One response to “The Appliance of Backup Science”

  1. tech support

    I used to work at axcient and I have a warning for anyone who uses this product.

    Be very careful with the axcient product on your network. Once you create your backup devices, tech support has free roam on your servers and regularly logs in to them using winexe (part of the samba suite) from the axcient appliance.

    Why do they do this?. Well, when you contact support with an issue, first thing they do is access your servers via the command line and will query configuration settings. They will actually make configuration changes like stopping/restarting services, re-register dll’s without any permission or notification for the resellers. Ask support if they ever make/do anything to customers servers to work past issues without permission first. If they say no, they are lying. Also, ask them what MachinePassTool.jar is and what it is for. Hint, it dumps all usernames and password for all configured devices.

    Call Julian, the director of support and ask him. However, he is known for not actually telling the truth and is an accomplished BS artist. I’m sure he’ll put a nice spin on it for you.

    Their so called colo is just a bunch of Franken boxes that constantly lockup. Ever wonder why your offsite backups seem to take forever or never complete. Well, it’s because the server locked up. There is no redundancy at all in the colo, so your data could in theory be lost. They have no redundant colo in place to mirror your data, but is all at one location. Tech support also will go over your data at the colo and check out your files, especially pictures and music files. Don’t buy into the gen2 colo they are now starting to call it. It is still not up and running. Oh, did I say that there is no physical redundancy at the colo for your data?

    I suggest you ask for a disaster recovery drill. They will try to discourage you by charging hundreds for this simple task as they have no set procedure in place.

    Be very careful of these guys, but call support and ask for Julian. Pin him down on the above. However, if you value privacy of your customers, you should not use this product.