The cloud backup market is expected to expand with a compound annual growth of 23.4% and reach $6.82 billion by 2025. The growth of hybrid cloud adoption is an ongoing trend as more organizations use cloud solutions without discarding traditional on-site storage. Hybrid cloud configurations open new technological opportunities, enabling new services and improving production efficiency and data security for businesses worldwide.
However, the level of sophistication of cyberattacks is also growing, posing new data security challenges. Read this post to discover more about hybrid cloud backups and their advantages. Learn how to implement a hybrid cloud backup strategy and enhance your organization’s data resilience.
What Is a Hybrid Cloud Backup?
Hybrid cloud backup refers to the use of both local backups and cloud-based data backups in one strategy. An organization can send backup data to an on-site repository and simultaneously place a copy of that backup in cloud storage. In such combined systems, local backups can provide fast recovery, while cloud-based backups ensure redundancy and improved data control.
How do Hybrid Backups Work?
A thoroughly organized hybrid backup system has different types of storage integrated into a unified data protection management platform to streamline administration and maintenance. Organizations can then capitalize on the advantages of cloud storage yet continue to benefit from local repositories.
In case a local backup is unavailable due to a major failure (for instance, a successful ransomware attack), cloud backups remain usable and recoverable. On the other hand, local backups are there to restore data and production if issues with a web connection or cloud vendor’s infrastructure break access to off-site repositories.
Hybrid Cloud Backup Requirements and Considerations
Implementing hybrid cloud backups requires an appropriately organized IT infrastructure. Below are some key points to consider when planning your hybrid backup system.
First, you need a server and storage to fit local backups. To avoid production issues and backup failures, the hardware must provide sufficient performance with spare resources to overcome load spikes. Additionally, local storage volume and reliability must be enough to store backup data.
Second, you should calculate cloud investments thoroughly. Small and medium businesses have strict budget limits that become tighter with added cloud service payments. Enterprise organizations need to back up terabytes of data regularly and deal with the additional cost of cloud storage as their backups grow in size.
Third, bear in mind that your network load will increase. Both local and wide area networks must have enough bandwidth to enable fast backup to different destinations and swift recovery whenever required. To prevent backups from impacting the production network, you may also need to consider setting up a separate network for data protection workflows.
Fourth, you need to choose a backup and recovery solution. Not every solution available on the market can help you implement hybrid cloud backup strategies. Solutions that can do that also have varying feature sets, efficiency and costs.
Fifth, your IT team needs to maintain the system’s efficiency. A hybrid cloud backup strategy is more effective when employees have appropriate data protection expertise and training. Learning can take time, effort and resources, especially in case your infrastructure is ramified and multi-leveled.
Local Backup vs Cloud Backup vs Hybrid Cloud Backup
Understanding the differences between local, cloud and hybrid backup methods can help you decide on the backup strategy for your organization. Below we explain the pros and cons of all three backup strategies.
Local Backup
Local backup is the basic data protection method that is simple to implement. You need a local backup server connected to your organization’s network and a software solution running data protection workflows. Due to data flowing exclusively via LAN, this approach is the fastest for backup and recovery.
However, focusing on local backups can lead to data reliability and accessibility issues. Local backup servers and production workloads normally reside in the same or neighboring location as the production site. Although you can enhance cybersecurity to protect backup data, an emergency such as a power outage, ransomware attack or natural disaster can disable the entire local infrastructure and make recovery impossible.
Cloud Backup
Public cloud backup storage is remote, independent from the production site and can remain functional when the main server is down. This strategy is especially beneficial for SMBs as they don’t need to rent extra space and invest in hardware to run backups. Additionally, the cloud is available from anywhere with internet access, meaning that you can recover data on demand to any location.
Still, regardless of whether your cloud is private or public, you need a strong and stable connection to perform uninterrupted backup and recovery. Moreover, the third-party systems of cloud vendors can have security vulnerabilities that are beyond your control. A supply chain attack targeting your cloud vendor may block or delete your backup data and prevent recovery at the most unsuitable moment.
Hybrid Cloud Backup
Once again, a hybrid cloud backup approach gives the advantages of both local and cloud backup repositories and, at the same time, neutralizes both their weaknesses. On one hand, you have local storage with short backup windows and fast recovery for minimum downtime. On the other hand, if local backups are unreachable or unrecoverable, cloud backups are still there to support production continuity, data availability and regulatory compliance.
