views on cloud backups when provider breaks (IBM NZ)

[ashleyw]

Hi,
I wondered if there were any views out there around the practicality of using a cloud provider as backup storage.
In NZ we've seen an epic fail when IBM hosted farm at Highbrook datacentre in Auckland has been down since 3am Monday (now 2pm Wed).
I would have thought backups are the one area where you wouldn't want to push into a different providers cloud.
Is the view to still retain local backups on local storage devices (eg. whitebox running Napp-IT/OmniOS etc) and then to replicate to a cloud provider as an additional DR location?

[veremin]

Just my two cents regarding best backup practice.

There is so-called 3-2-1-0 rule that one should keep in mind, while thinking about backup strategy.

3 Copies -> 2 Different Media -> 1 different location -> 0 errors at restore.

The foundation principle is that you have to make everything possible in order to secure your data against any potential failure that, as you have accurately observed, might happen even with such reliable solution like cloud storage.

Based on the above-mentioned points, one should think about cloud storage as only one part of the whole backup strategy, and not as the universal panacea.

Furthermore, another interesting thing about this rule is that it doesn’t have any specific instructions, apart from very generic ones. So, implementation of it is your judgment call, since there are thousands of possible variants.

Thanks.

[dellock6]

Also, one of those copies should be near to production to have faster restores, while downloading backups from a cloud provider is a long activity.
Cloud backup is only another layer of data protection, but it could not be the only one.

Luca.