Things to Consider Before Moving From Tape to Cloud Storage

The cost of storing and backing up data online has dropped dramatically within the last year. As a result, many companies and organizations are reassessing the methods they use for backing up and safely storing data. Just like any other form of data backup there are things you have to consider before making the decision to change your backup plan.

If you are considering moving to cloud storage for backing up and securing data here are a few things you should consider before making the move.

Security Risks

If you use online data storage, the data is transmitted through an encrypted tunnel to a secured data center. While this eliminates security risks that are associated with tape storage and backup, one must consider what is in store for the future when it comes to cyber criminal activity and cloud storage.

The stakes are even higher if you are storing data for a business. Although conventional online storage is fairly safe, if your business grows, hackers and cyber criminals have more of an incentive to tamper with your data.

That is why it is important for anyone, whether or not they own a business, who wants a large amount of information to be stored and protected, to consider utilizing a data center. These centers allow you to store as much data as you need, offer an unbeatable level of protection, and boast data transport speeds of roughly 10Gbps.

Recovery Time

As opposed to the time it takes to recover data through cold or warm backup sites, data recovery online can be accomplished instantly and without any down time associated with retrieving and loading backup tapes.

Reliability

While there are many ways that tape backups can fail, cloud storage provides unmatched reliability because the hard drives are configured with a redundant array of independent disks (RAID) which stores the data on multiple hard disks. By placing data on multiple hard disks, operations can interact with each other in a more balanced way which improves reliability and performance.

With tape style backup configurations, the upload speeds are slower than online storage backup which limits the amount of data you can backup in one day. Higher end cloud storage services offer faster upload options which allow organizations to backup more data on a daily basis.

Cost

With tape backup storage, companies and organizations have the expense of added hardware, maintenance, personnel, and offsite storage. With online data storage, companies can access storage for as little as $1 per gigabyte of storage space.

Automatic Backup

Instead of dealing with all of the hassles involved with tape backups, companies can simply map the cloud storage to a location on their server which allows data backup to be automated without any user interaction with the backup process.

While cloud storage provides an easier way to backup and store sensitive data in a more cost effective way, before moving to this method of storage it is necessary to investigate the cloud storage provider to find out what security measures they have in place for storing and encrypting data, and if they enforce strict policies on who has access to the data. It is also important to review their reputation and track record with other companies and organizations that use their cloud storage services.

(0 Comments)