The Cloud-y State of Backup
Backup has always been a problem. The biggest problem is not backing up and most of us have felt that (Doh!).
Even when you back up it doesn't always equal restore. Sometimes the backup is corrupted, and just not usable. Other times it is out of date, so the recent data you really need was never duplicated to begin with. And in the best of cases, your restore can take precious business hours or days.
The cloud may, and I mean may, change that. If backup and hopefully restore are all that vendor does, they ought to be good at it. And all that data should be resting comfortably in the ether waiting for you to call it up.
My guess is that cloud backup should be your last tier and one should have a backup of the cloud backup that is nearer to your data center.
For me, I use Carbonite for personal backup and it is nice to know that so long as the company is in business, all my files are a click or two away.
For more on the changing world of backup, check out this report.
Posted by Doug Barney on 03/13/2012 at 4:59 PM