4 Clouds better than 2

There seems to be something pervasive going on at the moment and that is the concept that the more replications of data in the cloud the better as it will somehow protect the data from loss. Well, maybe not. Why? I hear you ask. It simply not a sound strategy (in and of itself) to ensure protection of the data from replication or corruption (be it by ransomware, malicious insider attack or other IT cock-up). The 3-2-1-1-0 rule is what good backup regime should be managed on – 3 copies of the data, 2 different media at least, 1 on-site(prem), 1 off-site (cloud or other physical) and 0 errors confirmed in the data backed up.

Being slightly old school, I’m still an advocate of tape backup (some of you remember the yellow write protect rings you could pull out of the reel). The technology has moved on hugely, allowing storing of large data volumes. Don’t get me wrong, Cloud has its place and is massively convenient for organisations, however knowing I have a copy stored that cannot be over-written is kind of reassuring.

It seems that organisations think their data is secure in the cloud, no matter what and that it’s up to the cloud vendor to ensure their data is protected / backed-up. Well, there is no doubt that the big three have world-class data protection, however it is there for their service provision and if they do actually lose your data, there is not much you can do about it – where is your own copy of your own data? (erm, the recycle bin is good for 30 days).

Other issues are floating up with the cloud – initial data upload constraints for large volumes of data,  duration of backups when everyone else is running the backups to the same provider, cost of egression of data when the contract ends or you want to switch to another cloud. Lastly, the risk of getting locked-in and not having the flexibility to move away from the vendor as your business needs evolve.

So, what’s the upshot, at the very least have a backup regime that is not wholly reliant on the cloud, i.e. a hybrid solution which is a mixture of on-prem (physical) and / or multi-cloud supported by an Enterprise backup software solution that delivers the capability to keep you in control of your backups.

For a more in-depth look at creating a cloud backup strategy  take a look at this blog article here.