Cloud Backups & Disaster Recovery- Why You Need Both?
Incidents of data loss such as cyberattacks, natural disasters,malware, human error and more have significantly increased and without any data protection, it is only a matter of time before your business becomes the next target. However, having a single cloud backup solution is not enough, you need Disaster Recovery (DR) as well and this article will explain why.
Why Do You Need Both Cloud Backup & Disaster Recovery?
It is important to note that just having a disaster recovery plan and cloud backup is not enough. These systems need to be tested for speed and reliability. Your system also needs to be immutable which prevents changes to an object after its creation. This ensures that your backup is a truesnap shot of your data at any point in time.
Having said that, just as the data is important, the time it takes to recover that data is also very important as this directly links to business continuity. Mitigating downtime is the difference between your business going down for a few minutes and your business being down for days.
Difference Between Cloud Backups & Disaster Recovery
Cloud backups are basically the essential files of data that are stored on the cloud and enable full restore. In simpler terms, backing up refers to the actual copies of data being backed up to the cloud. The process by which the backups are created can vary from vendor to vendor but the conceptis the same.
Virtualization has replaced tape backups with replication,snapshots and live migrations. Snapshots protect data and enable quick restores.
Furthermore, every backup solution is measured on its Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). The lesser these times are, the more efficient the solution is.
If we talk about disaster recovery, it includes having a full strategy for responding to a disaster event (which can be ransomware or any other natural disaster) and putting the backups into action. DR is basically an umbrella under which backups reside.
Creating a Cloud Disaster Recovery Plan is Important
Creating a cloud disaster recovery plan is just as important as backups and DR itself. Remember, many businesses without a DR plan fail after a disastrous event. Creating a cloud disaster recovery plan beforehand can help your team to know exactly what steps should be taken to ensure efficient recovery of data. A cloud disaster recovery plan will also enable you to meet your RTOs and RPOs goals. This makes it critical to create a cloud disaster recovery plan beforehand.
Conclusion
Both cloud backups and disaster recovery are important in order to ensure reliable data protection and efficient recovery of data, and should be included in your cloud disaster recovery plan. This way, you can reduce your RTOs and RPOs and can get reliable data protection as well.