Cloud Backup is NOT the solution

We hear it all the time, move your backups to the cloud and it will solve everything. We have been sold cloud backups as the silver bullet but is this actually true?

What are they not telling you!

Cloud backups are a great improvement in backup technology, especially for smaller companies who don’t have multiple offices and redundant infrastructure, but there are some dirty secretes that nobody talks about.

First let’s talk about some of the benefits.

• You don’t need to maintain your own backup infrastructure.
• Reputable backup companies generally have excellent security.
• Cloud backups have become extremely cost effective.
• backup data is kept on completely separate network and location.
• You can generally get some additional support when things go wrong.

This all sounds great so what’s the problem nobody talks about?

There are several key problems with cloud backups that nobody likes to talk about.

First which is the most common, is the time to restore. In today’s world of large cheap storage and all-you-can-eat mindset, data grows quickly. The ability to recover quickly from cloud backups simply due to the size of your data is often overlooked. With many backup providers trying to restore even 1tb of data can take several days. For the engineers who have been involved in large data restores, you will know that large data restores can take several attempts extending the time even further. This dirty little secret is never talked about.

The second secret is what happens when the cloud backup company gets overloaded. All the backup companies are setup and designed to manage only a certain number of simultaneous backups and restores. What happens when even 20% or more all try to restore their data at once. Generally, the system collapses a restore that should take a day or two can take several weeks.

Another problem is, what happens if the Cloud Backup company goes under and fails to operate, what happens with your data? Other more common scenarios include the backup company get bought by another company, what’s happens to the technology, or you might not want to work with the new company.

Another challenge is swapping cloud backup providers. For many companies who retain data for several years with yearly snapshots can be extremely costly to migrate the backup data from one provider to another and the cost of maintaining multiple cloud backups is prohibitive.

So what is the answer?

It depends on your requirements, but in general for most businesses the answer is a combination of cloud backups with an additional copy onsite. With this solution you get all the benefits of cloud backup while maintaining control of your data.

• All the benefits of Cloud Backups
• You can perform quick restores from onsite storage
• You can make use of less expensive onsite storage because you have additional copy of the data offsite
• You own the storage and the data. If the backup provider goes out of business, you still have your data and can restore from onsite.
• If you change backup providers, you still have the onsite data for historical puposes.
• If the backup provider gets hacked or taken offline, you still have your local backups and data.

So if a combination of cloud and onsite backup is the answer why does nobody talk about it?

We seem to live in a world where cloud solves everything mindset, so people tend not to think about the potential issues. The backup space is also extremely competitive and price sensitive so cloud providers don’t want to talk about anything that might add an additional cost to your backups. This is short sighted and not taking into account the true cost of losing data.

In Summary

Always speak to a Backup Expert and for majority of use cases always combine Cloud Backups with Onsite Backups for the best results.