MozyPro review

Going strong since 2005, Mozy is one of the longest-running cloud backup providers. And with good reason – it’s excellent value. The MozyPro business service will protect unlimited workstations, laptops, servers and popular business apps, with pricing based purely on the amount of raw cloud storage required.

The handy 2xProtect feature simultaneously backs up data to a local drive or network share for faster file restores, and now includes integration with the Mozy Sync service. See also: how to choose the right cloud backup for your business.

Security is tight: files are encrypted prior to backup using the default Blowfish 448, or you can manage this yourself using AES-256 encryption.

The MozyPro web portal gave us full access to our account, so the first job was to create client configurations. These define what features are available to users, and how the client software behaves. It also automatically secures the base file set for Windows and Mac systems, and much more besides.

We set backups to run if a client’s usage was idle for a specific amount of time, limited Mozy’s CPU usage, and configured how often throughout each day it could run. We assigned daily and weekly schedules – with bandwidth restrictions applied during work hours – and let some users run their own backups.

As users are created, an email is issued with a download link for the client software. After the user enters their email address and password, the client registers with the main portal and starts backing up using the assigned profile – it’s that simple.

The client sits in the system tray and provides a running tally on backup activities. More control is available via the Settings option, where authorised users can modify backup sets, use the File System tab to add more files, tweak their backup schedules, and enable bandwidth restrictions.

MozyPro used Microsoft’s VSS to secure our Exchange 2013 and SQL Server 2014 apps. With VSS support enabled in our server profile, all we had to do was select which databases we wanted copied from the local client.

The 2xProtect feature must be configured at the client end, since it isn’t referenced in the profiles. Data is stored natively, so we could use drag-and-drop restores from Windows Explorer, which proved to be speedy; a 690MB video clip recovery averaged 53MB/sec.

MozyPro first runs a full backup and then updates any changes in subsequent jobs. For large datasets, you can order a Data Shuttle removable device and courier this to Mozy for vault seeding, with 3.6TB for one server costing an extra £250.

For Exchange and SQL Server recovery, the VSS backup files are downloaded from the cloud. For this, you can use the 2xProtect local backup, but only if you want to restore the latest version. Item-level recovery isn’t supported, so you’re better off using Exchange 2013’s own, rather good, item-recovery features.

The myriad restore options make MozyPro a top choice if you want to let your users in on the act. For file restoration, we could use the Client Restore window, view our files from the Windows Explorer MozyPro Virtual Drive icon, access the context menu restore option or log in to the MozyPro web portal and restore all files with one click.

You can monitor cloud usage and view historical graphs of backup activity from the admin web portal. Selecting individual systems revealed detailed audits of all backup jobs, showing the number of files and megabytes transferred.

MozyPro earns its Recommended award for value for money and ease of use: its simplified deployment streamlines cloud backup immensely. Take note of the lack of Exchange item-level recovery, but for file and folder backup and restoration, it really doesn’t get any easier or more affordable than this.