Cloud Backup VS Cloud Disaster Recovery

Data loss and security breaches are becoming very common in today's world. If any disaster happens, all of the organization's data must be protected and readily available for the business to survive. Backing up data is a core aspect of any business's IT strategy, whether cloud backup or disaster recovery. For companies, securing information is even more critical because it involves your employees and your clients. A recent study shows that even an hour of downtime can cause businesses heavily. If a disaster strikes, you need to prepare yourself, so cloud backup and cloud disaster recovery are becoming the next big thing. Cloud backup sends a copy of your data to an offsite vendor, a cloud provider. They keep your data safe and available for a small fee. Cloud disaster recovery (CDR) is a cloud-based managed service where your organization's critical systems are quickly recovered after a disaster strikes. You are provided with remote access to your systems in a secure virtual environment. CDR combines strategies and services to back up your data, applications, and other resources.

Difference between Cloud backup and Cloud Disaster recovery (CDR)

There is an essential distinction between cloud backup and cloud disaster recovery. Cloud backup is the process of making an extra copy (or multiple copies) of your data to protect it. On the other hand, cloud disaster recovery refers to quickly re-establishing access to applications, data, and other resources after an outage. Backup protects your data in case of thefts, employee accidents, or a technical issue. You can access a copy of your data and restore it quickly with cloud backup. Disaster recovery relies on protecting valuable business resources and ensuring that these resources can be accessed and recovered after a disaster to normalize business operations. Hence CDR becomes a core element of business continuity. Cloud disaster recovery reduces the restore time of systems, services, and applications based on your needs. In cloud backups, the cloud service providers look after all your backup-related problems, so you don't have to hire an IT specialist for it and focus on other essential aspects of your business.

For organizations considering cloud disaster recovery, you need to have a proper plan and an effective disaster recovery strategy. To begin with, you have to understand your infrastructure, assets, and the data you possess. Once you account for these factors, you can design your disaster recovery plan efficiently. Next on the list is the analysis of a disaster's impact on your business. The two factors that can help you here are Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). RTO is the maximum time your application can stay offline before your business is affected. RPO is the total time you can bear data loss due to a disaster. Now you can create a disaster recovery plan based on your RTO and RPO. Next, you have to look for a trusted cloud provider who will help you in your deployment. Cloud disaster recovery has a short RTO and RPO compared to cloud backup. Having a cloud disaster recovery plan for small and mid-sized businesses may prove costly, as they can afford to have a minor downtime. So cloud backup is recommended for these businesses. But for large organizations, having many applications across multiple platforms, cloud disaster recovery is essential. Their data is stored in various locations to avoid business interruption in a disaster. Even a minor downtime may prove very costly for the company and its customers.

Advantages of Cloud Backup

• Having your data backup on the cloud makes it accessible anytime. Different levels of access are granted to increase your valuable data security.
• Cloud backup utilizes the latest innovations in software which increases your efficiency and simplifies complex processes, thus giving you an improved user experience.
• Cloud backup is straightforward and user-friendly. Cloud providers have an expert team in place who know their jobs well. Thus backing up on the cloud makes it easier for you and your team.
• Cloud backup offers a considerable cost-saving solution to small and mid-sized organizations. As on-site data centers and servers are expensive, organizations can save these costs by switching to cloud backup.
• The significant advantage of cloud backup is that it is scalable. So you can store as much or as fewer data as you need, and you only pay for what you use.

Advantages of Cloud Disaster Recovery

• The significant advantage of CDR over standard disaster recovery is cost-efficiency. Setting up replication of physical servers in another location is very costly. CDR helps you outsource as many resources as needed, and you pay only for what you use.
• Cloud disaster recovery eliminates the hardware, software, and secondary site investment.
• The pay-per-use cloud model helps to align costs based on the size and complexity of your disaster recovery strategy.
• With the cloud, you can deploy disaster recovery to all locations across your organization, thus offering consistency and simplified management.
• Another benefit it has is scalability and reliability. CDR ensures maximum data availability; your backups can also be restored much faster with cloud disaster recovery than on traditional DR.

Conclusion

Having a backup is exceptionally vital. As cyber-attacks are increasing and networks are getting hacked and ransomed, having a cloud-based backup solution is highly recommended to save your time, money, and hustle. Businesses can choose between cloud backup and disaster recovery depending on their overall size, infrastructure, and other requirements.