Marketing offsite backup

[NBrady]

Hey guys,

I recently purchased a HP Proliant n40L file server ( the little tiny one), I have it loaded up with 5 hard drives totalling 10TB of space that I want to use as a data pool that my clients can upload to remotely on a scheduled, incremental basis.

I'm looking for advice on marketing it as well as what kind of software configuration to use.

I was originally thinking FreeNAS or UnRAID, but now I'm also considering windows home server 2011 with the bitlocker addin or maybe straight up ubuntu server...

Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys

[BDNTech]

First you'll need to figure out who your good prospects are. Then give them what they need in a BDR solution and market those features to them.
Regardless of you server os decision you will want to figure out what client software you will use to send the data to your servers and how your clients will restore their data? Will you be able to offer them SLA's for their RTO's?
Will it have open files or vss support? Will it be able to backup not only incrementally but also at the bit or block level? Will it be able to backup and restore in a reasonable amount of time to meet the recovery time objectives? Will the client interface have a restore capability at all? Will it have encrypting features? Will it be able to backup, pst? exchange? Active Directory? SharePoint?
How will you monitor their backups? Will you offer email support and notifications on backup status?
Businesses need a managed backup service how will you manage their backups? Answer these questions then put them in your marketing materials.

Hope this helps.