Do you use GMail, Google Docs, Dropbox, Facebook, CrashPlan or iCloud? If so, then you use cloud computing. It’s not essential that you have an in-depth understanding of cloud computing, but here’s a brief overview.

Cloud Computing is often misused as a synonym for the Internet itself.  This is an incorrect use of the term. However, the term was inspired by the common use of a picture of a cloud to represent the complex infrastructure of the Internet in diagrams. Consequently, this incorrect use is somewhat understandable.

Broadly, cloud computing refers to computing resources that are offered as a service rather then a product. More specifically, these cloud computing services also need to meet certain characteristics including wide access, measured service, as well as pooling of storage space and computing horsepower.

Let me illustrate this with an example. In the past, if you wanted to use a word processor you would typically buy a product, like Microsoft Word, and install it on your Mac. In a cloud computing world you might, instead, sign up for a free (or paid) service, like Google Docs, and use its word processor. Google Docs is broadly available and behind the scenes Google’s system can bring more computers online to handle surges in customer use of  the service.

Cloud computing has become possible because it’s cost-effective for companies to build huge data centers where computing and software can be provided remotely at massive scale and rented out, like a utility service. Other factors include the lower prices of computers and smartphones and the growing pervasiveness of fast Internet connections.

For those interested in a more in-depth description and definition of cloud computer I direct you to this excellent Tidbits article on cloud computing. It covers the essential characteristics, service models, and deployment models for cloud computing in more detail. With this basic understanding of cloud computing, we’re ready to look at Apple’s iCloud service. We’ll address the question, What is iCloud? Look for this in a future Tech Tip.

Here are instructions on how to restore one or more files from your CrashPlan online backup archive. The instructions work for both CrashPlan and CrashPlan Pro. In my opinion, an untested backup system is next to useless. Only by testing it do you know for sure that your backup system is working properly. By testing it, you also learn how to restore a file, which will enable you to be a bit more calm in the event of an actual disaster.

If you’re a visual learner, you might like to watch my video demonstration of how to preform a restore from CrashPlan.

• Open the CrashPlan (or CrashPlan Pro) application by clicking on its icon on your Dock or in your Applications folder.
• On the left-hand side you’ll see five sections. Click on Restore.
• You’ll see the CrashPlan Central Destination listed at the top, as well as the time of the most recent backup. If you want to restore from a backup other than the most recent backup, click the words “most recent” which appear at the bottom of the window. From the calendar that appears, select a previous date and time then click “Ok.”
• Next, select the files or folders you want to restore by inserting a checkmark in the checkbox to the left of the file’s name. You can either use the search field to locate your file or you can click the arrows to the left of folder names to see the contents of the folder. Using these arrows, you can navigate down several layers of folders to locate the files or folders that you want to see.
• The files will be restored to the Desktop by default. If you prefer, you can click on the word “Desktop” near the bottom of the window to select another location.
• Finally, click the “Restore” button.
• “Restore Status” information will be listed at the bottom of the CrashPlan window. Depending upon how many Kilobytes of data you select, it can take a while for CrashPlan to retrieve the files and send them to your computer. When the restoration is complete the status message will list the time at which that the files were restored to the destination on your Mac.

It’s also possible to restore files from CrashPlan’s web site. This option could be useful if your laptop was stolen or if you’re traveling without your laptop, but need a file. Restoring files from the CrashPlan web site limits you to a maximum of 500 MB.

Update January 2012: CrashPlan no longer offers the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service. This has been supplanted by CrashPlanPro. This is a great development since CrashPlan Pro is much easier to setup and use. Please ignore the old tech tip below.

In this Tech Tip article, I’ll tell you how to setup CrashPlan’s Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service to perform automated, off-site versioned backups. I use this service to backup my work laptop. In my previous Tech Tip on setting up a comprehensive backup system, I mention how CrashPlan can be a nice supplement to backing up your Mac to an external hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner since CrashPlan’s backup data can be stored off-site on CrashPlan’s servers. Thus, it can provide automated, off-site backups of your business data.

In another recent Tech Tip I talk about how to use CrashPlan+ to backup personal data so if you’re not backing up business data you’ll probably prefer to sign-up for the less-expensive CrashPlan+ service which offers the same set of features. That article includes definitions of CrashPlan, CrashPlan+ and CrashPlan Central so if you’re not familiar with the differences between these terms please read this part of the article now.

