Remote Backup Systems

Wanted to chime in here and add an updated review of the RBS software, circa June 2016 because there have been some major changes recently. You probably (definitely) want to take another look at the RBS «Rbackup» software.
I’m an MSP and currently use the service provider edition of RBS software. (since 2001)
We have nearly 2,500 endpoints installed and actively backing up each night. The version we currently use is 11.12. We have been successful at supporting our clients with that version — which means we are good at restoring lost customer files.
Like some of the other reviewers here, I too was disappointed with version 11.15. Before we update our clients to any new versions, we always bring the software in-​house and thoroughly check it out on test equipment. When we did that with RBS’s «update,» we found major problems.
These problems were beyond cosmetic. They were significant enough that we could not deploy the updated software to any of our paying customers.
I reached out to the owner of the company (Rob) and explained our situation and my disappointment with the latest version. He too was disappointed.
I subsequently figured out that version 11.13 and 11.14 were internal only releases. Version 11.15 was the first public release of a completely re-​engineered (re-​written) backup client — capable of supporting modern versions of Windows and scaling to 100s of thousands of files.
The problem IMHO was that this software was apparently rushed to market before it was of commercial quality.
My guess is that it had been a couple years in development and the sales and marketing folks wanted it on the street to sell. This apparently caused major portions of QA activity to be deferred. The result was a release that was buggy as heck. It was literally like a V1.0 product — which it kinda of was.
The bad reviews you may have read here at that time were probably deserved –especially if this was a first experience with RBS.
Since we had used the RBS product for many years, and have a very large customer base, Rob asked us if we would participate in a total quality assurance review of the new backup client software. We would be provided direct access to the engineering staff and be able to spec-​out and prioritize the repair of any problems we found. The QA review was supposed to take 30 days.
We accepted his offer.
As it turns out, it took nearly 90 days of intense engineering effort to resolve and test the fixes for over 5 dozen «high priority» problems we discovered. While taking nearly 3x longer than we had expected, the resulting product now appears to be dramatically improved.
Not only is the bug count lower, but all those new features enabled by the re-​write are to the forefront. The enhancements were all «CORE» function enhancements. You don’t see them when you look at the configuration UI, but believe me, they are under the «hood.»
The features include: scan/​transfer performance improved by about 30%, ability to back up files with path names over 259 characters (server shares), ability to handle multi-​byte unicode file formats (i.e., Arabic, Chinese, Tai, etc.), proper detection and parsing of directory junctions, and improved handling of in-​use and locked files. Plus, support was added for Windows 10 and Server 2012R2 and an optional SQL/​Express engine now enables the catalog to hold up to 10 million files.
I personally used a 1.5 million file test set to verify that the product would indeed scale to over a million files. All indications are that we now have a solid release to offer our larger clients.
The new RBackup will also perform full VSS-​based image backups of all OS and data volumes up to 2TB in size. I believe in late summer of 2016, that limit will be raised to 4TB. Having a single product that will do offsite and local image backups is huge for many of our clients.
At the end of the QA project, we migrated all of our in-​house systems over to the new software and things looked good, so we have begun to deploy the software in production.
As I write this, our first production (revenue) server has been migrated from 11.12 to 11.16 and is up and in service. Based on our past experiences, we’ve decided to handle the migration of our customer base in phases. So far, all is as expected.
The version we are rolling out is 11.16.004. The new features are working much, much better. We believe our clients will be happy AND our support costs will be lower due to the quality improvements.
I’m not saying that the RBS product will now «slice bread» for you. But, if you are willing to invest in learning the product — it’s definitely worth a hard look.
Remember, if things never changed… there would be no butterflies.

This company has issues. Things start out great with constant communication with the owner Rob. He always has time to talk when selling the product, but as soon as it’s sold good luck having any communication outside of India.
I purchased the product in August of 2015, and scheduled an installation in September after receiving close to $ 20,000 in hardware to support the project. I built two identical servers with 45TB of backup space to mirror each other. A feature I was told was supported.
During the scheduled install, the technician installed the free version of BTSync. A bit torrent protocol software that they insisted the free version was fine to use. (It was against the terms of service to use a free version for business use according to BTSync) I stopped the install at this point as I wanted to do some research to verify the security of this outside software, but was told everything should be working.
After doing some research on the software, I found as long as I followed some precautions I was ok with the security of the software. I purchased the pro version; a reoccurring cost not stipulated in the normal license fees. I then attempted to install the client side of the software created by the technician to test out the software. The installs failed attempting to register to the server. This was October 13^th, 2015.
The registration issue was fixed on October 15^th, however I seemed to be having some issues with the backups. It told me everything had backed up fine, but as soon as I attempted a restore, it couldn’t unencrypt the data.
This is the issue that plagued me for months and was never resolved. I had multiple all day sessions with the support from India. I had to cancel many of my client appointments to work on the issue with the technicians from RBS. Time after time I was told the issue was resolved when it never was. BTSync was blamed as corrupting the encryption files, however the same results remained after the uninstallation of BTSync. They couldn’t even get the software working correctly on ONE server. If I had just trusted this company and installed the software on clients machines without testing it would have been catastrophic. A backup software that tells you it has backed up successfully, but fails during restores when you need it the most.
On December 3^rd I requested a refund on the product. I was met with an email from another support technician. One who had already worked on the case plenty saying he was taking over the case. At this point I refused a couple days went by with no refund issued and I issued a credit card charge back with Capital One. I uninstalled their software. Reinstalled Windows 2012 Server on both of my servers. Installed a combination of the software Syncovery and Cerberus SFTP on my backup servers and I haven’t had an issue since. I have multiple clients on the new software and things are running smoothly. Backups even restore, it’s amazing what competent programmers can do.
Today (January 19^th) I was informed by Capital One that RBS has submitted documentation as to why I should still be charged for their software. I plan on fighting this claim until the end. I highly suggest you do not do business with this company.

3 – 2014
I bought this software quite a few years ago to create backups for my clients. Over a period of several years, I tried and tried to use this software and was frustrated at every turn it seemed. While it may have been state of the art in the 1990s, it was never properly updated to keep up with technology and ended up being nothing more than a giant kludge.
The support staff tried to be helpful but in the end they just couldn’t really provide the help that was needed to make the software usable because it was just outdated software. After many months of wrangling with these people I finally gave up trying when they became unreceptive to my communications. They eventually wouldn’t even talk with me even though I would provide them with detailed debugging logs and technical information about the many bugs I found in their software. Their executive staff became downright belligerent with me accusing me of not having the technical ability to understand their software. I have over 40 years of experience working computers of all kinds including programming experience so I sort of doubt that was an accurate assessment. :-)
Bottom line, I would heartily encourage anyone considering this software to look elsewhere. Unless they’ve made drastic changes in the past couple of years since I quit using this software, I would be very surprised if it is anywhere near as useful and robust as many other remote backup offerings.