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5 Hidden Costs of Cloud Backup

  • 5 Hidden Costs of Cloud Backup-

    Cost of Not Having a Solid SLA

    Hidden Cost No. 5: The Price of Not Having Rock Solid SLAs

    Many clouds have soft SLAs. It pays to read the fine print and determine how the cloud you are relying on for mission-critical backup and recovery will perform when it matters most. Consider the following questions when evaluating cloud providers:

    • What does the cloud provider guarantee for recovery? Does the provider guarantee a specific recovery time?
    • What is the guarantee for uptime?
    • If you have concerns about data sovereignty, does the provider validate that your data will stay in the geography that you choose?
    • What are the SLAs for response time for service? Is there a person to answer the phone or is it email/chat only?
    • Are there multiple vendors involved? Does that affect the SLAs?

    SLAs are particularly important for backup and recovery. You need to make sure that you have a supplier who will be there with you when you have a disaster or emergency. Without such SLAs in place, you may find that you have just purchased cheap offsite storage rather than a true backup and recovery partner.

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5 Hidden Costs of Cloud Backup

  • 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
  • 5 Hidden Costs of Cloud Backup-7

    Cost of Not Having a Solid SLA

    Hidden Cost No. 5: The Price of Not Having Rock Solid SLAs

    Many clouds have soft SLAs. It pays to read the fine print and determine how the cloud you are relying on for mission-critical backup and recovery will perform when it matters most. Consider the following questions when evaluating cloud providers:

    • What does the cloud provider guarantee for recovery? Does the provider guarantee a specific recovery time?
    • What is the guarantee for uptime?
    • If you have concerns about data sovereignty, does the provider validate that your data will stay in the geography that you choose?
    • What are the SLAs for response time for service? Is there a person to answer the phone or is it email/chat only?
    • Are there multiple vendors involved? Does that affect the SLAs?

    SLAs are particularly important for backup and recovery. You need to make sure that you have a supplier who will be there with you when you have a disaster or emergency. Without such SLAs in place, you may find that you have just purchased cheap offsite storage rather than a true backup and recovery partner.

Backup and disaster recovery are typically cited among the top use cases for cloud computing. Companies are increasingly realizing that cloud-based backup is more efficient, more reliable, easier to use and less error prone than traditional methods such as tape or other rotational media, not to mention it enables extremely effective disaster recovery. In 2015, we saw a major upswing in cloud adoption for storing backup copies. In 2016, expect to see cloud backup and disaster-recovery-as-a-service (DRaaS) options become the norm for new backup deployments at organizations of all sizes.

Most companies can easily lower OPEX and CAPEX with cloud backup. But not all cloud backup options are the same, and a true cost comparison entails evaluating more than just each offering’s top line cost per GB. In this slideshow, cloud-recovery leader Unitrends details five “hidden” charges that companies must consider when researching the best and most cost-effective cloud backup solution for their business.