One important detail to know is that CrashPlan’s does not mention this Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service by name and barely mentions that a hosted service is available. In fact, I was confused after reading the CrashPlan web site and trying to understand the proper way to use CrashPlan+ to backup business data. I only learned about the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service by exchanging emails with Code42′s tech support team. I was informed that CrashPlan will be revising their web site to offer a better explanation of the range of services that they offer. In the meantime, here’s my abbreviated explanation.

CrashPlan, the application, can be used to backup either personal or business data to local hard drives, hard drives connected to your friend’s computer at their home or office, or hard drives connected to other computers on your own network. However, neither CrashPlan nor CrashPlan+ allow you to backup business data to CrashPlan Central, Code42′s servers kept in a secure data center. I value having a reliable, redundant backup system and I want my data to be secure so I really like the idea of storing my backup data on the CrashPlan Central servers. So, if you’re a business owner and you want to backup your business data to the CrashPlan Central servers then you need to sign up for either CrashPlan Pro or the Hosted Pro Client Subscription Service (contact info listed below). CrashPlan Pro is advertised as supporting 10-10,000 computers, but technically it could be used for any number of business computers. It just isn’t cost-effective until you have about 10 computers. It seems that Code42 setup their Hosted Pro Client Subscription Service as a bit of an after thought to plug the gap in their service offerings and to give business owners with 1-5 computers a way to more affordably store their data on the CrashPlan Central servers.

If the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service is a good fit for your small business then here’s some guidance on how to set it up.

Contact Code42′s sales team at sales@crashplanpro.com and ask them about the Pro Hosted Client Subscription Service.

Fill-in and return the Pro Hosted Order form that is sent to you by the sales team. Read the pricing examples that I provide at the bottom of this article.

You’ll be notified of your login information once your account has been setup.

Download and install the CrashPlan Pro application. It works on PowerPC and Intel-based Macs running OS X 10.4.11 or higher.

Open CrashPlan Pro. When you’re prompted to login do so using the account information you were given.

On the left-hand side click on the Backup button. Look at the section labeled “File to  Back Up”. By default it’s set to backup your Home folder. This folder is the default location for all of your music, pictures, documents, local email messages and files on your Desktop. This is typically what I recommend you back up. However, if you want to make changes to add or remove folders click the button which should be labeled Change or Change File Section.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup then again click on Backup on the left-hand side. Then, in the Backup Destinations section locate “CrashPlan Central” and click the Start Backup button. The backup will start. That’s it. You’re up and running!

Remember this initial back up could take days or weeks to complete depending upon how much data you’ve selected and the speed of your Internet connection. Until this initial backup is complete you don’t have much protection. So, I’ll reiterate that I think CrashPlan is a nice supplemental backup to local backups performed by Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan offers some redundant protection and off-site protection which is very important to have if you only backup to one hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan is also very useful if you travel and take your laptop with you since CrashPlan will run anytime your Mac has an Internet connection.

You can quit the CrashPlan application and the backups will continue since CrashPlan is made up of two parts. There is the CrashPlan application which you use to configure the backups. The other part is the CrashPlan Engine, which runs quietly, unseen, in the back-ground. CrashPlan’s Engine automatically adjusts how much of your computer’s processing power and your network’s capacity it uses based on whether or not you’re using your computer. You can view and adjust these values in the Settings section of CrashPlan. Also in Settings you can adjust how long versions of files are retained and your can setup files or folders to exclude from your backup data using file names or regular expressions. You can also adjust the frequency and types of email notifications which you receive.
By default, CrashPlan will send you email notices when it hasn’t been able to backup your Mac in XX days and it’ll also send you a weekly summary of when the last backup occurred. You can change these email notification schedules in the Settings section.

As with any backup application. I recommend that you perform test file restorations regularly to ensure that the backup system is working properly and so that you’re comfortable performing restores so you can do it with confidence with disaster strikes.

On the left-hand side click on the Backup button. Look at the section labeled “File to  Back Up”. By default it’s set to backup your Home folder. This folder is the default location for all of your music, pictures, documents, local email messages and files on your Desktop. This is typically what I recommend you back up. However, if you want to make changes to add or remove folders click the button which should be labeled Change or Change File Section.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup then again click on Backup on the left-hand side and click the Start Backup button. The backup will start. That’s it. You’re up and running!

