Can the cloud be a new way to backup

Just before, in ESG research, it was clear that in their online backup system, the number of visitors relying on tapes (or disk to tape, D2T) accounted for only 20%, while the use of online backup was 80%, so 80% ESG survey respondents said they had transitioned to disk-assisted backup (disk to disk to tape, d2d2t) or disk-based backup (disk to disk, called) policy. For those who use online backup-to-disk, 60% will eventually migrate data to tape for long-term preservation or disaster recovery.

Although offline backup media is now dominated by tape, ESG believes that this state will change after a year. By the year 2012, the proportion of data stored on offline or Third-party cloud storage is expected to increase, and will be another alternative to backup to offline tape. Over the next two years, the data stored in third party cloud storage is expected to grow 4 times times, while data stored in offline tape media is expected to decrease by One-third in 2012 years.

Disk and duplicate data removal technologies Drive cloud usage

Endless data growth has made it possible to use disk-based backup to ease the pressure on backup windows, freeing up more resources to perform larger backup tasks. And more and more technologies that can improve storage utilization, such as data de-duplication, also push the general application of disk-based backup way. So how do these trends affect people's interest in cloud backup?

As IT organizations are increasingly using BACKUP-TO-DISK to reduce their reliance on tape, the need to keep data in electronic form is growing rapidly. This is an indisputable fact for companies that are deploying duplicate data deletion to conserve network bandwidth and storage capacity. How to transfer data between multiple sites while maintaining data capacity efficiency is a new level of storage efficiency challenge. The offline transfer of data copies will become more attractive to many companies as long as they provide enough wide area network bandwidth, which is the angle the cloud is cutting into.

Cloud level

For the cloud, it is still in a state of nothingness. The cloud can play an important role in the field of data protection. But how to use the cloud in these scenarios is relatively subtle. Data copies can be stored in a cloud container and can be retrieved for data recovery.

• Backup software is the service (backup Sortware as service), which means that a service provider supports the execution of backup tasks by using a web-based backup application and a cloud storage system. Backup software that is, the service can take advantage of pure cloud resources, and can mix a variety of methods, but also can integrate various types of storage together to form cloud storage.

• Cloud storage services provide a Third-party cloud-based storage hierarchy to support backup and archiving solutions. Authorized backup products can be docked with the API interface provided by the cloud storage provider to deliver accurate data to the cloud level.

• Cloud-based disaster recovery combines cloud computing with cloud storage services to enable business switching to a cloud-based infrastructure.

Risks and benefits

Cloud-based companies view the cloud as a storage hierarchy that has unlimited storage capacity and does not require management at all, and provides a measurable consumption model that can be saved in terms of procurement, installation, configuration, maintenance, and provisioning compared to the physical infrastructure in which it is owned. The cloud hierarchy is also a way to deploy data disaster-recovery systems, and it is better at Headquarters and branch data integration than in building a physical datacenter.

Business organizations tend to worry about data security, access, and control when considering using cloud levels. Data from different organizational departments are placed in different isolation spaces, as is the case for the cloud. So enterprise IT administrators need to be very careful to ensure that data at the cloud level is subject to strict access control, which can be done through service level agreements (Agreement,sla) SLAs enable enterprise IT departments to get the services they have explicitly reached from the cloud provider.

By recovering some trivial files from the cloud, the RTO in this scenario can be greatly improved as these files are transferred directly from the network and restored locally. Restoring from tape can take a longer time than a tape backup scenario. It is indeed a challenge to worry about the increased RTO generated by the recovery of large amounts of data from the cloud. The time required to restore the entire server or the entire site may not be met by the most conservative RTO, but a physical delivery method can be used to direct the data directly to the disaster.

Swim in the Clouds

Using on-demand cloud storage services is not necessarily a complex or disruptive business effort. Many of today's well-known backup software offerings are integrated with cloud storage services, including EMC, CommVault, Microsoft, Symantec, and Zmanda. It is easy to combine your current backup software and network links to enjoy cloud services, and you only need to point backup strategies to the cloud. However, it may be cumbersome to back up data to the cloud for the first time. For example, if the amount of data needed to back up is too large and the bandwidth of the network chain is low, the first backup will take a lot of time. This is why many cloud backup providers offer a "seed backup" service that delivers data to a cloud provider through physical media before performing an incremental backup.

The easiest case to try is remote office and data storage for branch offices. For data in remote branch offices, it is most appropriate to use cloud storage to resolve data from branch offices, which are often stored offline, and use cloud storage services to reassure you that you have to buy a bunch of equipment for your own.

This article is from: Storage Manager January 2011: Snapshots: Alternative Way of backup

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The evolution of cloud computing in the IT market is becoming a commentary: China's cloud computing development potential is huge but obstacles still exist the application of cloud computing and virtualization in enterprises big companies push cloud computing standard process cloud computing subvert global industrial development Model "responsible editor: Xin Wei TEL: (010) 68476606"