The next big land rush seems to be happening within the online storage and backup space, with offering from Amazon S3 and Rackspace, the cost of massive online storage has plummeted in the recent years, to the point when its accessible to even home users and enthusiast.

Here are three services I’ve looked at and started using recently…

Dropbox

An amazing application for day to day file backup and synchronisation, the service comes with a very minimal desktop client that creates a dedicated folder to sync your files into.

I have been really impressed by the quality and simplicity of this service, the way it manages to keep track of changes to documents with the minimum of effor is quite amazing. I have a large folder of images which I regularly rename or reorganise and the smoothness at which it follows, moves and renames files on the remote server without the need to completely reupload the files is hugely impressive.

On top of all these great features, you can get started with a 2gb account for free. The only fly in the ointment is that to upgrade your storage things get pretty expensive, to the tune of $9.99 a month for 50gb ($99.99 for a years worth up front) or $19.99 a month for 100gb ($199.99 for a years worth up front).

More about Dropbox

Gladinet Clout Desktop & Microsoft SkyDrive

Great application for archiving and backing up your photos, and when combined with a service like Microsoft’s SkyDrive with it’s 25gb of free storage, it creates a great solution to backing up your images online.

Unfortunately one of the Skydrive limitations means that your will probably end up focusing only on photos as each file is limited to 50mb. Gladinet does contain a file divider to limbo around this limitation, but for ease of mind I’ve decided to keep this archive for photos only.

More about Glainet

Keepvault

This is an interesting service, the two features that attracted me the most were its Windows Home Server integrated software, which makes backup and uploads an automatic feature rather than having to reply on regular archive uploads.

The other was the price, I managed to get 40gb of storage (with no upload or download costs associated with products like Jungle Disk) for only $38 a year, this makes it a perfect service for backing up my work to (which can change quite regularly).

Find out more about Keepvault

Sometimes it can be useful to have a VPN connection into your home network, luckily setting up a VPN service on Windows Home Server is childs play…

Create the VPN Network Connection on your WHS

1. Get the access of your server using a remote desktop connection or via the Advanced Admin Console addin. Move to “Control Panel” – “Network Connections” and select “Create a new connection”. Select “Set up an advanced connection”.
2. Select “Accept incoming connections”, and then “Allow virtual private connections”. At the “User Permissions” screen, select the user to whom you want to get the VPN access. Select “Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)”. Choose “Properties” and specify IP addresses in a range outside of the ones that are normally used by your DHCP. Confirm by selecting OK, then Next. Click Finish.
3. Now set up an exception in your firewall. You may need to forward port 1723 in your router to the Home Server IP address.

Setup the VPN Connection on your Laptop

1. On your laptop, run “New Connection Wizard” by going to “Control Panel” – “Network Connections”. Now select “Connect to the network at my workplace”. Then select “Virtual Private Network” connection and give a unique name to this connection.
2. Then enter the website name for your home server eg. xxx.homeserver.com. Then select “Do not use my smart card”, “Next” and “My Use Only”. After clicking “Next”, select the check “Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop” and click “Finish”.
3. Test the connection by clicking on the shortcut created on your desktop. Enter the username and password. If the connection is setted up properly, test it to make sure everything was done correctly.
4. Make sure that VPN connection is active and the laptop is connected to the server.
5. Then install the connector software which will be found in the Software shared folder on the server.

It is also possible to use the Big Iron version within Windows 2003 Server (which forms the basis of Windows Home Server), if you disable the firewall service, enable the Routing and Remote Access service.

That said it’s not the obvious to setup this service, so I would recommend avoiding this route unless you know what you’re doing.

Instructions via Techarena