Cloud Backup technology for enterprise applications has matured

Each cloud storage vendor has backup as the preferred service to launch, and backup is the most popular way to use cloud storage. Since cloud backups are often considered to be only for small companies, some large enterprises are currently using this technology for data protection in remote offices and desktops and notebooks, or as a complement to existing backup systems for archiving and offline backup.

The benefits of backing up to the cloud are obvious: no need to back up the architecture, minimize the enterprise's need for IT resources, and make it a part of the monthly enterprise operating costs on a pay-as-you-go basis. However, given the security implications and the risk of recovery, this advantage may be discounted, especially if there is a huge amount of data to be recovered from the cloud. As more cloud services are applied, there is increasing availability of cloud backup technology based on choice, which gives enterprises more choice of application.

• Backup Managed services provider (MSP)

• Cloud-activated backup applications

• Cloud Gateway

Considerations for adopting Cloud technology

In addition to these options, the following key features and considerations will help you choose the right product for your specific environment.

Security。 Security is still the main reason why many enterprises do not adopt cloud services. To address these security concerns, cloud backup products must meet at least the following best practices:

• Data must be encrypted in transit, and a secure Transport layer (SSL) connection is typically used for transmission over the Internet.

• Data stored in the cloud must be encrypted via a leading encryption protocol, such as 256-bit AES encryption.

• Cloud service providers must provide robust, mandatory authentication methods such as password expiration and password complexity.

Must have a clear understanding of encryption key management; The big cloudy service provider does not provide key management for users, and the advantage is that encryption keys are not available in the cloud. However, with encryption key management, users themselves need to take risks, if the key is lost, cloud service providers can not provide any help to get the cloud data. Because encryption keys are so critical, some organizations choose to host them for safekeeping in case they are lost or corrupted.

The advantages and disadvantages of different choices of cloud backup:

There are also compliance issues with cloud backups. For listed companies and related industries, it must comply with some additional regulatory norms, so that only Ssae16/soc 1 (previously known as SAS70) of cloud service providers should be considered. SAS70/SSAE16 is an audit standard for service providers, based on which service providers must undergo additional audit evaluations in control and process and report sharing to their users. For Sas70/ssae16 There are type I and type II two test methods, so it is necessary to determine whether the service provider has passed a stricter type II audit. Only Type II audit reports can prove that the control test is sufficiently efficient to operate and provide reasonable security for the control targets that are archived within a specified period of time. For example, an audit of Oxley (SOX) usually only adopts the audit report of type II.

You should also understand what the audit report contains. Many small hosting providers quickly claim to comply with SAS70/SSAE16 regulatory requirements by providing data centers or Amazon SAS70/SSAE16 reports (assuming hosting services vendors are using Amazon as a background). Although the data center's SAS70/SSAE16 report guarantees physical control and does not have operational control over the relevant hosting service providers, these vendors can still change management, develop programs, or provide other access methods. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you request the latest SAS70/SSAE16 reports and review them in both internal and external audit units before signing a service agreement with a cloud service provider.

Mixed cloud vs Simple cloud backup. In a simple cloud backup environment, the protected server and the client software on the desktop will transfer the backups to the cloud. The benefit of this service is that it can quickly establish and minimize maintenance time. A pure cloud backup product is ideal for PCs backups and small businesses with only a handful of data to protect (typically several TB). When retrieving backup data directly from the cloud, bandwidth is a problem given the bandwidth limitations available in the context of the Internet connection; This short board becomes very deadly when restoring data.

The problem of latency and bandwidth throttling is less pronounced in hybrid cloud backup offerings, which use local disks or gateways as data to replicate to the cloud's first backup target. These local media typically store the most recent backup locally as a cache, to avoid lengthy recovery times, and to replicate the data asynchronously to the cloud. For a pure cloud backup solution, there is no local media for rapid recovery, it is necessary to understand all the ways of recovery, including whether the backup data can be shipped back to the site via disk or NAS devices, and recovery options become important as cloud data storage grows. Similarly, some managed service providers can make a full backup (or "seed") for the first time on an external storage device to avoid consuming a lot of time on the Internet for their first backup.

Efficiency. A backup process that is appropriate for local backup may not be feasible for cloud backup. For example, it is a very important feature of a cloud backup product that only file backups are made for file-changing parts. Mail Personal Folders file (. PST files) may grow in gigabytes, and large Excel spreadsheets and PowerPoint speeches are likely to be dozens of MB, making it very important for a cloud backup product to simply back up the part of the file change rather than the entire file. Similarly, the ability to perform continuous incremental backups can also minimize the amount of data transmitted per backup. Traditional weekly full backups and daily incremental backup principles typically apply to local backups, but are not used to back up data to the cloud. The limitation of network bandwidth makes performance become an important feature of cloud backup products. So any technology that lowers the data required to migrate to the cloud becomes critical.

Compression and source-side de-duplication are two technologies that minimize the amount of data that can be transmitted to the cloud. Data deduplication reduces bandwidth usage and also focuses on reducing the cost of backup to the cloud. Since the pricing of cloud storage is usually based on a per-unit gigabyte, compression and de-duplication can reduce the overhead per month. To minimize data, some managed service providers also perform duplicate data deletions on the source side once again in the cloud. Because duplicate deletion of the source-side range may be limited to a single or several servers, repeated deletes from the cloud can be targeted at all data, which can further delete large amounts of data. Karen Jaworski, senior product manager at Seagate's i365 backup hosting service provider, said: "We repeat the deletion and compression before sending the data and repeat the deletion once the data arrives in the cloud." ”

Transmission。 In addition to the source-side de-duplication, cloud backup products vary in their management of the available bandwidth. The ability to restrict bandwidth usage while backups are in place minimizes the impact of backups on users or other applications that share Internet connections. In addition, the ability to configure different bandwidth limits in different time periods in a day can further optimize the balance between backup performance and impact on other users. Some cloud service providers, such as At&t, allow users to opt for the use of Multiprotocol tag switching (MPLS) lines to replace the Internet, which is quite cost-effective for users who already use MPLS. Due to low network latency, MPLS quality of Service (QoS) features enable users to mark backup data and eliminate all impact on other users or applications. This is especially important for midsize and large enterprises with large numbers of users and backup data.

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)