the desktop application. Proxy servers are also supported and Mozy can be setup 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 when managing backups on PCs and laptops that may not even be in the same location. Multiple accounts can be setup as well as multiple devices. A more restricted 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 utilized commercially.
• The basic free account is limited to 2Gb of storage although this can be increased by allowing other people to become users. For every further signup you get an additional 250Mb of virtual space.
• There are no limits set on the size or type of individual files. 
• There are also no limits on the total 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 infinite devices and users but there is a cost for each device.
• 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 product. That being said, it does support sign-in, sign-out and multiple levels of security to an individual file level.

Synchronization

You can synchronize multiple devices with the central web portal.

Web 2.0 Integration

Mozy does not provide FaceBook or similar integration.

Customer Support

Mozy's customer support is commonsense: They supply great user guides, full FAQs and a knowledgebase. There is also a blog and plenty of testimonials and case studies available. Email support is available to all types of accounts, but, telephone support is only available to MozyPro and MozyEnterprise users and live chat is not usable to free users.

Usability

MozyHome is very effortless to use. You can go from signup to backup in less than 5 minutes and it really is a 'set it and forget it' procedure. MozyPro has a slightly harder learning curve but this is understandable since it provides much more features.

Closing comments

If you are trying to find a sure-fire, set-it-and-forget-it backup provider that does not cost too much, will grow or shrink to meet your situation and is a snap to change then Mozy Online Backup is your best solution. If you are trying to backup many gigabytes of files that changes on a frequent basis then there are different and cheaper solutions available.

Still not sure about Mozy? Check out this comparison table.