A smart way to handle cloud backup, restoration and disaster recovery is to not rely entirely on the cloud. Employ two tiers of backup – one in the cloud and the other on-premises. Even better if the two replicas are kept constantly in sync.
That’s the concept of hybrid cloud storage, and more and more companies are getting into the act.
Some companies, such as Datto, have both pieces already fully in place. Others like ATScloud are looking to partners to complete the offering.
Recently, ATScloud, a service provider, hooked up with hardware maker Exagrid to create a full hybrid cloud backup solution, now offered by both partners.
Under the arrangement, ATScloud connects clients to its data center via a virtual private network hookup. For the on-premises side of the equation, an ExaGridAppliance is installed. The appliance handles the primary backup.
Once set up, the backup data is de-duplicated, and again stored on the appliance. The deduped data can then be ferried off to the cloud.
All this activity is based on the storage software already in place at the enterprise – the partners really deliver a combination of hardware, networking and services. This is different from a company like Datto, which provides the software, the appliance and the cloud service.
In the Beginning
ATSCloud, a 14-year-old company, was originally built to support the Credit Protection Association, another group in the Etan Industries family, with ATScloud providing an operations model. Etan saw commercial value and launched services aimed at utility companies, as well as telecommunications and cable concerns.
Today, ATScloud offers private cloud, software provisioning as a service, secure cloud, and disaster recovery – in addition to the managed hybrid cloud storage service.
Startup Central
Startups abound in the world of cloud and hybrid cloud storage. Some have gone under, others remain independent, and still others have been sold.
Microsoft (News 
- Alert), for instance, last year bought StorSimple, which like Datto and others, offers appliances that work on-premises but interact with backups held in the cloud. Rather than calling it hybrid cloud, StorSimple used the term, Cloud-integrated Storage.
StorSimple now operates as a Microsoft company, maintaining its original independent branding.
See Microsoft’s view of hybrid cloud storage here.
Gartner (News - Alert) Says
According to mega research house Gartner, Inc., next year nearly a third of medium-sized shoos will use the cloud for disaster recovery. Two years ago that number was just 1 percent.
One customer already sees the value in the approach; “We’re very pleased with the ability to have our backup data offsite and online at the same time. And the pay-as-you-go model made a lot of sense for us, giving us the ability to easily expand as data grows,” remarked John Rowe, data/information systems engineer for North Central Texas Trauma Regional Advisory Council. “Offsite tape can be a nightmare, and our major goal was having a real-time offsite backup copy for redundancy that we can easily pull back across the WAN in case our primary site went down.”
“ExaGrid and ATS integrated seamlessly with our existing backup infrastructure, and now life is easier and I can be comfortable at night knowing we have a high availability copy of our backup data offsite without the management headaches of tape or having to manage our own offsite DR.”
Edited by
Braden Becker
CDG and Innovation Incubator Create Generative AI Solutions for BSPs04/25/2024