Cloud Backup or Physical Backup Appliance: Which is best for you?

There are so many public cloud service providers that it almost feels like there’s an infinite amount. When thinking about backup, the market preference has moved from backup appliances to cloud backup. It makes pretty good sense too; backups in the cloud are cost effective and really simple to setup. However, that’s just the prettier picture.

When it comes to solutions like storage, backup and disaster recovery; the truth is: "One size does not fit all". What works for a large enterprise will not work for SMBs (Small and Medium-sized Business) or SMEs (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) and vice versa.

That’s why it’s important to analyze your data first, realize your data requirements and then begin the hunt for the perfect backup solution.

In the context of the perfect backup solution, let’s elaborate on cloud based backups and on-premises backups and compare the two.

Cloud Backups versus Physical Backup Appliances: Which is better?

Before indulging into this, I’d like to repeat this again because it’s that important. Which backup solution is perfect for you depends on your requirements. That’s why the perfect backup solution is determined on a case by case basis.

With that said, let’s dissect cloud backups and backup appliances and their general attributes.

Cloud Based Services

The two most commonly associated attributes of the cloud are:

1. 1. Scalability.
2. 2. Cost Effectiveness.

Due to the architecture of cloud based services, its ability to scale-up is unrivaled. This ability to increase required storage is one of the reasons why the cloud became so mainstream. Cloud based services can scale up as required and the setup is very simple; in most cases, it only requires a single click and the conclusion of the respective payment process.

Cloud based services are also cost effective. Unlike on-premises, you do not have to pay a large sum initially to acquire and setup the environment. Instead, you can acquire a license and setup your backup in the cloud and then use the pay-as-you-go payment models.

So what’s the catch? Well, unlike on-premises environments, the cloud is slower. If you are not looking for latency, cloud based services are a bad idea. The larger the size of the data, the slower the cloud based service will be. This is one major drawback; especially for SMBs because they don’t need to have different clouds or multiple solutions for their data.

For a business with limited resources, it’s far more efficient to have a single solution that delivers as per their requirements.

Physical Backup Appliances

For an SMB with a few TeraBytes (TBs) of backup, it’s better to get a single backup appliance instead of setting up a cloud based backup solution.

Why do I recommend this?

I recommend it for a number of reasons, here are some of them:

• Instead of setting up a pay-as-you-go model, it’s better to invest once and then use the appliance for backup.
• With a backup appliance, SMBs do not have to pay each time they wish to retrieve a file or data in the appliance.
• The on-premises appliance will support IOPS better and will have higher performance and reduced latency than cloud based services.

If scalability is not one of your major concerns, then a single appliance is enough for your backup requirements. By continuous monitoring of this appliance, you can order another appliance as an add-on, when it’s time to add more space.

For instance, StoneFly’s M series backup appliance is a good example of a perfect backup appliance for SMBs. It’s cost effective, you can easily scale-out or scale-up when you need to and it uses innovative technology to deliver much needed data services.

Conclusively, I maintain my previously stated argument. Only data requirements determine which type of backup solution is best for an IT environment. Generally, SMBs can really do well with a backup appliance, SMEs can utilize backup appliances and sometimes cloud backups are enough for them; large enterprises need to setup a wide range of services. Mostly, experts recommend large enterprises to setup hybrid solutions because they introduce multi-layered redundancy ensuring data recoverability and business continuity.

StoneFly is a pioneer in the creation, development and deployment of the iSCSI storage protocol.StoneFly has made iScsi into a standard which is now used by IT professionals around the world.