Online Data Backup Lodi

A quick guide to online data backup services in Lodi

It probably won’t be too long before traditional data backups go the way of cassette players, videos, and film cameras. They may still find a niche amongst enthusiasts and hobbyists, but people who mean serious business will be using more modern alternatives. Rather like many updates to existing technology, online data backups work very similarly to traditional data backups, but they have their differences too. With that in mind, here is a quick guide to online data backup services in Lodi.

What Do You Know About Online Data Backup?

1. You need to think differently about “on-site” and “off-site”

With traditional data backups, on-site and off-site generally means exactly that. With online data backups, your backup may be physically off-site, as in away from your main place of business (assuming you have one), but it may function as an on-site copy because it’s stored in the cloud you use for your everyday operations. If you want a genuine off-site copy of your data (which is highly advisable) then you need to store your online data backup in a cloud that is both off-site with regards to your business premises and separate from your regular cloud.

2. Online data backups and disaster recovery

As a rule of thumb, with online data backups, you still want to stick with the 3-2-1 approach. That means you want three copies of your data over two clouds with one copy being held in your “off-site” cloud. For the most part, your local data backup will be used to deal with minor local issues (such as accidental deletions of the production copy) and the off-site data backup will be used for more major ones including disaster recovery.

Be aware, however, that it takes more than just an online data backup to create a cloud disaster recovery solution. You also need to add the tools required to work with the data, such as an operating system and applications.

If you’re in a public cloud and taking an online data backup to a second public cloud then it is likely to be very straightforward to take that one step further and build a complete cloud disaster recovery solution.

If you’re in a data center, then you can at least use the public cloud to store your online data backups (if necessary keeping them encrypted the whole time) and use the internet to transport your data between your main data center and your disaster recovery solution, which will presumably be another data center. In the old days, this was considered questionable due to the possibility of internet outages, but these days it’s probably safer than relying on the roads, especially in urban areas such as Lodi.

3. Online Data Backup In Private Cloud Services

If you’re in a private cloud, then the situation becomes more interesting. You have three main options.

Store your online data backups in a second private cloud which you use as your disaster recovery location.

Store your online data backups (encrypted) in the public cloud and link that public cloud platform to your main private cloud and to a second private cloud that you use as your disaster recovery location.

Store your online data backups (encrypted) in the public cloud and decrypt them in the public cloud if you ever need to use them as a disaster recovery location.

Options one and two may be fairly obvious, but, even if you’re in a regulated industry, you might want to look at option three and see whether it is feasible for you now or, if not, whether it could be feasible for you in the foreseeable future.

Private clouds offer the highest level of customization and, in principle, also the highest level of privacy (although in practice this depends on how well you manage them). They are, however, also the most expensive option. Even if companies are at least fairly happy to swallow this expense for their everyday solution, they might prefer to look for more affordable options for solutions they will only use occasionally. 

Using a private cloud as a place to store online data backups is likely to be more economical than storing them in a second private cloud, but it does make for more complicated architecture and it can slow down your recovery because you have to send the data from the public cloud to your private cloud. 

Using a public cloud both to store your online data backups and as a disaster recovery solution is certainly cost-effective and can be more convenient than sorting out the architecture to transport data between three different clouds (two private and one public). It also makes for quick recoveries since you just have to decrypt your data in the public cloud and get to work.

If you’d like to speak to a reputable and experienced online data backup services provider in Lodi, please click here now to contact Aperio. IT.