Please recommend some "FTP Backup Software" programs.

My "needs" are:

FTP
Encryption via TLS and/or SSL
Incremental
Copies whole folders and entire contents including sub-folders
Runs on a schedule that is configurable (i.e. time and day of the week) with no user intervention
Can be run manually
Runs on Windows XP, Server 2000 to current, Vista, 7


My "would likes" are:

Free
Runs under Linux and OS X
Has a file mask option to NOT copy certain types of file (e.g .exe)
Easy to use


Where I am now:

I currently use 2 different programs to do backups, "Karens Replicator" for non-FTP backups, which is fantastic and I would recomend it to anyone.

And Kobian backup, which I use for FTP backups, but is buggy, does not do encryption for free, and is no where near as easy to use (in some respects, in others its better). But my main grumble is that its lacks encryption and is buggy.

Ideally I would like to have one program to take over both tasks, but that is not essential, I am perfectly happy to carry on using Replicator, but I dont want to use Kobian any more.

Filezilla does everything that I want except Incremental backups (its not proper "backup" software).

I have now come to the conclusion that a small one-off cost per end user would be acceptable so long as the server end was also cheap and a one-off cost, as this could simply be passed on to the end user.


Where I want to be:

The small computer company I work for has not really offered remote backup solutions before (non-encrypted via buggy Kobian to a server of our own attached to a slow (relatively) connection. We want to be able to offer a proper solution, that is robust, problem free (haha), always available, and sellable to business customers.

We have looked at various options ranging from doing everything in-house, to totally outsourcing it. We have decided the best option would currently be to get some decent dedicated server hosting, and then setup "our remote server" with the necessary software to do that end of business, and remote access the administration from the office. That has already been planned (but not tested in practice yet, we will of course), but we dont know of any software that will do everything that we need at the customers end, let alone everything that we "would like" as well.

This is the current hurdle, please make some suggestions.


Andy

I think Duplicati does at least most of what you want (perhaps all, but I haven't tested everything that you want it to do) http://code.google.com/p/duplicati/

Wow that was a quick answer, thanks very much.

I will look into that software, looks OK on the surface, but no mention (after a very quick read) of it being "Incremental", which is a must when the data set is measured in gigabytes.


Andy

Is there any reason it has to be FTP?

You might also want to look at running an rsync daemon on the server, and have the Windows clients connect using Deltacopy over SSH - it only copies the file deltas during an incremental backup, which could be a big advantage if you're copying large data files over the net.

Thanks Nick, its useful to know that there are other ways of shunting data across the net, again this seems to be lacking encryption (not read everything yet).


Andy

Duplicati is incremental, only the changed parts of changed files get copied (it uses a slight tweak of Rsync so you only need access to a files on the other end, rather than needing an Rsync server)

You can use SSH tunnelling for security, should do the trick.

I have to admit it's not the simplest solution - I remember fiddling with it a while back and getting into a mess with the combination of rsync authentication and Linux file permissions on the server (I did get it to work in the end, but there were a lot of bad words along the way). If you're a Linux guru, or have one handy, you should have no problems.

To be honest though, whatever you use, I think providing your own in-house remote backup service is fraught with potential problems, particularly as you'll presumably need to provide some kind of guarantee against data loss - you might be better off just signing your clients up to something like Mozy or Carbonite and leaving them to it.


I haven't come across this before, looks a lot better than Deltacopy if it does what it says on the tin.

Duplicati does have some issues (I would rate its issues with locked files and only copying the main file stream to be the worst) -however most of the commercial (file based) backup software I have examined has had these two as well. It's probably worth looking at the issues tab to see if any of them would affect you though.

I've got Praetorian Guard and it's always worked fine for me. It is easy to use. I’ve done only full backups with it but I think it does incremental backups as well. You can set up a schedule for the folders, which you want to back up. If you haven’t decided on backup software you can check it

Sounds like an Italian sports car, no offense.
Given that no wonder it has issues, no offense again.

Just kidding.