Why Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage makes backup better

Data protection is a top priority for businesses large and small. One of the best ways to ensure absolute data security is by utilizing cloud storage. There, I said it. Let’s discuss. Cloud storage enables users to store, access, and share data at a fraction of the cost of on-prem or co-located storage. This is especially important for those organizations implementing the “3-2-1″ strategy for data protection – always have 3 copies of your data, which includes the (1) working dataset, a (2) primary copy, and a (3) secondary copy stored off-site and rendered immutable from any accidental or malicious deletion/encryption (aka “ransomware”).

Let's review some most important benefits of using cloud storage for data protection and ransomware recovery:

Security

Today's bad actors are becoming more and more creative in their strategies to extract the maximum ransom from their victims. A key component of their attacks is to render backups useless, leaving their victims no recourse but to hope they can recover their data by paying up. Cloud storage, primarily object storage, can nullify that attack vector when used with object lock/immutability. Immutable storage makes it impossible for anyone to delete, alter, or encrypt your data during a period of time defined by your storage administrator. Advanced Wasabi features such as Multi-User Authentication provide an additional layer of security by making it impossible for any one person to delete your cloud storage account.

Responsiveness

When things “go sideways” the shot clock is ticking down and tensions run high until system operations return to normal. Cloud storage, thanks to high speed networking and various data transfer acceleration methods, meets or exceeds the performance requirement for fast recovery when the on-prem systems are compromised. While we can certainly debate “how fast is fast enough”, the reality is unless you have a fully redundant data center where you can restore operations, the insurance company (you have cyber insurance, right?) is going to need some time to collect evidence for your damages claim before you can restore anything to the original systems.

Scalability

Yeah, yeah, yeah, infinite scalability. You’ve heard that one before. Well, the ability to add capacity on-the-fly came into VERY sharp focus over the last few years as the supply chain was constrained, and installing added storage capacity became an exercise in futility. The cloud doesn’t run out of capacity, and you can use as much as you want when you want. I bet that sounds better than “We’ll take your order, but we have no idea when we can deliver, install, and configure those additional X terabytes for you…”

Redundancy redundancy

While “3-2-1″ is a “nice to have” strategy for data protection, the fact is, more is better. That means having multiple copies of backup data in the cloud is a solid hedge for when power grids or networks are having problems. In the United States, there are three power grids – one on the East Coast, one on the West Coast, and one in Texas. Want to insure you have uninterrupted access to your data? Just put one copy in a data center on each grid. Will that be expensive? Not as expensive if your company ceases to exist because you can’t get access to your immutable backups in time to keep the orders coming in and keep the shipments going out.

Sustainability

Cloud storage is a better solution for sustainability when compared to scaling-up capacity on-prem or at a co-location facility. That’s because commercially available storage systems are not designed to operate at maximum capacity with any degradation in performance or availability. It’s true. Most on-prem systems are not optimized and run well below 80% capacity to provide a cushion due to poor capacity planning or an unforeseen spike in usage. Cloud systems, inherently multi-tenant, are designed, built, and operated to maximize their capacity across all users/buckets. The greater efficiency of cloud storage systems results in using less energy which results in a lower carbon footprint. Cloud storage is better for the environment.

Accessibility

In the Internet age, companies are spread across the world, serving markets big and small. Their data has to be available globally as well. While having redundancy within a market is good, having access to replicated data globally is better. Global access enables business agility and makes responding to both simple or complex data recovery requests easier.

Predictable pricing

This is a tough one, since most folks have been conditioned by the industry behemoths to accept that cloud storage capacity comes with additional fees that can double or triple their costs. It doesn’t have to be that way. You can experience the benefits of using cloud storage while enjoying predictable, linear pricing. For this particular benefit, I’m referring to Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage. Wasabi is the only global, enterprise-class cloud storage with predictable pricing (aka no egress or API request fees).

The reality is, hybrid architectures combing on-prem and cloud storage services will continue to be the prevailing approach for years to come. Fortunately, with innovations like Veeam’s direct-to-cloud capability in Veeam Backup & Replication v12, the opportunity to begin shifting towards a cloud-first strategy is now a viable option. Using direct-to-cloud backup provides an added layer of security by enabling immutability for all copies of your backup data. This ensures full data integrity and helps meet compliance and insurance requirements. Cloud storage innovations will continue to shape the future of data storage and protection. If you aren’t already leveraging cloud storage for data protection, now’s a good time to get started and leverage all the benefits it has to offer.