Expert view: What is the forecast for cloud backup? Even as the number of backup software and appliance vendors grows, cloud backups continue to be a source of confusion and contention. Like so many things in IT, the answer to "should you use a public cloud backup?” is the ever-annoying "it depends”. For some cloudy backup is an absolute no go. For others, there is clearly a …
"Aren't incremental backups just deduplication happening at the application (and file) level rather than at the driver/hardware (and block) level?"
An incremental backup is has this file changed since my last backup (could be from my last full or my last incremental which is where differential and cumulative come into play) but it does not take into account if you have backed the file up somewhere else already.
Deduplication is have I seen this file anywhere else before and if I have then I don't need to take another copy of the file (but metadata may still be created) and you can do an deduplicated full or a deduplicated incremental.
Within deduplication there are then a few ways that vendors operate ranging from file (single instance) to blocks to chunks (or a mix of more than one) but the backup "method" does not influence this.
The key to backup is not having all your eggs in one basket. If you look at how CodeSpaces just lost all their data on Amazon and closed down they had no plan B, everything was stored in one place.
Hybrid is definitely the way to go, just test the restore capability occasionally. We use the SyncDocs service to backup all our Google Drive and Apps data to our local servers. Not as pure as cloud-only, but we have business continuity if the Internet goes down.
It's dependant on scale, too, though.
IE an SMB has an SBS box with files and email.
Get three/five USB HDDs, do Windows Backup doing a full VSS system state and contents backup with incrementals - that way you have five backups giving potentially years of recovery options depending on how much data you have and how big your data is (obviously if you have 8tb of data this is unrealistic - most SMBs I work with have only a couple of TB tops).
You then rotate one or two disks offsite - that's your 'localised disaster proof' backup.
You can then use a cloud system as a tertiary backup - perhaps a weekly system state image (for AD, exchange etc) and a daily/hourly/pick your poison data backup.
that way, you can have a natural disaster where the whole town is flattened by a tornado/gas plant explosion etc, and you can still recover to a workable system state and have a 'recent enough' data set.
Once you get beyond portable HDD capacity I suppose it's tap or file array, with colocated file array (or if your primary data is in the cloud, use another cloud system to backup as it'll be usably fast to recover) but once it gets to that stage, I'm just not well enough versed in that sort of data set size to be very good at it. Virtualised stuff is also a bit alien to me, but I expect the concepts are simple enough with the right tools (using hypervisor aware backup tools etc).
Do fancy getting good at it though...anyone got any suggestions for self-learning Big Data Backup stuff? Just out of interest, like.
Steven R
Alright Trevor,
Yup, all of our maintenance customers - as their support contract (free hardware and software support based on regular retainer, etc - you know the schtick) is based around them running backups, including off-site and they do actually do it, believe it or not!
If they don't run backups (including offsite) we don't offer them support, simple as that - someone else can be forced to do long winded, expensive data recovery for them when their server craps out as far as we're concerned - engineer time recovering data can easily cover the cost of the maintenance contract, so it's a case of financial viability as much as anything else.
It's not nice to have to give a client a four figure bill to get their data back from the dead server on top of the cost of a new server as in those cases, that's often what's required. So we calmly explain that if you're not prepared to run backups, we're not prepared to offer you a support contract, simple as that.
People who use us but aren't on maintenance (IE where we are their preferred supplier) are a different kettle of fish, but even most of them have heard enough scary stories from us to implement even a basic system with one disk offsite.
We had a site where the whole office burned to the ground - the only thing that stopped the business going under was that they had one offsite backup disk. Nothing else. All their financial and transaction data was safe from the day before the fire. They got some portakabins, some new computers and a phone line and were back up and running in three days. Could have had them backup within 24 hours if they had an environment to run computers in within that timescale.
That business and it's fire is well known locally, it normally doesn't take much more than that story to convince someone to volunteer to take a backup disk home at night.
Obviously, if you have a 16tb NAS/SAN, then that's....trickier. Not had to deal with that as yet (most of our clients are small scale, when it comes to data) - one assumes a suitcase of tapes would be required, as I recall from working in a local authority many years ago...
Steven "So how would you get your data back if I threw a petrol bomb in your server room right now?" Raith
They're mostly pretty good, but I totally get what you mean - our business clients are about the only ones we can get to do proper backups of data, almost none of the private customers (IE your Aunt Mabel, that bloke your dad knows who uses a computer for his sole trader accounts, etc) run a backup of any kind, and of course, never think about it until their Windows installation lunches itself.
So I don't have it all my own way!
Surely the first and second questions must be how secure and how reliable do the backups need to be? There's no point having a transaction-by-transaction based 'backup' if it's unencrypted and unreliable and holds mission critical data such as patient or banking/financial information!
I'm undecided about the reliability of on-site vs. cloud. We have used a cloud backup for about three years. When making the decision, it was pointed out that they can probably do HA better than we do, and on down the line as far as more resources, dedicated purpose, etc. Our app does have a local server, which I insisted sit in a remote building. If the data center has a fire, the backups don't go with it. So the cloud site is DR for us in the case of a wider scale disaster such as a tornado. Our remote building is across the street so a tornado could take out both the main office and the remote building.
We have moved on from tape though. I realize tape still has it's place and will be around for a long time, but we haven't used tape for three years.
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