Leveraging the Cloud for Storage and Backup

Leveraging cloud storage as an extension to existing storage management can help enterprises with long term retention requirements. As mentioned in this Information Week story, essentially cloud storage becomes another target option to the application, similar to the choice between disk and tape.

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"By leveraging cloud as an extension to the backup process, backup jobs could be replicated to the cloud storage facility whose sole job it is to manage and maintain both the equipment and the data. Also, depending on the vendor, steps could be taken to enhance the mining of these backup jobs when the need arises to be searched years later for specific data content. This means that locally you only need enough capacity to meet the 'normal' restore requests.

"There is some disagreement on whose cloud storage should be used. Should the backup application developer build their own cloud and maintain that, or should the application simply support various cloud storage providers and let you select from the list? There is value in both. The important concern from your prospective is does the organization that is holding your data have the fortitude to be there when you need it and does the facility they are using meet up to your standards for security and availability?"

Read the Full Story at Information Week