Hidden in yet another undisclosed location somewhere near Victoria, British Columbia, is the massive archive facility of DBFT (Data Base File Tech Group), whose InfoSure service is the only non-U.S. offering we tested. Known as "the Fort Knox of the North," the facility houses Canada's Federal Office of Critical Infrastructure Protection and Emergency Preparedness, as well as emergency backup for the Canadian Joint Rescue Coordination Center.

InfoSure is based on Atempo's Time Manager Software, which takes an approach to backups we found more complex than the norm, but well-suited to those requiring long-term file archiving. To set up an InfoSure account, our server's address had to be publicly routable, which we accomplished by setting up simple one-to-one address translation and forwarding the single TCP and UDP ports the system requires. This was necessary because the InfoSure system was the only one in our test group where backup-and-restore actions were initiated by the remote storage system rather than locally.

Although this dedicated connection to an off-site backup server may raise security eyebrows in some organizations, the provider contends it's not an issue because access is needed for two unique port addresses and nothing else, and those ports are bound to a single, specific and monitored application. The setup and configuration of the Atempo agent make InfoSure the most IT-intensive service of our group, but we feel it's also the most powerful when it comes to long-term archiving and information life-cycle management. Still, the complexity hurt InfoSure in our scoring.

Learning to use the InfoSure agent took a bit of an adjustment, because even though the interface looked like a basic file tree, it was really a representation of our online archive's data state relative to the time and date set in the Date Control window. Like a Wayback Machine (remember Mr. Peabody and Sherman?), we could use the date control to scroll through our backup history and select specific time-based restorations from as many as 28 levels of historical recovery. There was even a handy indicator to show whether we were in the past or present--a feature that would be helpful in the real world for some people we know.

We selected files for backup by creating a backup "class," InfoSure's name for defining a group of files and folders with filtering. In defining a class, the software theoretically lets us choose from among four backup strategies. Unfortunately, there really was only one option available--that strategy was predefined by InfoSure, which reserved the right to establish our automated backup schedule based on mutual convenience. While this policy is undoubtedly effective for load-balancing InfoSure's internal usage, it will be unpopular with managers who prefer to control their own backup windows.

On the plus side, the agent offers many advanced capabilities and has native tools for managing hot backups on a number of messaging platforms, including Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint Portal Server and IBM Lotus Notes/Domino, as well as databases like Oracle, IBM DB2, Informix, Sybase, Teradata and Microsoft SQL Server. If that's not enough, InfoSure offers cluster support for data protection in high-availability environments--HP MCSG, HP OpenVMS Cluster, HP TruCluster, IBM HACMP, Microsoft Cluster Services, Sun Cluster and others--as well as support for all major Unix, Linux and Windows platforms.

Like setup and configuration, pricing is somewhat complicated. After the initial setup fee, costs are calculated based on a monthly charge per server, plus storage and data transfers. For our test server, the tab came to $55.12 per month plus a one-time setup charge of $133.80 for one computer backing up as much as 2 GB of data, with 20 percent incremental change each month (all prices converted to U.S. dollars).

Restorations are billed separately at a cost of $8.60 per GB of data transferred, and data retention is based on 28-day storage for incremental data, after which that data is remotely concatenated into a "synthetic full backup," which is stored for 56 days. Additional levels of retention are available, ranging from years to decades, and DBFT even offers direct computer-to-microfilm transfers for those needing records archived into the next century. Technical support is available 24/7 by phone and online. There's emergency data restoration by CD-ROM, and the company offers premium bare-metal server restoration on a case-by-case quote basis.

InfoSure. Data Base File Tech Group, (800) 661-0272. www.infosure.com