Best Practices for Cloud-Based Backup

According to a report by Granter, the cloud service market is going to grow to over $300B by 2022. More than 90% of enterprises will be using cloud services in 2021. Most of these companies are using simple cloud-based services like email and storage. However, PaaS and IaaS is also rising. Many companies forget that they are still storing data in the hardware. It doesn’t matter if you are storing data in your in-house server or cloud server. Your data will be ultimately stored in hardware. Sometimes this hardware can fail and you can lose your data. Thus, you should take the right precautions if you want to protect your data.

There are two things that you need to consider when you are going with the cloud-based backup option. You should ensure that your cloud-based backup solution is redundant. It should ensure data redundancy. In this article, we are going to talk about the best cloud-based backup practices.

1. Recovery objectives

You can’t create an effective backup strategy without recovery objectives. There are two metrics that you need to know about. They will help you in creating your strategy. Also, these recovery objectives can help you in minimizing downtime. First, you need to know about your RTO or Recover time objectives. RTO is the amount of downtime that you can bear. This figure will depend on your industry type. Most hospitals can’t even afford a minute of downtime. However, many companies can afford an hour of downtime. After that, you need to figure out Recovery point objectives or RPO. It is the amount of data loss that you can afford. It will help you in determining how often you should take backups. Some companies need access to their latest data. Thus, they should take a backup every 15 minutes. However, some companies don’t depend on their latest data. Thus, they can take back up after a day.

2. Redundancy

You need to take regular backups. However, you also need to make copies of these backups. The number of copies will depend on where you are storing your backups. If you are storing all the data in one location, then you will lose your data in case of a disaster. The best thing about cloud backups is that you can store your data in offsite locations. They will be away from these disasters. You can also store your cloud backups in multiple locations. This will ensure that your backups won’t get affected.

You can store backups locally in your in-house server. However, make sure to replicate them offsite. This will offer you better data redundancy. After that, you should consider if you need to replicate these copies to another site. Cloud providers are providing redundancy to their users. However, you should never take chances with your data. You should always store your data backup in your in-house server first. After that, you should replicate the same data in the cloud server. You can also mirror crucial data for keeping it safe.

3. Address both downtime and data loss

Redundancy should ensure that your data is secure. However, it will help you in addressing half of the issues only. You will start losing money if your systems are down. Thus, you should ensure that your data is both accessible and safe.

You should consider how you are going to recover your systems and data. Natural disasters are very different from hardware failure. You need to create approaches for every type of disaster.

Cloud can help you in the recovery process. You should first research different cloud providers. Check how much time it will take to download a complete backup from your cloud storage. Also, how much time it will take to restore this data into physical hardware. Your cloud provider should help you in minimizing downtime.

4. Think about data categories and systems

Data storage has become cheaper with time. However, you should never waste storage space. You should figure out the data that you are storing in your cloud servers. It is important to find the data that is most important for you. If you are storing customer financial information, then you should protect this data. You should mirror this data in multiple cloud sites. This will ensure that you can always recover this data.

You should also look for the data that can be archived. If some data is not important for your business, then you can store it in archive storage. This type of storage is inexpensive when compared to other storage.

You should also figure out important business systems. There will be various systems that can’t tolerate downtime. You need to restore these systems first. This will help you in minimizing downtime and revenue loss. You should restore all the important systems and data first.

5. Recovery cloud

Some companies will have their own data center. You might be using AWS for storing your data. There can be many case scenarios. However, you should ensure that the cloud services you are using are enough. There are many cloud services that are offering basic services at a very cheap rate. However, these services won’t help you in quickly recovering your enterprise data and systems.

You should ensure that you can integrate a cloud solution with your existing backup solution. Also, your cloud provider should offer mirroring, archiving, and other premium features. You should ensure that you can directly recover data from your cloud storage. Also, your cloud-based solution should be easy to manage. The backups transfer and sync process must be efficient. You should also check the vendor uptime before working with them. Make sure that your vendor is providing good uptime. Your cloud vendor’s staff should know about the backup and recovery process. This will ensure that they can help you in recovering from a crisis.

Conclusion

Most businesses are now using both cloud and local storage. They want to ensure that their data is protected from disasters. Your data must be always accessible during a disaster. Cloud providers can help you in minimizing downtime. You can minimize the damage by storing your backup in cloud-based platforms. Experienced MSPs like Bleuwire will help you in creating a cloud-based backup strategy. They will help you in storing backups in different offsite locations. If you need more information regarding backup and recovery strategy, then you can contact Bleuwire.

Contact us today to learn about Bleuwire™  services and solutions in how we can help your business.