Every company or business is aware it needs to safeguard its data and needs a backup and disaster recovery (BDR) plan in case of a crisis. However, do you want to keep your data, one of a company’s most valuable assets, close at hand onsite or keep it locked away offsite.
The answer is both.
An offsite BDR solution protects you against physical damage and cyberattacks. Physical damage could be a result of a natural disasters or accidents such as a fire or flood in the building. In such cases, an onsite backup might not be sufficient as it will most likely be destroyed.
Offsite data backups are in many cases the best defense against cyberattacks, especially involving ransomware as an onsite backup, which is likely connected to the ‘infected’ network, would also be affected. Whereas, an offsite backup would not be affected and could restore the network and have the business up and running again.
Although it sounds obvious to have your data backup offsite, onsite appliances have their benefits too. Datto Product Manager, Ian McChord, told MSPmentor that service providers should not ignore solutions with onsite applications for three reasons: Bandwidth, Recoverability and Downtime.
McChord explained that bandwidth has not developed to the level MSPs need it to be for backup services. He recommends a hybrid cloud model, a mix of onsite, private cloud and third party public cloud services, which would be able to backup images that normal software using the bandwidth would not be able to do directly to an off site network due to their size.
He added that local disasters are responsible for 95% of all company outages. A hybrid Cloud model allows companies affected by a local disaster to virtualise data from the latest backup point, without changing configurations, as it is an identical copy of the production machine. Additionally working off of a LAN connection allows for better performance than an internet connection.
The third, and maybe the most important of McChord’s reasons, was an onsite backup reduces downtime as the company is able to virtualise and restore files for a speedy recovery and leave full blown cloud recoveries for true crises.
With the implementation of onsite and offsite applications through hybrid cloud or other solutions, utilising the benefits of both applications is the way forward and can only be predicted to become increasingly popular as new cyber threats arise each year.
