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Like most small- or medium-sized businesses, you probably already have a backup solution in place. That said, even though you may no longer be relying on manual backups, your existing backup solution may not have kept up with the times.
It’s been a few years now since businesses started switching from traditional backup policies to cloud-based backup. As the technology evolves, moving to cloud backup solutions seems the right thing to do. It’s not though.
In this article we will explain the concept of hybrid backup and its benefits to organizations of any size.
What is Hybrid Backup
Hybrid Backup is when combining both local and cloud solutions in your backup strategy.
One would think local backup is dead, however it does offer competitive advantages such as:
- Lightning-fast, simplified backup and restore
- Cost-effective in terms of bandwidth utilization
- Predictable cost vs. cloud backup cost spikes when inefficient backup policies are configured
However, businesses nowadays do not have all digital assets in one place. Some may be on-premise (accounting, payroll software, file server) whilst ERP systems, Google Drive or Microsoft 365 data are on cloud.
Additionally, organizations under regulatory compliance (banks, forex brokers, health institutions, etc) may be required to have sensitive data hosted in accredited, multi-certified data centers. In this case the cloud backup option seems like the right fit versus a local backup policy.
Let’s take a closer look and compare Local and Cloud Backup features based on several factors.
6 Things to Consider When Choosing Between Local vs. Cloud Backup
| Consideration | Cloud Backup | Local Backup |
| Cost | Whilst it can be cheap to start, costs can significantly grow over short time as the data volumes grow. | Purchasing hardware for on-premise backup can be expensive, especially on disk-based products. The cheapest local backup option is, still, the tape products. |
| Scalability | Storage is, essentially, unlimited or at least the company does not need to worry about capacity to accommodate future data growth. | Organizations need to forecast needs in order to accommodate sufficient storage. |
| Accessibility | Most cloud backup solutions offer an easy-to-use panel to manage and access the data. Depending on the size of backup and the source server’s connectivity, the backup process time can vary. | Unless there is a disaster on the site where the backup hardware reside, its relatively easy to access backup data on-premise. Speed of data transfer depends on the disks and RAID configuration. Tape backups are usually the slowest. |
| Security | Most reputable cloud backup providers claim to be safe, however end-to-end security is still a concern for all cloud providers to achieve in the future. | Local backup is considered secure, however if we are talking about hardware connected on the public internet, local backup method is still exposed to cyber attacks and other threats. |
| Management | Usually, cloud backup solutions come as Managed, meaning the provider takes care of the on-going management, maintenance, etc. | Organizations may choose to handle local backups administration through its own IT staff or outsource it. |
| Recovery | Whilst failover to a disaster recovery platform is relatively easy, dealing large volume data can make the recovery process very slow. | Recovering in a local backup scenario is considered to be fast as the infrastructure is connected on the same network. However, in case there is a disaster on site, local backup may also be affected making it impossible to recovery anything. |
Why Choosing a Hybrid Backup Solution
We live in an era where organizations invest a lot of human and financial capital to cope with the complex topic of data management and security.
Maintaining two parallel solutions (local and cloud) for data backup is definitely not an option, so here is where Hybrid Backup solutions come in play.
Hybrid Backup platforms merge the best features of cloud and local backup. In many ways, this offers the best of both worlds:
- Simple, fast recovery from local backup when original hardware is available
- Maintaining a copy in the cloud can be proven a great decision in case there is a catastrophic event on-site.
- Ability to backup everything on cloud whilst requesting backup data to be physically shipped to you, on-premise.
- Ensures compliance with regulatory guidelines even if the on-premise infrastructure does not meet the necessary requirements – choose a cloud backup provider who possess compliance certifications such as GDPR, PCI, HIPAA.
To summarize, the biggest benefit of hybrid backup solutions is the enhanced redundancy. Data stored somewhere are trash unless you can recover them. The hybrid backup solution ensures that if the on-premise backup hardware fail, recovery can start from the cloud storage. Additionally, in the case of having to recover Terrabytes of data over a slow network connection, recovery from local backup would be your preferred option.
Secure your Business and Digital Assets with a Leading Managed Hosting Provider
NetShop ISP’s managed infrastructure and security specialists have helped hundreds of organizations in fast-paced, heavily regulated industries such as online gambling, forex, crypto exchange platforms and more.
Starting with an audit of your current backup policies, we will design the most appropriate business continuity and disaster recovery strategy based on your business’ needs and budget.
For businesses without the necessary facilities or capital needed to create or maintain local backup systems, NetShop ISP offers a Hybrid Backup solution via a private colocation space in multi-certified Data centers along with Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud; an award-winning cloud backup provider.
Contact an Infrastructure Specialist today or chat with us via Live chat or Skype (netshopisp).
