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What you need to know about data backup storage in Placerville
Data is one of the most essential resources in business. This means that protecting it has to be one of the highest priorities of any organization. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to what you need to know about data backup storage in Placerville.
The less data you have the less storage you need
While this point is particularly relevant to companies in the cloud, it also applies to companies buying their own physical storage. Minimizing the data you collect/generate and store (as much as you reasonably can) is the most obvious way to minimize the cost of data backup storage. It also makes for greater efficiency in general which brings additional benefits, including financial ones.
It makes sense to separate data backups from data archiving
A lot of traditional IT boundaries are becoming increasingly blurred. In many ways, this is a simple natural progression and can even be beneficial. At times, however, it does help to draw a hard line and the issue of data backups versus data archiving is arguably one of them.
The purpose of a data backup is to get you back into production. This means that a data backup should only contain data that supports your productivity. Dormant data is data that is not in use, therefore it does not support your productivity, therefore it should not be in your production systems or your data backups. If you must keep it (for example to satisfy compliance regulations), then keep it in a separate system. This saves cost, time, and potential confusion.
If you’re already in the cloud, it makes sense to use the cloud for data backup storage
If you’re already in a cloud (public or private) then your local backup will, by definition, be to the cloud. In principle, you can take your off-site data backup to physical storage. In practice, doing so would create numerous complications and cause you to lose much of the benefit of being in the cloud without replacing this benefit with other advantages. This means that sticking with the cloud is almost always the most sensible option.
In fact, regardless of whether your regular cloud is public or private, the public cloud is generally the most sensible choice of data backup storage location. If you’re in the public cloud already, then you simply need to look for a second provider that meets (or exceeds) your minimum standards.
If you’re in a private cloud then you will almost certainly be able to use a public cloud as a data backup storage location. You may, however, have to keep your data encrypted until it is either used or deleted. On the other hand, you may not. The mainstream public cloud providers are increasingly likely to be able to comply with the major data protection laws and compliance programs. It could be well worth checking, especially if you are on a tight budget, as this could offer a very cost-effective business continuity/disaster recovery solution.
If you run your own data center, you can still use the public cloud for off-site storage
In a data center, you’ll take your local data backup to physical storage. For your off-site data backup, you have the choice between physical storage and the cloud. If you want total protection from cyberattacks, then physical storage is your only option. If, however, you want to minimize your recovery time (while still maintaining a very high level of security), then the cloud is your better option. It’s important to consider this question carefully as the loss of productivity is also a business threat.
In a data center, your local backup will be either to tape or to hard drive
Consumers have a wide variety of options for backing up their data to physical media. In the SMB environment, however, there are only two which make practical sense and these are tapes and hard drives. If you have plenty of budget, you might want to add SSDs, but these will probably have to come down in price significantly before the average SMB could seriously consider them as their main storage solution.
Tapes require a significant upfront investment in supporting hardware (such as tape drives). Over the long term, however, they are very economical. They are also very robust. Unfortunately, they are also very slow and cannot be searched easily. The speed issue can be alleviated by partnering them with SSDs, which buffer clean and compress data before forwarding it to tape.
Hard drives are much more affordable to implement and much faster than tapes. Unfortunately, they are not particularly robust. In fact, they are notoriously prone to failure at the best of times and particularly vulnerable to any form of rough handling, for example during transit.
If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced data backup storage partner in Placerville, please click here now to contact Salient IT.
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