Data backup storage West Sacramento

Data backup storage West Sacramento2020-04-23T10:11:08+00:00

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A quick guide to data backup storage in West Sacramento

All businesses need a robust data backup strategy. A fundamental part of that is choosing the right form(s) of data backup storage for your needs. With this in mind, here is a quick guide to data backup storage in West Sacramento.

Data backup in the cloud 

If you’re already in the cloud then it makes sense to use the cloud as your data backup storage medium. Your “local” backup will be to your “local” cloud (which, these days, is very likely to be located away from your main place of work). Your “off-site” backup will, therefore, be to another cloud.

Regardless of whether you usually work in a public cloud or a private cloud, the public cloud is generally the most sensible option for data backup storage. If you’re in the public cloud, then you’re obviously happy to work with your data in a public cloud. If you’re in a private cloud, you can almost certainly use the public cloud for data backup storage. You may or may not be able to work with it in the public cloud.

Data backup storage and disaster recovery 

For the most part, locally-held data backups are used to remedy minor issues, like accidental deletions or data corruption caused by hardware failures. Off-site data backups, by contrast, tend to be used mostly in business continuity and/or disaster recovery situations.

If you are in the public cloud, it may be tempting to think of these as someone else’s problem and while that may, technically be true, you need an off-site data backup anyway (to protect against threats caused by misuse of your accesses, whether that be accidental or malicious). That means you already have a lot of what you need for a business continuity/disaster recovery solution, so it arguably makes sense just to take the extra step so you have a Plan B ready to go if you ever need it.

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If you’re in the private cloud, then, in principle, you could keep a second private cloud on standby and also use it as data backup storage. In fact, this would usually be your best option if you had extremely sensitive data and valued speed of recovery above all other considerations and were prepared to pay what it took to get your data back online as quickly as possible. In general, however, this approach would be far too expensive for most SMBs.

There are, however, two alternatives. One is to use the public cloud simply for data backup storage and move your data to your business continuity/disaster recovery cloud on an “as needed” basis. This would slow down your recovery somewhat, due to the need to move the data before you could start work, but would be much more economical. The other would be simply to use the public cloud as your business continuity/disaster recovery solution.

 

You would need to check the legal situation carefully, but it is increasingly common for public clouds to be able to comply with data protection legislation and compliance programs. This might not be anything like enough to tempt you to use them as your main solutions, but it could be enough to make them viable for use in business continuity/disaster recovery situations.


Data backup storage West Sacramento

If you’re in a data center 

If you’re in a data center, then you’re going to need to choose the right form of physical storage for your local data backup. Then you’re going to have to choose between physical storage and the cloud for your off-site data backup. This could then feed into your choice of business continuity/disaster recovery solution.

For practical purposes, your choice of physical storage is either hard drives or tapes. If you’re creating a data backup from scratch, then hard drives may be the better option purely because they are less expensive to implement. If you go for tapes, you will need to buy extra hardware such as tape drives, which increases your upfront costs, although, over time, tapes do work out as a very economical solution.

If you are going to go for tapes, then you might want to consider using a “disk-to-tape” approach. This means that you run your data through an SSD before putting it onto the tape. The SSD not only acts as a buffer (thus helping to alleviate the slowness of tapes) but also cleans and compresses the data. Taken together, this results in a significant performance improvement over tapes alone at a much lower cost than using SSDs alone.

For your off-site storage, you need to decide whether your priority is maximum security or maximum speed and convenience. If it’s the former, then physical storage is the better option and if it’s the latter then the cloud is the clear winner.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced data backup storage partner in West Sacramento, please click here now to contact Salient IT.

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