Cloud Backup Now Supports Archival Tiers

NetApp Cloud Backup gives users an easy and automatic way to create block-level, incremental forever backups that can easily be stored in cloud-based object storage. Now with Cloud Backup’s new support for tiering backups to Amazon S3 Glacier, Glacier Deep Archive, Google Cloud Storage Archive, and Azure Archive Storage, storing your backups in the cloud is less expensive than ever with this ONTAP-native cloud backup service’s help.

Let’s take a look at this new feature and how it can help you reduce your storage costs for long-term backups.

Say Goodbye to Tape-Based Backups

Backing up your data has always been a priority, but it hasn’t always been easy. As the growth of data demands more and more storage space, backup demands grow with it. Suddenly, it’s more important than ever to find the lowest cost storage available.

Traditionally, that low-cost storage option has been tape-based, particularly for data that needed long-term storage, such as historical data, regulatory-mandated copies, and secondary backups. But tape storage requires all the physical upkeep and costs of any on-premises storage solution. In the past, NetApp users also relied on solutions like NetApp AltaVault. The cloud offers some help with object storage offerings such as Amazon S3. But S3 and the similar offerings on Azure and Google Cloud have the low-latency meant for active data—and they are priced as such.

For long-term backups, the archive options on Amazon S3 Glacier, Glacier Deep Archive, Azure Archive Storage, and Google Cloud Storage Archive offer the lowest-priced storage in the cloud, which is perfect for the coldest data that you own. These archive storage tiers store data in such a way that it can only be accessed with long wait times: depending on the option selected, retrieval can take a few minutes, 12 hours, or even longer.

These archive storage tiers serve a number of purposes:

• Tape replacement / modernization It’s time to move away from inefficient tape-based solutions.
• Cost reduction Archiving to the cloud allows infrequently used data to be stored on less expensive tiers and to be restored without additional overhead.
• Long term backup retention After a backup copy is replaced, older versions that can be retained at the lowest cost in the archive tier.
• Third copies In keeping with the 3-2-1 backup strategy, archive tiers make the perfect home for third copies.

Cloud Backup now lets users leverage these coldest storage tiers for their backup data.

The Benefits of Cloud Backup Archive Storage

With the new support for the archive storage tiers on the major cloud hyperscalers, Cloud Backup users gain a number of key benefits:

• Reduced Costs
  Archive to a cheaper tier with the ability to restore on a file/volume level with a lower cost and highly resilient and no management
• Easy Access
  The metadata for all of your archive data remains stored on the standard tier. This makes the information readily available so you can still get results from your data even without reheating it.
• Multiple Restore Options
  With other solutions, it might take as long as a month to restore a backup. Using Cloud Backup’s archive options, you can decide which tier has the retrieval time that will best suit your needs, whether that restore window is in the hours or days.
• The 1 in 3-2-1
  According to the trusted 3-2-1 backup strategy, you should be keeping one copy offsite. There is no more effective place to store this copy than with the deep archive tiers which don’t require any maintenance or attention.
• API Control
  All of Cloud Backup’s tiering capabilities can be managed programmatically with the Cloud Manager APIs, so now archiving can be a direct part of your DevOps workflows.
• Tape Is Out of Date
  Tape has come a long way. Modernize your deployment by archiving with the least expensive object storage options in the cloud.

Get Ready to Start Archiving

With the new support for archive tiers, Cloud Backup users now have access to the least expensive storage formats in the cloud. To use tiering you’ll need to be running ONTAP version 9.10.1 at least, so if you haven’t updated yet, now is the time to do it.

To get the latest in, try Cloud Backup today: