2. 1. Data security
If you’re thinking about a switch to the cloud, security is likely your top concern.
You’ve no doubt read numerous articles assuring you that the cloud is perfectly
safe, but the reality is that not all clouds are created equal when it comes to
security. Understand the practices of your cloud provider and insist on the
tightest security possible. Look for these features:
3. 2. Data transfer efficiency
Going to the cloud shouldn’t mean massive upgrades in infrastructure. A data
protection program written for the cloud from the beginning can benefit you
greatly because it takes bandwidth utilization into consideration. Most cloud
backup programs get this right – they minimize data transfer sizes by using
client-side reduplication prior to sending the data over the wire, and only send
changed blocks of data. The data transferred should be compressed and sent over
a parallel TCP transport.
4. 3. Storage footprint management
Most businesses need to retain their data for longer than one week.
However, after seven days, they only need to maintain one backup a week for
the month. Automatically aging the data and managing retentions can mean huge
storage savings. Test the cloud protect, solution, measuring the growth of your
storage footprint over time.
5. 4. Recovery procedures
Getting to your data should be seamless. You should always have access to your
data and teams who can help recover it. No single point of failure in the data
protection architecture. Assistance with recovery, including physical shipment of
your data. You should be able to recover to dissimilar hardware, to physical and
to virtual.
6. 5. Resource consumption
Your data footprint should be small everywhere onsite, on the wire, in the cloud.
We don’t like to talk Big Data when we talk about backup. Don’t be forced into
buying more equipment just to keep a cache of your backup data onsite. Use your
existing hardware and deploy the cache as a virtual machine.
Security, efficiency, fast recovery, and low resource consumption – key attributes
to consider when choosing a cloud backup solution
