​Traditional Backup Or Disaster Recovery Solutions?

More and more businesses are embracing Data Recovery as a Service (DRaaS), as cloud solutions are trending. However, is it really the way to go? Let’s see how it holds up against the traditional backup methods.

Traditional DR Methods

Traditional DR methods typically use magnetic tapes or disks as the primary storage. However, since magnetic tapes are pretty much non-existent in today’s IT industry, we will consider just the magnetic disks, or the hard-drive disks here.

Daily Data Backup

In every data backup method, whether traditional or modern, it is important to backup your data on a daily basis. While backing up data on a daily basis is a challenge in itself, if and when needed, restoration could also pose difficulties. Depending on the size of the entire backup, full restoration can take hours. In some cases, problems may also emerge because the recovery environment must be identical to the backup environment.

Mirrored Physical Servers

Using mirrored servers is a much better option for going the traditional way. Every single change in the data on your side is mirrored to an off-site server. For instance, if you add a new entry on the database in your office, it will be copied to the database stored in the server.
While mirrored physical servers are a good option, both in terms of reliability and also in terms of time (as no restoration is required with them), their costs could be a bit higher. Not only you have to make a huge investment initially for buying decent hardware, cooling systems, and data mobility, and security systems, but also you will need to spend a portion of your monthly cashflow for meeting the operational and maintenance costs.

Cloud Based Data Recovery Methods

Cloud based data recovery methods are becoming popular for two big reasons- they are simpler, and they are inexpensive.
While there is nothing wrong having an in-house cloud system, you can enjoy even more benefits by partnering up with an MSP that specialises in cloud backup and disaster recovery services.

Comfort

An experienced cloud service provider can provide you top-tier cloud backup solutions at affordable prices. Everything from IT standards compliance to data-breach protection, and business continuity to complete virtualization will be taken care of by them. With a major aspect of business, i.e. data protection, out of the list of things to worry about, you can focus your energy and time on other important areas.

Scalability

While your current backup system is working fine, will it work for you when your data grows in a few years from now? As your business scales up, you will need to scale up your data recovery system, too. If you are using a cloud backup service for your data protection, then scalability is never a problem. In fact, you also get to enjoy upgraded security measures, as most service providers upgrade their hardware and software regularly.