Remember this initial back up could take days or weeks to complete depending upon how much data you’ve selected and the speed of your Internet connection. Until this initial backup is complete you don’t have much protection. So, I’ll reiterate that I think CrashPlan Pro is a nice supplemental backup to local backups performed by Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan Pro offers some redundant protection and off-site protection which is very important to have if you only backup to one hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan Pro is also very useful if you travel and take your laptop with you since CrashPlan Pro will run anytime your Mac has an Internet connection.

You can quit the CrashPlan Pro application and the backups will continue since CrashPlan Pro is made up of two parts. There is the CrashPlan Pro application which you use to configure the backups. The other part is the CrashPlan Engine, which runs quietly, unseen, in the back-ground. CrashPlan’s Engine automatically adjusts how much of your computer’s processing power and your network’s capacity it uses based on whether or not you’re using your computer. You can view and adjust these values in the Settings section of CrashPlan Pro. Also in Settings you can adjust how long versions of files are retained and your can setup files or folders to exclude from your backup data using file names or regular expressions. You can also adjust the frequency and types of email notifications which you receive.

By default, CrashPlan Pro will send you email notices when it hasn’t been able to backup your Mac in XX days and it’ll also send you a weekly summary of when the last backup occurred. You can change these email notification schedules in the Settings section.

As with any backup application. I recommend that you perform test file restorations regularly to ensure that the backup system is working properly and so that you’re comfortable performing restores so you can do it with confidence with disaster strikes.

Pricing Example – As of the November 2010 the cost is $5/computer/month plus 30 cents per gigabyte per month with a minimum of 50 GB. Thus, for one computer the cost would be $20/month ($5 for the computer and $15 for upto 50 GB of storage).

The cost for 4 computers would be a minimum of $35/month ($20 for 4 computers and $15 for upto 50 GB of storage). $35/month x 12 mns = $420 per year each year.

Here’s a cost example in case you need more then 50 GB of storage space.

4 computers = $20/month

initial 50 GB of storage space = $15/month

additional 20 GB of storage space = $6/month

Total is $20 + $15 + $6 = $41/month    12 months x $41 = $492/year

Update Jan 2011: In December 2010, CrashPlan released CrashPlan version 3 which added new features like the ability to backup different files to different destinations. More importantly, it rolled the CrashPlan+ features of backups running every 15 minutes and storing multiple versions of files into the standard CrashPlan application. Thus, these two features are now standard for all users of CrashPlan.

Update March 2013: Pricing and product structure updates from CrashPlan are now correct in this article.

In my Tech Tip on how to setup a comprehensive backup system I mention that CrashPlan can be a nice supplement to an external hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner for backing up your Mac since CrashPlan’s backup data can be stored off-site on CrashPlan’s servers. Thus, it can provide automated, off-site backups of your personal data. In this article, I provide instructions on how to setup CrashPlan to perform automated, off-site, versioned backups.

I need to start by introducing and defining a few terms.

CrashPlan is the name of a backup application made by Code42 Software. It’s free for personal use and can be used to backup data to a locally connected hard drive, to another computer in your home or to another computer at your friend’s home. CrashPlan+ comes in three sizes: 10GB, Unlimited and Family Unlimited. It allows off-site backup to the CrashPlan Central servers in addition to other computers. With CrashPlan+, backups occur continuously as files change and you can configure CrashPlan to hold onto previous versions of files for a while or forever.

It’s important to know that CrashPlan is free for personal use by residential customers. That is, you’re allowed to use it to backup only personal data, not business data. If you’re a business customer then you should buy CrashPlanPro. This allows you to backup your business data to local hard drives or other computers owned by you or your friends as well as CrashPlan Central.

Setup Instructions

Start by going to CrashPlan’s web store and purchasing a license for CrashPlan+ as either an Individual Unlimited Plan ($60) or a Family Unlimited Plan ($150). The individual plan provides unlimited storage for one computer online. The family plan provides unlimited storage for all computers in one household online. When you finish the checkout procedure you’ll receive an email which contains your license code for CrashPlan+.

Download the free CrashPlan application. It works on PowerPC Macs as well as Intel Macs running Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. These requirements may change over time to be sure to check CrashPlan’s web site for current requirements.

Open CrashPlan. You’ll be prompted to enter your user account information. You don’t have an account yet so follow the instructions to setup an account.

Once you’ve setup your account then the CrashPlan application will open.

