Cloud Backup vs Local Backup – Choosing the Right Backup for Your Organization

Protecting your organization’s strategic resources from data loss due to user error, system failure, malware or natural disasters is critically important. Today’s businesses have two main backup method options to consider when they are choosing a backup strategy: cloud backup vs local backup.

In this article, I will explain the differences between cloud and local backup, plus when you should choose one over the other, or sometimes both.

Cloud backup vs local backup

Cloud and local backup can be mutually exclusive or used together to increase the benefits of just choosing one or the other. Let’s take a look at each in turn.

What is local backup?

Local backup is the traditional time-tested method of backing up your data to on-premises storage that uses backup storage from your own location or data center; and usually a third-party backup solution. Sometimes locally backed up data can be replicated from an on-premises device to offsite storage. 

What is cloud backup?

Public cloud backup is a somewhat newer option although it has been around since about 2006 when Amazon first released their EC2 and S3 cloud computing options. Since that time, other cloud vendors like Microsoft Azure and Google have embraced cloud storage and many backup vendors have added cloud backup service options to their offerings.  

Like its name implies, with cloud backup your critical data is stored in cloud-based servers rather than on-premises. Let’s take a closer look at the advantages and disadvantages of cloud backup versus local backup.

Local backup – advantages

There are many reasons why on-premises backup remains a popular data protection option in spite of the near universal adoption of the cloud. Local backup provides on-site accessibility for your data and storage mediums. The local storage medium is usually a hard drive (HDD) or solid state drive (SSD).

Some of the main advantages of using local backup include:

• Greater data control – You have full control over your backups. You can specify where they’re stored, the media you store them on and how long you will keep the backups.
• Data security – Local backups are typically not accessible via the Internet and you can air-gap and store backup off site, making them less vulnerable to malware and ransomware attacks.
• Faster backups – Local backups also tend to be faster because they are using low latency local storage and do not need to send data across the Internet, which typically has lower bandwidth.
• Faster recoveries – Likewise, data recovery from local backups that use local storage is usually faster than needing to download that data from the cloud.
• No Internet dependency – Sine there’s no reliance on the Internet, local backup and restore operations can proceed even if there’s an interruption in your Internet connectivity.
• Lower operating costs – Backing up to local storage uses the infrastructure that you already have. There are no added monthly fees and no additional costs for storing larger amounts of data, assuming you have the capacity with existing hardware.

Local backup – disadvantages

There are also disadvantages of local backup. Some of the main shortcomings of using a local backup system include:

• Physical vulnerability – Local backups can be corrupted or lost due to physical damage from causes like hard drive failure, flooding, fire or even theft.
• Limited accessibility – You can only access local backups from the specific location where they’re stored.
• Higher infrastructure costs – While the operational costs for local backup are lower than the cloud, infrastructure costs are higher. You need to purchase and maintain the compute and storage capacity to perform and store the backups.

Cloud backup – advantages

Next, let’s look at some of the main characteristics of cloud backup. While it is generally slower than local backup, the backup on cloud platforms offers several distinct advantages including:

• Improved disaster recovery (DR) – As cloud backups are by definition stored in the cloud, they automatically provide protection from all types of local disasters.
• Data security – All of the tier one cloud providers offer robust security measures that typically far exceed those implemented by most businesses.
• Scalability – The storage capacity provided by cloud vendors can be elastic. It can scale automatically to meet virtually any capacity requirements without the need to purchase additional hardware.
• Accessibility – You can access your cloud data from virtually any place that has an Internet connection.
• Enhanced data protection — Many cloud vendors offer the option of immutable storage, which prevents data from being altered after it has been stored. This makes it impervious to ransomware and malware corruption.
• Lower infrastructure costs – To utilize cloud backup you don’t need to make any additional physical equipment purchases. You don’t need any additional compute power or local storage devices. You can buy just what you need on a subscription basis from the cloud vendor.

Cloud backup – disadvantages

Some of the main disadvantages to using cloud backup include:

• Slower backup and restore times – Although there are exceptions, generally, backing up and restoring from the cloud is slower than using local storage. That said, options like Azure ExpressRoute and AWS Direct Connect can provide high speed low latency cloud connections but they are not used by most businesses.
• Internet dependency – Cloud backups depend on an Internet connection to both back up and restore data. Plus, the service provider must be able to support availability of the online backup services.
• Increased data exposure – One of the risks with cloud backup is the possibility of data exposure and breaches. While unauthorized access is possible, this is unusual as cloud vendors provide very high levels of security.
• Additional operational costs – While the cloud can lower infrastructure costs, it increases operational costs. There is typically a monthly recuring fee for the levels of compute and storage that your backups use.

Combined local and cloud backup, and backup appliances

While local backups and cloud backups are quite different, they are not mutually exclusive. Using cloud backups in conjunction with local backups can provide the best of both worlds. Local backup can provide faster backup and restore times, which can help reduce your Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs). And combining them with the cloud can improve your disaster recovery capabilities, backup accessibility and can reduce the need for backup infrastructure.

There are several ways you can combine local and cloud backup solutions. First, it can be as simple as performing local backups and then copying those backups to the cloud. Taking a copy of those local backups up to the cloud can enhance offsite disaster recovery, add end-to-end encryption and in some cases, add data immutability, which can help provide protection from malware, ransomware and accidental deletion.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are several backup appliances that provide the ability to back up to tiered high performance local storage and then in the background copy that backup data to the cloud based on policies that you manage. The appliance keeps track of the data location for you.

Backup storage depends on your organization’s needs

In general, cloud backup tends to be better for disaster recovery and accessibility while local backup provides more control and faster backup and recovery times. You can also combine the two for the best of both worlds, either manually or by using a backup solution like a backup appliance.

The specific needs of your organization govern which option is best for you. The data storage choices presented in this article can help you make a better informed decision about your backup options. In any case, it’s important to remember that you need to periodically test your backup and restore procedures to ensure that they will work when you really need them.