We urgently need a way an automated way to backup the MyDocuments
folder of  five to ten laptops that travel around and connect to the
internet from various locations at different times. Ideally we are
looking for a small, maybe a shareware client application that will
install on each laptop that will run on the sytem tray or as a system
service, or in the background. And that will connect to one of our
webdav servers, and upload any files that have changed in the
MyDocuments folder since the last backup. These updates should happen
on a schedule, and if there is server software involved, that is okay
too.

We have been looking at a piece of software called remote backup
www.remote-backup.com  but its not working for us for two reasons:
1. The cost - its somewhere in the ballpark of $125/user. Plus the
email module which is about $200.
2. It doesn't have an option to email you if a particular remote
client hasn't had a successful backup in x amount of days. It will
only email all client activity, but we only need to know if a client
is not working.

What we really like about it:
1. It is brandable -- we can put our logo and name on the client software
2. It is doesn?t use ftp because we don't want to operate an ftp
server for security reasons.

What we are asking for is recommendations for other Windows programs
client server that will do what this thing does but without the two
limitations - so at a lower cost and with better alerting system.

One thing that has been recommended to us is writing an ftp script
that would run on each client, but we don't want do that because we
don't want the security vulnerability of running an ftp server.

Please send any links to commercial, shareware, or remote back-up
program reviews/comparisons.

Thanx in advnce

what security reasons are you having with ftp?
You could use secureftp ... sftp or secure copy program
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
but of course it requires a secure ftp server... a free one is
included in nearly all linux distributions.

I realize what I'm suggesting may be anethema to Windows users, but
the short answer is that it's relatively easy to set up a batch
program that runs as a cron job...

OTOH, if you already have webdav, you have drive letter access to the
server already, right? You can create an ntbackup job
(differential-overwrite or incremental-append) that runs on a schedule
from each of the workstations, and backs up to the repository. The
next thing is to have a program that can run through the directory and
determine the oldest files. That is something that can either be
batched for minimal cost, or you could find an application that can do
that.

xcopy is another program that can update only newer files. The
advantage to that is that the files are a live filesystem on the
webdav. The downside is that xcopy doesn't easily let you know the
most recent files it may have copied.

I think you will just need to use ntbackup, take a look at the ability
to report the oldest files in a directory(ies) and email the results
to you.

crythias-ga,

Thanks so much for your comments.  I must acknowledge that most of
these ideas will indeed solve our problem nicely, but we aren?t
technically proficient to execute any of them, or even troubleshoot
them when they have problem even if someone initially did them for us.

We spend a bunch of time playing with secure FTP, but found it took to
much time to setup on each of the laptops.  it was too complex for us.
 The server was one thing, that was a one time deal, but dealing with
installing it on each laptop was too complicated.

I am still looking for a shareware, or even a commercial app that
doesn?t have the disadvantages that we mentioned about that Remote
Backup Systems software (RBS).   Maybe we could swallow the expense
part, but the other part about it not being able to email us just when
failures happen, it a bit harder to swallow.

If RBS were a inexpensive shareware app, the email thing would be
acceptable, but for $125 a client, it is a big downside.  The email
alert limitation leaves use with just 2 options.

1. It means we have to email ourselves all the logs and then invest
our valuable time going through a bunch of logs to look for just
failures (By failures I include this scenario: someone leaves their
laptop off for 3 days and it therefore fails to backup).

2. We just have to give up the piece of mind that we would be notified
of a failure to back-up, and count on the user to be aware and alter
that backup happen.


So that leaves us still looking for ANY leads to a shareware, or even
a commercial app that will at least only have 1 of these 2
disadvantages (high cost, or lack of email failure alter), since BRS
has both.

thanx for you comment though, it was very good.

Thanks for your response. You really have three separate issues: 
1) backup
2) file transfer
3) notification

1) backup is easy: zip, xcopy, ntbackup. very very easy to make a
batch file to at least create the backup "unit" on demand. This can be
done even in an offline state.
2) file transfer. The link I gave above would work very nice. I'd use
puttygen to create a secure key pair, placing the public key on the
laptops, and the private key in the appropriate place on your ssh
server. This makes a secure traffic connection possible. I'd run
Pageant as a startup task, loading its public key automatically. Then,
I'd periodically try to run a batch file that tries to send the backup
"unit" to the SSH server via secureftp.

By the way, this is replicable and free and takes a minor bit of
reading to accomplish, but is not nearly as difficult as one might
think.

3) Notification: This is a difficult one. It's hard to determine a
negative. A program that does this either has to guess what's not
there or has to rely on failure notifications. There are (as I see it)
two major ways this works. Either the server pulls the data and/or
records a failure, or the laptop sends data and/or sends a failure.
The third option is that a database is created on the server. It has a
table that is populated with the laptops that will send backups. The
laptops may send files via a SSL connection to a web browser via an
automation script. This connection works with an HTML form to record a
timestamp in the database that can be queried periodically with a PHP
script.

Anyway, this last bit isn't exactly a walk in the park, but it's
accomplishable for free if you want to program it...

I know you are interested in one program that does "everything", but I
would like to know your thoughts on each part. I didn't get any
specific impression on what type of backup set (single file,
individual files) that you were aiming for. That is, what do you want
to *store*? A single .bkf or .zip or raw files?

This is a free comment. I am the only one on any search engine who
uses this pseudonym.

thanks for the greta info, but i still think it is too complicated for us.

try to go to www.softlink.com ask for amir yampel.
look at a product called FASTCopy