EVault probably offers the largest selection of online services and licensed product options for data backup and archiving in this review. For example, online users have a choice of EVault Desktop for desktops and laptops, EVault iSeries for AS/400 systems, EVault ProMail for Web-based e-mail and IM supervision and archiving, OurEVault for long-term archiving and disaster recovery, and the EVault Protect service we used for our testing. Secure hosting is at five locations in the United States and Canada, including two SunGard facilities for EVault's banking and financial customers.

Setting up the Protect agent is relatively complex. That's partly because of the provider's delta-sampling technology, but bad GUI design is also to blame. For example, the tree displayed in the main interface window is a representation of systems and processes, rather than the simplified file tree many will expect, and setting up even the most common backup task is a multilayered chore. A few wizards would ease the process for less savvy users; until then, it's worth enlisting the assistance of an EVault technician when setting up your first vault and backup tasks.

File and directory restorations required some of the same multilevel configuration, and even though we had the option of restoring files to another machine on our network, EVault doesn't offer any Web-based monitoring, restoration or backup-management options. So much for restoring files in our pajamas. System-level restorations were available from a base OS install, once we had installed and properly configured a new agent.

For sampling incremental backups, EVault offers two proprietary tools: QuickFile Sampling, which does a fast scan to look for files that have changed since the last backup; and DeltaPro, which scans the file in 4-KB blocks and communicates only blocks that have changed to a historically indexed Storage Pool on the remote server.

The Protect agent supports plug-ins that enable hot-backup capabilities for Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and Oracle. Open-file support for system files and other applications is possible using St. Bernard's Open File Manager.

A Protect account for our test server cost $156 per month for up to 5 GB of data, based on a 24-generation retention policy. EVault pointed out that our small test server would likely be assigned to an entry-level SMB service at $50 per month that supports only seven generations of restoration. EVault has recently announced a number of services aimed at customers with records requiring special handling for long-term archiving, life-cycle management, legal compliance and business continuity purposes.

Standard phone and e-mail support is available Monday through Friday, excluding U.S. holidays, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. After-hours support is available but may be subject to additional fees, while priority phone support is available 24/7.

EVault Protect. EVault, (877) 382-8581, (925) 944-2422. www.evault.com