Hybrid backup for business
Dave Mitchell puts four local-plus-cloud backup systems to the test.
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Data is the lifeblood of business, and if you don’t keep yours backed up, you’re taking an awful risk. Unfortunately, many companies are relying on ad hoc, untested backup strategies, which leaves plenty of opportunities for things to fall through the cracks.
Without a proper backup system in place, you’re putting your very survival on the line. As always, the best strategy is to keep both on-site and cloud backups: generally referred to as “hybrid” backup, this approach gives you the best chance of being able to recover the information you need in the event of a disaster.
Backing up to multiple different destinations may sound complicated, but many backup packages now come with built-in support for hybrid backup, making it easy to set up and manage. This month, we look at hybrid solutions from four specialists – Acronis, Barracuda, IDrive and StorageCraft – and test them in the lab to help you make the right choice.
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A combination of on-site and cloud backup makes it easy to follow the “3-2-1” principle, which means retaining three recent copies of your data, backed up to two different types of storage media, with one copy held off-site. It’s an approach designed to give you the best of all possible worlds: your on-site backups allow you to very quickly recover lost or
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deleted items, and if for some reason you can’t access your local archive – for example, in case of fire or theft – there’s still a copy stored safely in the cloud.
There’s nothing stopping you from putting together a bespoke hybrid backup solution, but for SMBs an integrated solution is likely to be safer and easier to manage. The four packages here let you manage local and cloud backups from a single console, and cover it all with a single regular subscription.
The only thing left for you to provide is a storage location for your local backups. For obvious reasons, your backups shouldn’t reside on the same server as your critical data: you need a separate storage solution. NAS appliances are the natural choice as they’re affordable and