Cloud Strategies for Backup and Disaster Recovery

Today, every backup and recovery strategy should include the cloud. You never know what kind of disaster might affect your business—or how—so it’s wise to take advantage of every available solution to protect your data and reduce downtime. But what exactly is the right cloud strategy for you? Let’s look at five different levels of protection businesses often adopt.

File and Folder Cloud Syncing

If all you’re doing is syncing data in the cloud using productivity tools—like G Suite or Microsoft 365—you probably need more protection for your users. As we’ve explored in an earlier post, there are a few things a cloud syncing option does well, like saving you money and preventing some data loss. But, say someone deletes something by accident. After 30 days that data could be gone forever. Your data needs more protection.

File and Folder Syncing + Cloud Backup 

If your team uses Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) or Microsoft 365, you can use a solution like StorageCraft Cloud Backup for added data protection. This approach backs up all the data your users create on these platforms and let you set your own retention policies. That gives users the ability to recover files they may have accidentally deleted—even beyond 30 days. That’s a step in the right direction, but what about the data generated outside of Google Workspace or Microsoft 365?

Cloud Backup Storage

The next level is basic data protection of data generated onsite, outside of Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, leveraging both on-premises backups and the cloud. That helps businesses follow StorageCraft’s take on the traditional 3-2-1 backup rule, which is a great model for ensuring data protection. First, you’ll take consistent image-based backups of your machines and create two copies. One copy is kept near the endpoint and another offsite or at least off-network. The third should be with a cloud vendor like StorageCraft. That keeps data safe—even if your local copies fail or are destroyed. This approach helps reduce data loss, but what about costly downtime?

Virtualization in the Cloud

With your local and cloud backups safe and secure, you’re off to a good start. The next layer builds on the previous one by adding virtual cloud failover. Now, not only is your data protected, but you also have fast recovery options if something goes wrong. That means less data loss and minimal downtime.

Cloud Virtualization + Mirroring

For critical data—or just to ensure maximum redundancy—some businesses build on the previous steps we’ve outlined by mirroring data to geographically disparate data centers, too. Instead of having a few local copies and a single cloud copy of their data, these businesses have multiple copies so it’s safe no matter what happens.

Getting Maximum Protection

Your business’s cloud backup and disaster recovery strategy will depend on your unique recovery objectives, your risks, and your budget. To find the most comprehensive data protections for your business schedule a demo with a StorageCraft sales engineer who can walk you through your custom options.