What is the best setup for building an offsite remote backup service
(software and needed gear).  This is for backing up servers from sites
like the former World Trade Center's occupant's data so it all resides
off-site in case of calamity.

I need more information about your question please...
what OS are you using ?

I'd use Linux for sure.  Maybe a BSD.

you could try writing a script or finding a ftp client that allows
synchronization with a remote ftp server.  a script could be placed in
a program to run it at specified times or some ftp clients allow you
to automate them so they will synchronize at specified times while thy
are running

Greetings spacemansteve,
Your objective can be broken into two steps.
1) establish a secure connection between the two machines you want to
replicate
2) Run software for the syncronization

LINUX will gives you a plethora of open source solutions for both 1)
and 2)

1) requires you to set up a VPN between your local and remote machine.
See the VPN howto for instructions on doing this under linux
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/VPN-HOWTO/

I do not suggest running any file transfer applications like ftp,
rsync, etc.. without them first being over a private and secure link.


2) depends on what services/software your local box is running.  IMAP?
MySQL? ORACLE? EXCHANGE? HTTP?  Confidential user data / backup data?
Different considerations need to be made depending on what you are
replicating.
The simplest case would be simple user data, or backup data, I suggest
under linux that you use rsync for the replication.
http://sunsite.dk/info/guides/rsync/rsync-mirroring02.html

Hope this helps,
Hrothgar  AOL IM:hrothgar3

Do look at http://www.atempo.com/US/index.php3

This will do the job. It will essentially mirror your server.

Babs.

Here is what I suggest:
Mirroring is a way to do the backup but the question was Backup right?

1. DO NOT use Tape - hard drives are so cheep it is quicker and easier
to do
hard disk to hard disk backups.
2. Unitrends http://www.unitrends.com makes a product Backup
Professional that will load up as a client on all OS's UNIX and even
Windows. It will do a backup over the net or LAN to hard disk(It makes
a nice TAR ball of your srver).
3. It will e-mail you each day when it is complete and has saved us a
ton of $$$ and downtime.

The most common practice is to take tapes to an off-site location that
has a fireproof safe.  Then all you need is tape drive at each
'on-site', and a stack of tapes.
Of course, with the cheapness of DVD-R these days, if your data
volumes will fit on a DVD, that's a good option.

If you really want what you're asking for, you're looking at serious
expense and consultancy to get the comms infrastructure in.

I have set up similar setups between Linux/UNIX servers.

Right now I am using rsync over ssh do to disk-to-disk incrementals:

http://www.mikerubel.org/computers/rsync_snapshots/

The backup is on a seperate server across the country.  The great
thing is that we back up over 600GB of data, but we only have a 512k
WAN link.  Rsync lets you do this because you never need to do a full
backup.  Your most recent backup is always the "full" backup, and only
changed files get sent.

Another more efficient solution, but still under development is
rdiff-backup.  This is similar to rsync-incrementals, but instead of
needing to take up the full space of a changed file if only one byte
in the file changes, it will only save diffs, or deltas, which is much
more efficient if you have large files that only change a few bytes,
but change often, such as mail spools.

http://rdiff-backup.stanford.edu/


Between these two setups, you should be able to do what you need to
do, with little cost.  With cygwin, you should be able to use this on
Windows, and it will run natively in just about any UNIX that gcc
supports.