Cloud backup –avoid it goes disruptive in its negative sense of the word…

Cloud-related offerings receive great media attention along major vendors trying to establish or rebrand themselves in the cloud space. How big is the cost to the business if core systems and transactions stored in the cloud can’t be restored successfully, let alone in due time?
Be cautious: storing server backups in the cloud requires frequent recoverability tests to ensure compliance.

As John Morency states, cloud computing was a major topic during Gartner’s recovery and continuity briefings in 2010. But the cloud should be embraced carefully.

Backup services running inside the cloud have dominated cloud offerings, since many existing technologies mainly needed rebranding to enter the cloud. Major vendors of enterprise backup software claim they (or their partner eco-system) offer cloud-based backup services since their technology already enables such market initiative.

For instance, IBM’s Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM), optimized for backup over the WAN, and supports the cloud quite naturally: policy driven backup and archive processes, optimized for server and application backup powered by the Internet puts TSM in a favorable position. For many years, IT centers have used TSM to fuel its remote backup / hosted backup offerings (predominantly SMBs looking for an outsourced offering with a cloud flavor). In Northern Europe, Internet- backup driven businesses using the TSM engine have grown at double-digits.

Embracing the cloud can provide many benefits to SMBs looking for ways of leveraging a tight budget. Rather than investing in an in-house backup platform, the cloud offers enterprise backup at a financially attractive profile. However, regardless of running backup services internally (in-hose) or externally (cloud), it’s mandatory to validate and ensure mission-critical server backups are restorable – and in due time. Even smaller changes to the primary servers can make the backup un-recoverable. The classic file restores are insufficient to prove server recoverability. Full server restores from the backup, stored locally or in the cloud, must be tested frequently.

Software tools like SMARTtsm from asensus offers automated server recovery processes. Alternatively manual processes should be considered to mitigate the business risks associated with incomplete server recovery testing.