Why Backup to The Cloud?

Backups have to get off-site in a reliable consistent way. Disasters like Hurricane Sandy are a good reminder of the importance of off-site data protection and how the lack of it can risk the business itself. Off-site protection is even more critical in this all digital age, there is no hard copy to fall back on.

Automated Off-Site Of Virtual Machines

For the SMB the cloud is an ideal location. It does not require setting up a second site nor does it require having to remember to take backups home with you. SMB IT administrators are already stretched too thin. Having them remember one less thing, especially something so important as getting data off-site, is important. With the cloud the move to off-site can be an automatic, natural extension of the backup process.

Geographic Separation From Production VMs

A VM Specific Backup product that integrates into the cloud gets data geographically away from the local disaster. Hurricane Sandy stands as a good example of why this is important. Data that was carried home, a classic SMB off-site strategy, was equally at risk. Even data that was replicated could be at risk because of the scope of this disaster. For example if data was replicated from New York to New Jersey it was still in the path of the storm. Only data that was cross regionally moved was safe. This is something that the cloud gives you naturally.

Anywhere, Anytime Access

If data is manually transported to an employee’s home or even to a secure storage area, even if that data is secure, getting access to that data may be difficult if not impossible, roads and rails maybe closed and unusable. In the cloud, as long as the IT Administrator can establish an internet connection recovery of the business can start from virtually anywhere.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership

The final advantage of the cloud is that it lowers the cost of ownership for the SMB. They don't have to maintain a secondary site nor do they have to buy enough storage in both sites to be able to keep a long term copy. With the cloud they can store just the most recent backups locally and the long term retention copies can all be stored in the cloud.

Solving The Cloud Security Barrier

Once moved to a public cloud, SMB data becomes vulnerable to a number of new threats, so protection of backups in the cloud becomes a #1 priority. Encryption of data in-flight and at the rest, a secure encryption method, and proper key management can ensure that cloud personnel and hackers cannot get access to SMB data.

Cloud Integration is Key

For the cloud to work well for the virtualized SMB the support of cloud storage has to be integrated into the product. Support of cloud as an afterthought makes the use of it less efficient and more complex, which drives up the overall TCO of the solutions. As we will discuss in our upcoming Webinar, "Using the Cloud To Solve VMware SMB Backup Problem".

NAKIVO is a client of Storage Switzerland

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