Echopath Blog
Into the Dark Ages: What Keeps Cloud Servers from Crashing?
There’s over 1 exabyte of data being stored in the cloud. (That’s 1,073,741,824 GB.) That’s personal cloud and private cloud, individual data and business data.
Now imagine that it all went away. All of it. Every single bit.
Obviously that wouldn’t happen, since the cloud isn’t just one giant server, but really, what does prevent those cloud servers from crashing? Well, honestly: nothing. In fact, it’s kind of happened before, when Amazon lost data—including some customer data—to a cloud server crash.
There are options, though, that can still keep your data safe.
Back Up Your Backups
Obviously you’ll have your local files as well, but even if you are storing data in the cloud, it’s important to use a solution that can even back up your backup files. For example, Echopath’s solution provides cloud backup with local sync, meaning that your data is stored not only in our primary data centers, but also kept up to date at your location.
Mirroring Backups
Even with a local copy and a backup copy, a better backup solution is to have your data stored not just in one cloud location, but in many. For some solutions, including ours, your backup is replicated to other sites. That means simply that if your data is lost from one location, it can still be captured elsewhere. Like we mentioned above, because the cloud isn’t one giant server, multiple locations can keep your data safe.
Disaster Recovery
While it’s not in line with what you consider to be a typical “disaster,” loss of data due to a cloud crash is a disaster in its own right. With the two previous suggestions, it’s important to add cloud failure to your disaster recovery plan. If you aren’t currently using a solution that offers mirrored backups or local storage as well, reconsider using a solution that does.
Barring some global disaster, there’s not much chance of the cloud ever actually crashing and leaving us all data-less, but it doesn’t hurt to take precautions against it. Having your data backed up makes you safe. Having it backed up in more than one location makes you safer.