File, image, client data, and critical business documentation all contribute to a company’s requirement around data storage. The need to access (directly or remotely), share, collaborate with, and/or retain these files has created demand for new and more cost effective ways of managing and storing data. Whether it’s Dropbox or Google Drive for personal use, or accessing your company servers for business related work, storing files remotely is rapidly becoming the norm. So how do Cloud Archival and Cloud Backup help with these new requirements, and what is the difference between the two?
Cloud Archival provides a secondary and/or tertiary copy of business data intended for long-term retention in a scalable, secure, and cost effective offsite cloud repository. This archive copy ensures that business data is not lost in the case of an equipment failure, natural disaster, or when hacking and malicious activity might occur. Leveraging the flexibility and geographic diversity of the cloud provides an easy to use, low cost alternative to tape or physical data repositories. Ideal use cases for Cloud Archival include long-term data storage, compliance focused data retention, and supporting a variety of data protection strategies. Cloud Archival reduces management overhead and cost by replacing onsite, offsite tape, and other legacy archival solutions.
Cloud Backup enables business users to backup data from virtualized environments or physical hosts into the cloud. Backup is an important component to many data protection strategies. Unlike data kept within a Cloud Archival platform (which may require considerable time and effort to restore), Cloud Backup is intended to provide instant access to individual files or data, which may be mistakenly or unintentionally deleted. Business data is replicated into a highly secure cloud data center to ensure availability when and where an end user might need it though an easy to manage web portal. No additional equipment or hardware investment is required. Click on this link if you’re interested in learning more about the ScaleAssure Data Protection portfolio.
