Dan’s Drivelings

In response to a call for opinions on NAS devices by Dan Wilson, Oğuz Demirkapi and I exchanged a few tweets regarding RAID and backups and how we each use them to try to ensure we don’t experience any data loss. It’s hard to explain this type of setup in 140 character chunks, so I thought I’d do a quick post outlining my current setup and what I want to do to tweak it in the near future.

Our house is a total Mac household. I have a 17″ Macbook Pro, my wife has a black Mackbook, the twins each have a white Macbook and we have a Mac Mini that sits in a room in the basement and serves as a “server” for the house–iTunes and Calibre servers plus DVR functions with an Elgato EyeTV 250 Plus. The mini streams iTunes content to all the above-mentioned computers plus two AppleTV units.

For file storage, I have an original-model Drobo hooked to the Mac Mini. We store everything from files used in our business, the iTunes media library, the Calibre eBook library, the centralized iPhoto library and more on there.

Current Backup Components

1. Hourly backups: Each of our computers has Time Machine configured to do hourly backups to a 1TB Time Capsule
2. Nightly backups: I’ve installed the Mac client for the Mozy online backup service on the Mac Mini. Each night it backs up anything on the attached Drobo that has changed except for music and movie files. This ensures that our business files, photos and other files get backed up daily as they change. I originally had the movies and music set to back up there too, but it took entirely too long through the limited upload speed of my cable modem for large HD movies to get backed up
3. Monthly backups: I keep a Western Digital MyBook that has two 500GB hard drives (configured to be a total of 1TB) in a safety deposit box at our local bank. About once per month, we bring that drive home, sync all the data on the Drobo to it and return it to the safety deposit box. This ensures that there is at least a relatively recent copy of the media files stored somewhere outside my house in the event of a disaster

Holes in my setup
Eventually, I’d like to move the Time Machine backup targets to point to a partition on the Drobo. It has 4 drive bays that can each handle 4TB SATA drives (when those become available) so it potentially has the capacity to do everything it’s doing now plus store what we’re putting on the Time Capsule. Doing that would give me redundancy for the backups that Time Machine creates unlike using the single drive in the Time Capsule today.

Additionally, the 1TB MyBook drive is, at some point, going to be insufficient to mirror the contents of the Drobo. I’ve been thinking about what to do when that happens. I’m considering purchasing another Drobo unit, mirroring the files from my current Drobo onto it, and placing it on the network at my brother’s house (which is about 150 miles from me). I could then use CrashPlan to mirror any changes to that remote Drobo. That would let me remove the Mozy subscription while keeping a complete set of files outside the house.

I realize this is not the most comprehensive backup strategy known to man, but I think it balances automatic, hands-off backup with off-site redundant storage to recover in the event of a disaster.

I’m also sure there are other great ideas out there and I’d love to hear how you folks solve this problem for yourselves.

Every small business has issues with accounting and billing.  As Dan reported in an earlier blog post, we were in search of the “perfect” solution that included the ability to get data into the system from a variety of devices and covered time tracking, invoicing and accounting.  What we have found is the “perfect storm” of applications to meet those needs.
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As a small business, any business-related activity that keeps me from doing billable work costs me money.  Obviously there is a certain amount of those hours that you have to deal with.  The trick, in my mind, is to find ways to limit those hours so that you can get back to the business of making money–which brings me to the reason behind this post.

I’ve yet to find a good solution for doing distributed time tracking, invoicing, and accounting. Before we made the switch to the Mac platform nearly 2 years ago, we used Intuit’s Quickbooks Online product and that worked fairly well, though it did far more than we needed to do.  However, it’s an Internet Explorer only application because of the ActiveX controls that it uses. I know I could fire up a VM to use it, but that’s a real pain for me and my wife who does most of the bookkeeping for our business.

Last fall I bought the Mac version of Quickbooks and we’ve been using it this year.  While it works, it’s far too manual a process to get done what we want.  The invoice designer doesn’t suit me and, since I have the potential to be in any city in the country on any given week, having the data landlocked on my home network while I’m on the road is a real pain.

So, over the last few weeks I’ve been researching online offerings for managing time for me, my wife and my brother who sometimes sub-contracts with us when I get overloaded. I’ve found several really good point solutions for my needs but have yet to find one (or even more than one that integrate with one another) that just knocks my socks off.

Even though I build web applications for a living, I still like to have a desktop presence for some things so that influences what I think will work for our business.  My criteria for the “perfect” solution includes the ability to get data into the system from a variety of devices (OS X applications, web interfaces, iPhone, etc) because I regularly work in a completely disconnected mode while traveling. The holy grail of solutions would also include facilities to make sure that I never have to re-enter data that’s already captured somewhere else.

Some of the services that I’m experimenting with now and am seriously considering for use are:
FreshBooks – Time tracking and invoicing
Cashboard – Time tracking, invoicing, estimates and online payments
IAC-EZ – Online accounting for small businesses
Less Accounting – Online accounting for small businesses
Clarity Accounting - Online accounting for small businesses and professionals 

So, my question to you is, what solutions do you use to run your business so that you can focus on working in your business instead of having to become an accountant and/or administrative assistant?  Please leave a comment here so that others can benefit from your experiences.