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The cloud has taken the IT world by storm. With the cloud, organizations get a one-stop solution to all their computation needs without having to invest in expensive data centers. The cloud is inexpensive, flexible, and highly scalable. Organizations are constantly virtualizing their existing workloads to hone the efficiency of the cloud. The cloud is still evolving and newer features keep getting added to the already impressive portfolio of the cloud. However, backing up the servers and data remains essential even if you move to the cloud.

Server farm

Why Do You Need Backups?

Backing up data has always been very important for any organization irrespective of its size. Data stored locally in the data centers can be lost due to natural calamities, technical glitches, data corruption, or human intervention. The loss of data can prove fatal to any organization. It can lead to lowered revenue, lack of client trust, and can irrevocably hurt an organization’s reputation. All of this can cause an organization to go out of business. But this can easily be prevented with the help of backups. The task of backing up your servers should be taken seriously. Organizations should back their data up to quickly get up and running when they encounter any issue that leads to a loss of data. 

You may also enjoy: Why Your Business Needs to Backup the Database

In the world of cloud today, organizations may think they should move away from physical storage like tape and legacy servers in favor of modern cloud-based servers. This is not true. Backups are not just limited to cloud servers, organizations moving to the cloud should also back up their data center and all related legacy storage. 

It’s a common belief among enterprises that their cloud data is safe. However, cloud data is also prone to data loss which can be caused due to sudden outage or corruption. Organizations should try to back up their cloud data using purpose-built data backup solutions. Some of these solutions support the backup of cloud data alongside traditional data like tape. Some solutions also offer replication that lets you keep several copies of your backup so that you can use them if your primary backup gets corrupted. 

Data backup

Invest in Backup Solutions

Physical data can be backed up in two ways; manually and through a software solution. Manual data backups are time-consuming and prevent IT personnel from focusing on more important tasks. Another issue with manual backups is the increased risk of error. Legacy backup solutions were a relief for organizations in the past, however, they have gotten obsolete as they are slow and require a lot of administration. The recovery requires an agent and there’s no guarantee that the recovery will be successful. Legacy backup solutions don’t cover virtualized workloads. 

Today, organizations can simply invest in modern backup solutions to help with all their backup needs. These solutions can make backing up your data at defined intervals and to a remote site a breeze. Organizations can configure these tools based on their own backup strategy. Ideal backup storage will provide incremental backup. Incremental backups are more efficient and much faster as only the changes made since the previous backup get backed up. Other than this, backup solutions also help organizations cut expenses and can be leveraged on a monthly subscription. 

Let’s take a look at some of these solutions.

Acronis True Image 

Acronis True Image is an extensive solution that takes care of enterprise and personal data. Acronis offers solutions for mobile devices and your cloud and physical servers. With Acronis, get quicker backups that can be restored to a completely different set of hardware without any compatibility issue with the help of it’s Universal Restore Technology. Other than this, Acronis can help you backup your data and send it to a secure local drive and the cloud simultaneously. Acronis also clones and mirrors your data with ease. Acronis True Image also comes with an anti-ransomware feature that detects unauthorized encryption of your hard drive and reverses it. Acronis come with a centralized UI that helps you efficiently manage your backups. You can get Acronis True Image for a one-time payment of $49, but that comes without any cloud storage. To get the cloud storage, you need an annual subscription of $49 which gives 250GB of cloud storage.

NetWorker

Networker is an offering by Dell that takes care of all your backup needs. It’s fast and reliable and gets you up and running in no time. Irrespective of the workload, cloud-based or on-premises, Networker helps you store and recover your data efficiently. It provides a unified set of tools to help protect your data. Networker also provides deduplication so that backups don’t take up more space than they should. Networker provides users with the same kind of experience whether it’s used for the cloud or local data centers. This backup solution also provides features like backup-to-cloud, backup-to-drive, LTR to cloud, and replication and snapshot management that can be managed from a simple UI.

Nakivo Backup and Replication 

Nakivo Backup and Replication is another efficient backup solution that simplifies backup and recovery. In its most recent v9.1 release Nakivo has introduced backup of Linux physical machines to the cloud. It also does tape backup, which is still a big need for enterprises that have been using tape as a reliable storage method for many decades now.  

Nakivo is extremely fast and provides you features like backup to the cloud, backup copy, backup size-reduction, and many others. Nakivo helps users backup their Linux and Windows servers, AWS EC2 instances, their Hyper V and VMWare data. This solution provides image-based, application-aware, and incremental backups that are easy to manage and guarantee a smooth recovery. This solution ignores swap files and uses deduplication to get rid of unnecessary data before compressing it to ensure that backups take up the least possible storage. Nakivo allows for policy-based data protection based on VM name, tags, and location among other attributes. Nakivo also allows you to automate your recovery and test it without disrupting other tasks. 

Finally, it’s crucial to any business that its data is constantly backed up and available no matter how modern or how legacy it is. To get the widest possible backup options, you should invest in a solution that offers backup for the widest range of storage devices — cloud, physical machines, or tape data. At the end of the day, your data is your business.

Further Reading

Assessing Cloud Backup Solutions: AWS vs. Azure vs. Google Cloud 

Best Practices for Effective Cloud Migration

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