A while ago we got some questions from a customer and decided it was great content to share with the rest of you. So take a look and send us an email if there’s something else you’d like to know. We love answering your questions about online backup, and specifically, Minbu!

Q: Is there a limit on storage space?
A: There is no limit to the amount of storage you may use.

Q: Do you have off-site backup storage of your customer’s backups?  If so, can you explain how those are handled and where they are stored? Can you explain your backup/restore plan in the event of a disaster (natural or other)?
A: We do not have off site backups of backups. We have redundant storage in our server room and the server settings are backed up off site. If our systems were to go down it would be a limited time for us to do a full download of users data again because we split data up between servers.  Thus, allowing us to recover quickly in the case of failure.

We have subscribers across the country and on one other continent.  If there were to be a natural disaster that wiped just us out, we could be up and running and downloading data back to new servers in a day. We only host backup (not live) data. So as long as there wasn’t a natural disaster that hit both computers at the same time ( that would be a pretty big disaster) we  would have things running smoothly very quickly.

Our policy for a major unexpected service disruption is to immediately notify subscribers of the situation and our plan going forward.  We’ve had one instance of that where we had to move servers and needed users to log in to their account.

Q: Does Minbu have regularly schedule downtime?
A: No. The software we use is upgraded on the fly both on your computer as you connect and on our servers.  Any maintenance we do would hardly be noticed by you (most likely not at all).  If there’s a problem with your account specifically you’ll know it because we’ll be calling you to get you connecting again.

Our service was set up for people whose data is centric to their lives and they need someone to make sure they’re always be backing up.  That’s why we watch the data logs every day to ensure you’re connecting.  In essence, we’re doing individual account maintenance everyday with no downtime.

Q: I’m assuming that you thoroughly screen and background check support personnel, so if you could confirm this, that would be helpful.
A: This question is a new one.  I’m assuming it comes from a concern that someone could be poking around in your data. First, let me say that you are the only one who can get to your data. It’s encrypted before we ever get it and if one were to look on our servers they would see nothing but cryptic code. The only way to get your data is with a user name and password. Also, we have so much of it in different places that a person would have to know exactly what they were looking for if they could see the data. Which, they can’t. With that said, we do a background check with MCC and don’t hire convicted felons.

Hopefully I’ve answered your questions thoroughly.  If not, then feel free to call my direct line and I’ll be happy to answer more. My name is Dean and my number is 612.605.1231.