Mountain Lion Server: Remote Time Machine Backups

11/07/13 12:56 Filed in: Technology

With the increased awareness of the need for backups there are many options for people looking for ways to keep their data protected in case of a hard drive crash or other disaster. While many have a strategy for backing up their important files and folders while in their own network, few have looked at how those back ups should work when their portable Macs are outside that network. Time Machine, which comes built into every Mac, provides a good incremental back up solution for attached hard drives to back up to. With the OS X Server those back ups can be done wirelessly to your server. But what about when you leave the home or office?

In this screencast tutorial I cover how to set up your portable Mac to enable remote Time Machine backups. This allows your backups to happen over the internet back to your server and allows you to create your very own cloud back up strategy. A couple of things to keep in mind with this approach. First, this is not the complete back up solution. You are protected from hardware failure but if your house burns down you lose your back up. So you will need to consider other offsite back up. Second, this is not foolproof. Because of things like bandwidth and internet interference you could cause your back up to get corrupted if you have major interruptions. So just because it is possible I would caution you in using Time Machine this way. Like anything else your mileage may vary so I want to make sure I put in that warning to start!

As always feel free to leave a comment or question here or on my YouTube Channel.

Tags: Mac OSX, Tutorials, Apple, Server, Screencast