What if you could get those tape drives off your network? Anyone who’s had to work with them knows how much of a pain in the rear end they are, and how tedious the process of managing the tape library is. An Indian company has come out with a really novel solution to backups called StoreGrid, which stores backup files on the unused disk capacity on your network. They’ve correctly observed that most computer users use only a fraction of their available drive space in the business environment and take advantage of that. It can be configured as a p2p application or in the traditional client-server backup model, and it’s cross platform -Linux, Mac and Windows are all supported. There’s even a free windows version you can check out that’s feature limited but still very useful.

They’re targeting this at the home and small business market and pricing it accordingly – $20 a seat. I think it’s brilliant. Not only is that pricing model lower than what you would pay for equivalent products, it removes a piece of the skilled labor required to manage your backup system and relieves a headache for support staff and small business owners. If I can get this running on my Linux box it’s going to become my new backup system, and this is well worth a look for folks who are running small networks in their homes. I’m willing to bet a large sum of money that none of you have an effective backup strategy on your home network, if you have one at all.