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Exploring Cloud Backup Options: A List of Considerations

Three Options for Cloud Backup

1. Porting On-Prem Solutions to the Cloud

It may be tempting to try porting over an on-premises backup system to the cloud, mainly due to your organization’s familiarity with the hardware and system. But this would defeat the purpose of moving to the cloud altogether. Backup solutions designed for on-premises backup don’t leverage cloud services to their full potential because these solutions were specifically made to run on a rigid physical infrastructure, which is less flexible and requires more pre-planning as user requirements change.

Porting over backup solutions from a data center to the cloud will result in two key problems:

Inefficient Architecture: Even if you were to take a “lift and shift” approach and emulate the physical hardware with Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) components like AWS’ EC2 virtual machines and EBS volumes for virtual hard drives, you will not achieve any independent scaling of compute and storage. Instead, you’d have to size the backup data precisely and continually tweak AWS resources manually to accommodate the changing backup requirements. This would create an unnecessarily complex backup system with unpredictable costs—all while completely failing to leverage the agility of the cloud.

Compute Scale limitations: In the data center, compute is constantly running and has a fixed cost, but the cloud is just the opposite. Cloud compute is consumed on-demand, and you pay for each compute cycle. Backup solutions designed for on-premises use do not make full use of the cloud’s scaling abilities, causing unnecessary delays due to lack of bandwidth.

2. Using off-the-shelf cloud-native tools (such as snapshots) or DIY script-based solutions

There are some backup solutions whose approach is based on building a wrapper around the standard snapshot API that is native on that particular cloud platform. While this solution will work, and typically comes with an intuitive UI, it doesn’t provide a comprehensive data protection solution.

First, it’s difficult to automate global policy-based backups. It can also be time-consuming to locate the right snapshot to restore. This approach is also more vulnerable, mainly because snapshots are generally stored locally and close to the primary application.

Although some may choose to develop complex scripts to mitigate some of these deficiencies, there still remains a risk of human errors and corrupt scripts, not to mention the need to continually devote valuable IT resources to the creation and upkeep of these scripts.

3. A cloud-native solution specifically designed for the cloud

Pairing a cloud-native backup solution with the cloud itself means that it can take full advantage of the scalability and agility of the cloud—two of the main reasons for migrating to the cloud in the first place.

With this approach, there is no need to install additional software, manage cloud resources, or install agents in the customer’s account. There is no upfront complex planning required as the solution elastically scales to meet the data protection needs of the applications. A well-designed solution also ensures that the backup copies are stored outside the security sphere of the primary data.

This creates an air gap between the primary data and the backups to ensure a successful recovery when the primary data is compromised. Additionally, an ideal cloud-native backup solution should also enable users to quickly search through backups to locate and retrieve data, as well as provide helpful tools such as dashboards and reporting to be on top of your compliance needs.

Although a cloud-native backup makes the most sense in terms of performance, data protection, and visibility into data, not all cloud-native solutions are created equal and users need to carefully select a solution that delivers on the key functionalities mentioned above.

The Industry’s Best AWS Cloud Backup Solution

Built natively in AWS, Clumio’s backup solution provides superior scalability, performance, cost efficiencies, data protection, and faster access to innovation made possible by the cloud, all while solving issues common in other cloud backup solutions.

Protection From Ransomware

Clumio provides comprehensive data protection against growing threats like ransomware and bad actors via air-gapped and immutable backups that are stored outside of the customer’s security sphere. Both data at rest and data in transit are end-to-end encrypted.

Hands-Off Compliance

Compliance has become increasingly complicated as more jurisdictions implement their own versions of data retention laws. Clumio mitigates complexity and exposure to compliance violations with a simple interface. Clumio provides a single, cohesive view of all AWS assets and automatically indexes any resources that require compliance protection with uniform policies, along with simplified reporting for compliance audits. And that’s just the start.

Rapid Recovery with Global Search

Clumio’s interface utilizes a granular approach that can quickly locate and restore backup files, effectively reducing restore time from several hours to just minutes. This helps to ensure optimal business continuity in the event of downtime from a security event.

No More Data Bottlenecks

Clumio utilizes AWS serverless Lambda functions and the unlimited scalability of the cloud to sidestep process tiers and transport data directly into highly scalable and durable object storage. This enables Clumio to scale as needed to meet application demands quickly.

Cost Controls

Clumio’s advanced analytics and simulations include several cost control features that can provide clear, actionable insights into possible ways to reduce TCO. For example, by analyzing aspects like snapshots created per asset and their retention periods, Clumio can identify opportunities to cut back on certain snapshots and reduce AWS backup costs.