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Contain Cloud Backup Costs with These Tips

Contain Cloud Backup Costs with These Tips

Cloud Backup costs, data continues to grow at an unprecedented rate. This is because a lot of big data is rapidly coming into the equation and enterprises need a way to deal with it. With so much growth of data, the costs of cloud backup would also increase.

Various techniques to reduce the cost of cloud backup have become even more important as the volume of data rises.

Cloud is the most obvious solution for backing up massive repositories of data. This is because cloud offers unlimited salability and this is one of the most hyped features of the cloud. But is backing up large amounts of data really as simple as copying it all to the cloud? And, what are the cloud backup costs associated with it? Well, the answer is not quite simple.

Consider Efficiency, Practicality and Costs with Cloud Backups

Backing up data can be a bit tricky and knowing exactly what you need to back up can help greatly. When it comes to backing large volumes of data or big data up to the cloud, there are two key considerations.

The first consideration is practicality and efficiency. For example, if you have a large amount of big data, let’s say petabyte of data to back up, and you are accumulating a lot of terabytes of new data every day, then backing up to the cloud is probably not going to be your best bet.

On the other hand, if your volume of data and also your data change rate is lower, such that cloud backups seem practical, then you will want to be able to back that data up in an efficient manner.

Another key consideration is cost. This is probably the most obvious consideration that most businesses need to consider before jumping into a cloud backup solution.

Cloud service providers usually charge subscribers a monthly fee, this can vary from vendor to vendor but mostly it is for every gigabyte of storage space that the user is consuming.Additional fees should also be taken into account which include fees for transferring data into or out of the cloud and fees for the services of additional optional features.

Most cloud service providers follow a pay-as-you-go model which means that users have to only pay for the services and features that they use only and not for everything else which they may never use. However, users can choose to add more services and even cloud backup storage as they may need in future. So, they can start off small and scale up as needed. As the size of the protected data set increases, cloud backup costs will also increase, as well.

Given all of the factors mentioned above, it is very important for organizations to adopt a sensible cloud backup strategy that suits their business use case the best. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done.

Cloud backup strategies are not one size fits for every use case.Users would have toset up acloud backup strategy based on their own unique needs. Having said that, you can still use some of the more common cloud backup techniques offered by many vendors as starting points or you can simply build your own custom cloud backup solution.

Some Helpful Techniques to Reduce Cloud Backup Costs

One of the most basic things that you should consider is how you might reduce the volume of data that is being rapidly transmitted to the cloud as part of your cloud backup strategy. Always remember that for every gigabyte of data that is uploaded to the cloud, the cost increases. Also, there is only a finite amount of bandwidth available for uploading that data so it is important not to go too overboard unless absolutely needed.

This may sound a bit overwhelming but no need to worry. Following is some of the techniques to cut down cloud backup costs:

  • Taking advantage of a cloud storage gateway appliance may prove to be very helpful. Now this may seem a bit drastic approach and you may worry about your budget limitations but it is not as complicated as you might think.

Cloud storage gateway appliances tend to vary in capability, different vendor offerings have different capabilities but are often able to emulate a virtual tape library. This means that you can back your data up to the appliance, and then the appliance itself can upload the data to the cloud.

You must be wondering; what is the advantage of this? Well, this approach provides two main advantages. First advantage is that the appliance will allow you to keep a copy of your most recent backup data on premises, since it has its own internal storage. This will reduce the need to upload and restore from the cloud.

The second advantage is that many cloud storage appliances will perform data reduction before transmitting the backup data to the cloud. The use of features such as data deduplication, data compression and other data reduction techniques can drastically reduce the amount of data that has to be uploaded to the cloud and in return, reduces cloud backup costs.

 

  • Consider the data that is being backed up. If it is unimportant data or data that does not need to be uploaded to the cloud then there is no need to waste resources in doing so.

 

  • Lastly, review your cloud storage options. Many major cloud providers offer many storage options.Some offer better performance but high costs while some are far less expensive. So, it is best to choose the one that suits your use case the best, rather than going with the most expensive option.

 

Conclusion

Rapid growth of data has made many enterprises re-think their cloud backup strategies as of course every business wants to save costs in any way they can. Although cloud providers can accommodate large amounts of cloud backup repositories, cloud backup can still cost a lot if not kept in check. The tips and techniques mentioned in this blog will help you reduce cloud backup costs significantly.

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