Onsite vs. Offsite PC backup for 5-10 machines - suggestions?

[Maverick2002]

I'm looking at different options to do either an on-site or offsite backup for my office of ~5-10 computers. I'll probably set up an incremental nightly backup of some sort and a more intense weekly or monthly backup. I've helped set up something similar for another company before using ViceVersa software, but I'd like to do a bit more research and set up something up that makes more sense this time around, while keeping the budget down. Here are my questions so far:

1) On-site or off-site? We have a dedicated server at a national datacenter (running Windows Server 2008). I can also purchase a local multi-TB NAS to keep in our IT closet. Pros of onsite: much faster throughput, easy to manage. Cons: if there's a situation where both points are compromised (fire, break in, etc), information is vulnerable. Possible alternate solution: a secondary 'backup of the backup' which I can keep offsite and sync every week or so.
2) What software should I use?
3) Should I be concerned with C: drive mirroring or just back up the files? Would suck to have to rebuild a machine, but how time consuming/accurate is an OS mirror?
4) A lot of these computers are laptops and are taken home at night, so they have limited time in the office. I need to make the best use of in-office downtime.
5) What else do I need to consider?

TIA

 

[Gooberlx2]

For file backup, I like Crashplan. I use their software to backup all my machines to a single file-server at home. The file-server itself backs-up locally as well as to their online service.

They do have Pro/business and enterprise services, though I don't know what's different vs their consumer service. You could use some sort of imaging software to create machine image files which are then backed-up via Crashplan.

 

[JasonCoder]

OP, Scott Hanselman has a pretty good plan he uses that could be easily scaled up to 5-10 boxes.

http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ABasicNoncloudbasedPersonalBackupStrategy.aspx

 

[ringtail]

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[ringtail]

I'd have BOTH onsite to a local server AND offsite, many choices available for offsite, here's one I like: https://www.cyphertite.com/