My Apollo Cloud 2 Lessons Learned

2018-01-15T20:46:32.4400000

Hi, I'm pretty happy with the Cloud 2.

I need to ensure backups using Time Machine for 3 MacBooks and 2 iMacs. My home FIOS network is 75 MBs. Only 1 iMac and 2 MacBooks are local.

Here's my experience.

EDIT:

Editing my original post. I'm tying to backup another remote iMac. it is important to know that for an initial backup to be practical at least 2 Mb/s upload for each 5 GB of backup data. If you wish to backup an iMac with 100GB of data (again initially) you must have 40 Mb/s of upload available. I know my FIOS is 75/75 Mb/s so all is good. However, the iMac I wished to add to the Cloud 2 used Comcast with 250 Mb/s download but only 20 Mb/s upload. The initial backup was going to take 2 days I suspect.

END OF EDIT.

I found the initial backups start slow at first -- once setup you should choose to "back up now," in Time Machine so you don't wait for the first backup to begin -- then once things get moving transfers are a reasonable wifi speed. Doing one mac first-backup a at a time seems best. After about 2 or 3 minutes the backups will move around 6 MBs a second. I don't have any of the Macs connected by ethernet cables, just wifi (5g strong signal).

Once the initial Time Machine backup is complete the subsequent, incremental backups perform well (based on wifi speed, of course). I rotate my iMacs between local USB drives and the Cloud 2. Rotation is working well and limited restore tests performed without issue.

Hint: One of my kids had 250 GB to initially backup with Time Machine. That was around 12 hours. But it did complete. So my "hint" is this: It's wifi, be patient. :)

I admit until I got the hang of things I was a bit frustrated. However, knowing all the Macs are backing up at all over the places they go is a good feeling.

I am automatically backing up photos from our iPhones to the Cloud 2 using Camera Roll, which is a setting in the iPhone Cloud 2 app) and leaving everything else like contacts to iCloud. Camera Roll is automatic so my wife is happy to know her photos are safe and saved and can be removed from the phone when she wishes. The photos are availalbe anytime to the iPhone quickly via a Cloud app.

Up to now, I have been using a Buffalo NAS with Time Machine support to do everything. The Buffalo is a good device and Cloud 2 for Time Machine is no better or worse. However, Cloud 2 is much easier to setup. But 2 things made me switch to Cloud 2. The Buffalo NAS is 6 years old so I'm likely pushing my luck and the NAS did not auto-backup the iPhone pictures everytime a picture was taken. That's a nice feature.

Overall, I'm happy with the product for what it is. However, keep in mind the limitations of the internet.

I hope that this provides some helpful insight for someone.

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My Apollo Cloud 2 Lessons Learned