The main downside of a hybrid cloud strategy is the increased infrastructure complexity and management overhead. You need an IT staff experienced in both on-premise and cloud technologies to handle synchronization, data management and transfer across environments. More difficulties arise in case you use multiple public cloud providers to store backups.
Hybrid Cloud Backup Advantages
Implementing a hybrid cloud backup strategy can provide the following benefits:
- Scalability. Hybrid cloud backup offers scalability since you can increase cloud storage space as backup volumes grow. Additionally, extra storage capacity to use during peak demand periods allows you to upgrade hardware less frequently.
- Cost savings. Cloud storage normally uses the pay-as-you-go model enabling you to reduce upfront payment and maintenance expenses. You can focus on local infrastructure and use cloud resources only when required to optimize costs.
- Data reliability. A hybrid cloud backup strategy allows you to follow the 3–2–1 rule to eliminate a single point of failure and make data backups redundant. You then have recoverable backup copies in case data corruption, hardware failures or disasters occur either to your main site, network provider or cloud vendor’s infrastructure.
- Accessibility and compliance. Cloud backups enable authorized access to data from any location with an internet connection. Remote data availability can improve team cooperation between departments and allows you to timely react to regulatory compliance requests.
- Quick recovery. Use local backups when you need to recover data quickly while completing routine tasks. Cloud backups are your spare resource for disaster recovery. Combining the two options, you can ensure meeting RTOs in different disaster cases.
- Offsite protection. Sending backups to the cloud makes them safe from physical threats such as natural disasters, power outages or device malfunctions. Whenever an emergency causes failures at the main site with on-premises backups, data in the cloud remains recoverable.
- Data security enhancement. Cloud storage normally has advanced security features such as encryption and compliance certifications. Therefore, cloud backups can be more secure compared to traditional local backup approaches without those protection measures. Data immutability is another feature that you can use to prevent malware from modifying, corrupting and encrypting your cloud backups.
- Data mobility and workload management. With hybrid cloud backups, you can seamlessly move data between cloud and on-premise workloads. Consider using this flexibility advantage to implement efficient data migration strategies.
- Geographic distribution. An organization with multiple departments can benefit from centralized backup management due to cloud data accessibility. This improves team collaboration and disaster recovery efficiency. Also, geographically distributed data centers add data redundancy that can be critical if a cloud provider experiences, for instance, equipment failures.
Implementing a Hybrid Cloud Backup Strategy with NAKIVO
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides an all-in-one solution to implement hybrid cloud backup and recovery strategies for SMBs and enterprises. You can perform fast incremental backups of physical (Windows and Linux), virtual (VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV) and cloud workloads as well as SaaS data to on-site, off-site and cloud repositories. Full and granular recovery, along with the disaster recovery orchestration functionality, provide swift data restoration to ensure minimal downtime in different emergency scenarios.
The following features and functionalities can help you build an efficient hybrid cloud backup strategy that corresponds with your organization’s requirements:
- Multiple backup destinations — store backups locally and send them directly to cloud storage such as Amazon S3, Azure Blob, Backblaze B2 and other S3-compatible platforms to implement your hybrid cloud backup strategy.
- Centralized management — protect and manage data in public cloud, private cloud and on-premises from a single dashboard.
- Reliable automation — streamline backup and recovery workflows with Policy-Based Data Protection and Job Chaining to streamline workflow management across your data protection infrastructure.
- Immutable storage — enable immutability for local and cloud backups to prevent alteration, encryption or deletion by ransomware.
- Malware scan — ensure ransomware-free data by scanning backups for malware before recovery.
- Air-gapped storage — enhance data resilience even further by keeping backups offline or storing them on tape.
Conclusion
Hybrid cloud backup refers to the use of both local and cloud storage for data backups. Implementing a hybrid cloud backup strategy requires appropriate hardware, storage and network resources capable of providing the needed performance and bandwidth. The choice of a data protection solution is also critical to make the strategy efficient. A thoroughly implemented hybrid backup strategy can provide your organization with significant benefits such as scalability, data reliability, security, accessibility and compliance.
