What is Cloud Backup and Recovery?
By Matt Brennan
When a business loses critical data and information, the most ideal situation is to have a backup ready to go so that the business can quickly restore data. Businesses often ask “What is cloud backup and recovery?” The answer is that it is a backup storage capability that allows businesses the ability to quickly access data in the event of a system failure, outage, or natural disaster.
Cloud backup works by allowing businesses to back up their information to a remote server that’s in a different physical location.
Why Do Businesses Use the Cloud for Backup?
- It Protects Your Online Assets – When critical data and applications are stored off site on the cloud, they are protected from the risk of weather or outages.
- Faster Recovery Times – Data stored in the cloud can be quickly recovered. This allows companies to regain access to data with very little downtime.
- Convenient Storage – The cloud doesn’t depend on hardware backups on a hard drive or tapes.
How Cloud Backups Work
If your organization had a physical data center, the backup would simply go to a different media or storage system for easy access if a recovery was needed. While this is still a viable and dependable option used by many businesses, the cloud offers an option that doesn’t rely on the need for more hardware in your physical location.
One way to operate in the cloud would be to use a service such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. If you go this route, then the cloud provider would use its own backup software to create a duplicate.
Organizations can also provide their data to back up to companies that specialize in providing that service. There are companies that specialize in backing up data that already lives in the cloud, as well. There are also hardware devices that specialize in backing up data to the cloud.
Cloud Backup Vs. Cloud Disaster Recovery
Cloud backup services can be used in the event of a disaster, but they may not provide all the same features that you would get from a disaster recovery plan. Users would need to mirror their entire servers within the cloud backup system to get that.
A cloud backup provider may also provide disaster recovery services, but this would entail more resources to accomplish.
Do You Need Cloud Backup Services?
Cloud backup is easy to use and affordable. It is also a reliable way to maintain access to your data in the event that it is lost. The loss of data can lead to downtime for your business and become significantly costly. By using the cloud, you are investing in a solution that can protect your business for the long term.
The backups are automatic and seamless and don’t require effort on your part to use. It’s also a secure backup that can be safer than most other options.
