Once you have conceptualized and started using your personal cloud, you have to protect the content. Protection should utilize a combination of both online and offline storage, and incremental and archival backups.
Email Flow/Backup
General Flow/Backup
- All email (incoming/outgoing) starts in a Gmail account (first online storage) and is auto–forwarded (copied) to MobileMe (creating a second online storage)
- All email is accessible by IMAP in the Mail desktop app (or the iPhone’s Mail app)
- Mac and iPhone Mail apps IMAP access to MobileMe, the desktop Mail app makes a copy of all email arriving by MobileMe (creating the first offline storage)
- Mail’s offline storage is incrementally backed–up by Time Machine to Drobo (creating a second offline storage)
- Mail’s offline storage is archivally backed–up to Drobo monthly (creating a third offline storage)
- Mail’s offline storage is archivally backed–up to AWS S3 (using either SFTP by Panic’s Transmit or Amazon’s JungleDisk; creating a third online storage)
- All documents are incrementally backed–up (”Time Machined”) to Drobo (creating a second offline storage)
- All documents are archivally backed–up to Drobo (creating a third offline storage)
- All documents are archivally backed–up to AWS S3 (creating an online storage)
The end results:
- For email: 3 separate online and offline storages
- For documents in general: 1 online and 3 offline storages