Five Facts about Hybrid Cloud Backup
Using the cloud as a backup target is definitely one of the ways that many businesses are adopting the hybrid cloud. Today, almost all businesses are dealing with massive data growth. The research firm IDC has estimated that overall data is doubling every two years.
Keeping up with this level of data growth is tough enough for your online systems. However, it’s important to realize that as your storage requirements grow your data protection requirements grow right along with them. Taking advantage of hybrid cloud backups is one of the best ways that businesses can reduce the costs associated with this rapid data growth. Moving your backups to low-cost cloud storage enables you to forgo the cost of buying additional local storage. Plus, it provides offsite protection as well. To get a better understanding of some of these benefits, let’s take a closer look at five facts about hybrid cloud backup.
- Hybrid cloud backups can save you money – Cost savings is probably the main reason why most businesses begin to look into using cloud backups. The cloud provides low-cost storage which can mitigate the need to buy more expensive local storage for your backups. Using the cloud can also eliminate the costs that you might otherwise need for offsite data storage and archiving. The cloud itself provides the offsite storage required to meet the 3-2-1 rule of data protection where you keep three copies of your data on two different media types with one copy offsite. Overall, hybrid cloud backups can provide CapEx savings for storage as well as reducing IT maintenance and operational requirements.
- Restoring from the hybrid cloud is typically faster than backing up – While uplink and downlink speeds can vary according to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) connection, the typical Interest connection for most businesses provides far higher downlink speeds than uplink speeds. For hybrid cloud backup, this often means that the time it takes to perform the backup is actually longer than the time it takes to perform the restore. The restore happens over the downlink which often has far higher bandwidth.
- You’re not limited to slow Internet speeds – There’s no doubt that the network is the slowest link in the chain of cloud backup and restore. Local storage is very fast and cloud providers are all able to provide high-performance storage options as well which means your network connection is the slowest link. For many businesses, the Internet speeds they can get with their ISP is adequate for their hybrid cloud backups and restores. However, for those businesses that have higher bandwidth requirements, it’s not their only option. Azure ExpressRoute, Amazon Direct Connect and Google Interconnect all offer direct connection technologies that can provide up to 100 Gbps of bandwidth. These connections bypass the public Internet and enable you to have high-speed connections directly to each of the major cloud providers.
- Hybrid cloud backups can be more secure then on-premise backups – Cloud security is always one of the top concerns for many businesses. However, not everyone realizes that hybrid cloud backups can be more secure than on-premise backups. First, some common backup solutions like Windows Server Backup do not support encryption which means the backup can potentially be accessed by hackers. Next, several of today’s ransomware exploits are known to explicitly target backups. If the backup is local that opens the possibility that it can be corrupted. Hybrid cloud backups can be encrypted by the cloud provider but it’s important to remember that the data stream sent to the cloud provider should also be encrypted. In addition, the cloud storage is not directly connected to your local network and can use a different set of credentials which can help to insulate it from ransomware attacks.
- Hybrid doesn’t mean singular – Today using hybrid cloud backup doesn’t mean that you’re restricted to a single cloud provider. In fact, most businesses today are already using multiple clouds. Gartner has estimated 81% of respondents said they are working with two or more providers. Using multiple clouds for your hybrid cloud backups can provide you with an extra degree of data protection. While the cloud providers tend to have higher degrees of availability than most local data centers, they have all been known to have outages and using multiple clouds can add an extra layer of protection for your hybrid cloud backups.