I’ve been thinking about this a lot with the recent hurricanes that have ravaged the southeast. Data storage for your business needs to be as disaster-proof as you can make it – and not just from natural disasters. You need to think about issues such as hardware failures, cyberattacks, and power outages. Otherwise, you could suffer lengthy downtime – or even end up losing valuable information.
So, what are your options for preparing for a cyber disaster? The two most popular are cloud storage and local storage. Both differ in how they handle risks, recovery time, and long-term reliability, so I’ll break down pros and cons for you.
Cloud Storage in Disaster Recovery
One key advantage of cloud storage is its built-in backup and redundancy systems. If there’s a server failure, power outage, or natural disaster in one area, your data remains accessible from another location. This minimizes the risk of permanent data loss.
Just as importantly, this works both ways – if disaster strikes your office, your team can still retrieve important files and continue business operations from any remote location with internet.
Additionally, cloud storage providers often offer disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) solutions, which replicate critical applications and data to the cloud so they can be restored quickly in an emergency. Often, this is more cost-effective than setting up and maintaining a traditional disaster recovery infrastructure. Many services also allow you to set recovery point objectives (RPOs) and recovery time objectives (RTOs) that enable your data to be restored to a specific point in time, helping you minimize losses.
All of this means that cloud storage typically helps you recover faster than local storage. That being said, it’s not without challenges. The most significant issue is internet dependency – if your connection is down, you can’t access that cloud-stored data. And businesses handling highly sensitive data may face compliance issues depending on where their cloud provider stores backup copies.
Local Storage in Disaster Recovery
Businesses that prefer local storage typically require strict data security and have hefty compliance requirements. Simply put, local is better for this because you can enforce stricter access and protection measures.
Here’s where the negative comes in. Storing locally generally means relying on physical backups (e.g., external hard drives, tapes). This can introduce risk if the backups and primary data is stored in the same physical location, because a disaster could destroy both the original data and the backup. You can increase redundancy by investing in offsite backups, but that can get expensive fast.
Moreover, recovery using local storage is generally slower because IT teams will have to manually retrieve backup devices, restore data, and potentially rebuild servers. If backup hardware is damaged or inaccessible, you’ll likely suffer more costly downtime.
Then there are the maintenance and security concerns. Backup systems need regular testing, updates, and monitoring to ensure they function properly in a disaster. And if you have physical backup devices, they’re at risk of theft or tampering.
Fast Recovery… Or Strict Control?
Here’s how I bottom-line it for people: choosing between cloud and local storage for disaster recovery depends on your priorities. Do you need to minimize downtime and recovery quickly? Cloud storage may be better. Need to keep your data protected? Local storage might be more suitable.
Some businesses opt for a hybrid approach. They store sensitive data locally while leveraging the cloud for redundancy, faster recovery, and cost savings.
One last thing. Even though the main point of this post is to discuss data recovery after a disaster, you shouldn’t ignore how the system you use works for your normal operations. For example, businesses that use CAD typically prefer local storage because of how large their files can be, while physicians, accountants, and others may choose 100% cloud to help manage their data protection obligations. Because it just makes more sense for the day-to-day.
Not sure which approach is best for you? Set up a free consultation with me to talk about it.