On the left-hand side click on the Backup button. Look at the section labeled “File to Back Up.” By default it’s set to backup your Home folder. This folder is the default location for all of your music, pictures, documents, local email messages and files on your Desktop. This is typically what I recommend you back up. However, if you want to make changes to add or remove folders, click the button which should be labeled Change or Change File Section.

Once you’ve selected the files you want to backup then click on Backup on the left-hand side. In the Backup Destinations section locate “CrashPlan Central” and click the Start Backup button. The backup will start. That’s it. You’re up and running!

Remember, this initial back up could take days or weeks to complete depending upon how much data you’ve selected and the speed of your Internet connection. Until this initial backup is complete you don’t have much protection, so I’ll reiterate that I think CrashPlan is a nice supplemental backup to local backups performed by Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan offers some redundant protection and off-site protection, which is very important to have if you only backup to one hard drive using Time Machine and Carbon Copy Cloner. CrashPlan is also very useful if you travel and take your laptop with you since CrashPlan will run anytime your Mac has an Internet connection.

You can quit the CrashPlan application and backups will continue since CrashPlan is made up of two parts. There is the CrashPlan application, which you use to configure the backups, and CrashPlan Engine, which runs quietly, unseen, in the background. CrashPlan’s Engine automatically adjusts how much of your computer’s processing power and your network’s capacity it uses based on whether or not you’re using your computer. You can view and adjust these values in the Settings section of CrashPlan. Also in Settings, you can adjust how long versions of files are retained and your can setup files or folders to exclude from your backup data using file names or regular expressions. You can also adjust the frequency and types of email notifications which you receive.

By default, CrashPlan will send you email notices when it hasn’t been able to backup your Mac in 3 days and it’ll also send you a weekly summary of when the last backup occurred. You can change these email notification schedules in the Settings section.

As with any backup application, I recommend that you perform test file restorations regularly to ensure that the backup system is working properly and so that you’re comfortable performing restores so you can do it with confidence with disaster strikes.

Are you considering an online backup system? Here’s an overview of the pros and cons of such systems.

Before we review the pros and cons, one has to initially be open to the idea of having a copy of their personal data stored on a relatively unknown company’s server. Thus there is an issue of trust. Who is this company? How do I know that the workers aren’t looking at my data? Companies which offer online backup services understand these concerns and address them by storing your backup data in an encrypted manner. The encryption key used to secure your data is randomly generated based on the password to your account. This means that nobody else is able to view the contents of your backup data.

The biggest advantages of online backups is that you end up with an off-site backup copy of your data and that the backups can run automatically. This means that if your Mac and any local backup copies sitting next to your Mac were destroyed by a fire or stolen by burglars, then you could retrieve a recent copy of your data from the online backup system. This is great. However, once you learn how long it would take to download gigabytes of music files, photos and word processing documents, then you’d see one of the disadvantage of online backup systems. They are slow. Depending upon how much data you want to backup to an online backup system, it could literally take days or weeks to copy it since the speed of Internet connections in homes and businesses are slow compared to the copying data onto a USB or FireWire hard drive. Let me illustrate this. I had a client with 16 GB of data. This data could be backed up to an external FireWire drive in about 15 minutes. Copying this same data to an online backup service took about 4 days.

As a consequence of their slowness, I tend to recommend only backing up part of your Mac’s hard drive not the entire thing. More specifically, I recommend only backing up your Home folder since it contains all of your personal data. Don’t bother backing up your applications and the folders containing the Mac operating system. I do believe in backing up everything on your hard drive, just not using an online backup system. Instead, one should use something like Carbon Copy Cloner to make a full bootable backup. For more details read my Tech Tip about setting up comprehensive backup systems. Adding an online backup adds redundancy to your backup system. If one of your backup systems, like Time Machine, were to stop working and you didn’t notice it for a few days, it would be very nice to know that your automated online backup system was still doing its job.

I should also mention that online backup systems can be quite affordable. I tend to recommend CrashPlan to people who want to setup online backup systems. For $60 CrashPlan provides you with unlimited storage space on their servers for backups or personal data on one computer for one year. Or, one can buy a Family Plan for $150 which provides unlimited storage space for all computers in your household for one year. The pricing for backing up business data on buisness computer is a bit more complex. In the coming weeks, I’ll write a Tech Tip which discusses CrashPlan in more detail.