Incorporating Cloud into Backup - The Right Way by Aravindan Anandan, Consulting System Engineer, Asia Pacific, Barracuda Networks

Cloud Backup? Only If You Do It Right!

In many ways backup is the perfect use case for cloud. Moving a business critical application to cloud carries a lot of perceived risk, but using cloud as store for backup data that is rarely going to be actually used in production makes a lot of sense.
 
It carries far less perceived risk than actually running an application in the cloud and it automates the process of getting your backup data off-site.
 
In theory it also automates the backup process which many companies find overly complex and time consuming when handled on site.
 
In truth cloud and backup is not so clear cut. The “easy” and straight forward logic I describe above often does not play out in practice. For me the starting point when it comes to cloud and backup is understanding what your own backup and recovery needs are as dictated by your business and then to consider the various strength and weaknesses of cloud as they relate to your companies own data protection requirements.
 
The key elements that must be considered are application awareness and consistency, cost of archive, speed of recovery.
 
Many of the Backup as a Service solutions that exist are relatively simple but they usually lack the power of traditional on premise backup solutions. They lack features like application awareness and granular application recovery. The critical thing that can be overlooked is just how long it can take retrieve data from the cloud in an emergency recovery situation. These are important considerations. For some the latency of recovering data from a cloud is acceptable, and that fine. However in many cases when I review this issue with potential clients it becomes a big hole in the attractiveness of cloud based backup solutions.
 
This is where Barracuda’s unique appliance based approach can deliver significant benefits. By having a purpose built backup appliance on site, you make no compromise what-so-ever on backup functionality. Our appliance also enables you cache your most recent backups on disk on your premise.
 
Given that over 80% of all data recovery is retrieved from data backed up in the last 48 hours, this cache solves almost all recovery latency issues, and then finally our appliance links to Barracuda’s own secure cloud to archive older backups our to an unlimited and always expandable cloud storage. This uses cloud the right way moving older backups to this low cost medium. When and if older backups need to be retrieved it is rare that the recovery process is highly time critical and as such the latency of cloud becomes acceptable.
 
In addition there are other critical factors that need to be factored in. Is your cloud backup hypervisor aware with support for VMware and Hyper V? Is it application aware with granular protection for Exgange, SQL and other major applications?  Importantly does a cloud backup solution give you flexibility to keep some backup onsite and at your own locations?
 
The underlying truth about backup and cloud is that it has to be trade off. It is exceptionally rare that moving the whole process to cloud will deliver the SLAs that your business needs. A hybrid approach to cloud backup which retains and benefits from the relatives strengths of both on Premise and Cloud has ultimately proved to be the right way to go in every use case I have come across.