Cloud Backup 4 Biz

AZURE DATA STORE STORAGE options & Databases

An Azure data storage account can contain a wide range of data objects: blobs, queues,  files, disks, tables, and data lakes. This storage account provides a unique namespace for the organization’s  Azure Storage data that is accessible from anywhere in the world over HTTP or HTTPS.  Account data is durable(immutable) and highly available, secure, and massively scalable.

There are three(3) types of storage accounts;

• General-purpose v2 accounts: Basic storage account type for blobs, files, queues, and tables. Recommended for most scenarios using Azure Storage.  (V1 accounts are legacy)
• BlockBlobStorage accounts: Storage accounts with premium performance characteristics for block blobs and append blobs. (Supercedes legacy BlobStorage accounts).
• FileStorage accounts: Files-only storage accounts w/ premium performance characteristics. Targeted towards enterprise or high performance scale applications.

Azure data stores support six types of data classes;

• File: Simple, distributed, cross-platform file system
• Disk: Persistent, high-performance disk storage for every workload   
• Blob: Massively scalable object storage for unstructured data.  Commonly  reserved for unstructured, REST-based object warehousing.
• Data Lake Storage: Secure, massively scalable data for analytics(Big) Data 
• Archive:  Rarely accessed data commonly referred to as cold or ‘glacier’.
• HPC Cache: File caching for high-performance computing

Backup

Azure Backup is ‘built-in’ to the Azure architecture.  It allows for immediate  backup and restore of Azure SQL Database, individual files, folders, and entire VMs. 

Backup & Disaster Recovery Options

For Azure,  Disaster/Site Recovery is also ‘built-in’ to the architecture.  Disaster/Site Recovery is delivered via  (DRaaS), or ‘Disaster Recovery as a Service‘.  DRaaS can guarantee that applications are kept available during outages with automatic recovery from; 

• on-premises to Azure or
• Azure to another Azure region

Of course, one of the drawbacks of this approach, is that the files must always be stored somewhere on Azure, which generally has the second highest cost  for hot storage (vs AWS and the Google Cloud Platform).

AMAZON STORAGE incuding Baseline S3, EBS, EFS & DATABASES

Amazon provides three different types of primary storage options;

• Simple Storage System(S3) 
• Elastic Block Storage(EBS)   
• Elastic File System(EFS)

We will also discuss an alternative backup location, other than S3.

Unlike EBS and EFS (discussed below), S3 is not limited to Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). 

Amazon S3

Amazon S3, aka Amazon Simple Storage Service, provides object storage through a web service interface. This web service interface is the default method to access the data.  S3 can be utilized to store any type of object for a wide range of purposes, including internet applications, backup and recovery, data archives, data lakes for analytics, disaster recovery, and hybrid cloud storage.

S3 is commonly used to store website content and media files.  These files are then served from AWS Cloudfront, a content delivery network (CDN) service.  

A user, who cannot use a web browser, may also access an Amazon bucket in Amazon S3 cloud by using the interface of an operating system such as Linux or Windows(for more, see below*).  

The basic storage units of Amazon S3 are objects which are organized into buckets. User-assigned keys uniquely identify each object. Buckets can be controlled using either the console provided by Amazon S3, programmatically using the AWS SDK, or with the Amazon S3 REST application programming interface (API). Additionally, objects can be downloaded using the HTTP GET  interface and the BitTorrent protocol.

In S3, buckets are typically the size of an entire mounted file system in other solutions. Access control lists(ACL’s) are assigned to each bucket, which provides for coarse grained access control. Objects are addressable via HTTP URL’s, by ensuring that assigned names and keys satisfy these related requirements.

*Some may need access a bucket in  Amazon S3 by using the interface of an operating system such as Linux or Windows.  This interface access, via command line, is required for operating systems that don’t have a graphical user interface (GUI), e.g.,  virtual machines running in the public cloud.    Command line access  is also useful for automating tasks such as copying files or making  data backups . 

Elastic Block Storage(EBS)

Amazon EBS delivers high-availability block-level storage volumes linked to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)  instances. It stores data on a file system which is retained after the EC2 instance is shut down.  It can only be used with EC2.   More specifically, EBS can only be accessed from a single EC2 instance in any given AWS region.

Elastic File System(EFS) 

EFS offers scalable file storage, also optimized for EC2.  EFS can be used as a common data source for any application or workload that runs on numerous instances. The EFS file system, can be configured to be mounted by an instance. The primary differences between EBS and EFS, is that EBS is only accessible from a single EC2 instance in any given AWS region, while EFS allows for the mounting the file system across multiple regions and instances.

Amazon Backup Location Options

Of course, when storing backups, S3 can be used.  However, S3 is expensive, both from a storage perspective, and from a data retrieval cost perspective.  

The high cost associated with Amazon S3 requires a review of Amazon Glacier.  Glacier delivers a cold storage solution,  which is one of the cheapest cloud infrastructure services available.  Rates are currently  $5 per Terabyte per month.  This cost is 1/5th of the cost of S3.  

The sole focus of Glacier is archival storage.  As such, it does not work for a process that requires regular access to the stored files.  The access charge for ‘standard retrieval’ is $10/ Tb, and the stored data is delivered in 3-5 hours.

For Glacier, expedited retrieval is available, at a cost of  $30/Tb, and the stored data is delivered within 5 minutes.  

 

WASABI HOT CLOUD

Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage (WHCS) is a tier-free bucket storage provider with enterprise grade functionality.  Wasabi charges a flat monthly price of  $5.99/TB (there are no discounts for storage amounts less than 1 TB). 

Wasabi directly competes with Amazon’s widely used S3 cloud storage solution for enterprise users.  In addition to being 80% less expensive than Amazon S3, Wasabi does not charge for ingress/egress and application programming interface (API) requests.   This low pricing makes it an attractive option for small to midsize businesses (SMBs) focused primarily on destination storage, backup solutions, and file-linking capabilities (volume storage).  WHCS  provides no functionality regarding collaboration, file viewing or file editing functionality.  It does, however, provide anti-ransomware functionality, by creating ‘immutable’ file stores.  Specifically, these are buckets that cannot be changed by anyone, including either Wasabi or the bucket owner. 

In fact, WHCS is strategically positioned to track/mimic both the functionality and the features of Amazon’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) S3 solution.  Its platform connects to Amazon Web Services (AWS) object storage via any S3-compatible gateway.

While it is a direct competitor to Amazon S3, it indirectly competes with Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud.  What does differentiate WHCS from S3 is the lack of charges for ingress/egress, and the much faster file transfer rate (as much as 6x faster than S3). 

WHCS buckets by default are ‘private’.  WHCS buckets can be made ‘public’, and accessed via a URL.

WHCS supports ‘bucket’ versioning.  This feature allows the preservation, retrieval, and restoration of  every version of every object stored in a WHCS bucket. Once versioning for a bucket is enabled, WHCS preserves existing objects anytime you perform a PUT, POST, COPY, or DELETE operation on them. 

Wasabi sells storage from leased data centers located in the US.  There are two regions in the US –  US-East, and US-West.  The US East datacenters are run by Iron Mountain Corporation.  

 

MSP360

MSP360 sells a product called ‘Managed Backup’(MBS) which delivers managed backup control, monitoring, and reporting. 

This product facilitates backup to AWS S3, Azure, Backblaze B2, and the Wasabi Hot Cloud. 

Specific backup functionality is available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, VMware, Hyper-V, and Office 365 and Google GSuite.

MSP360 is a direct competitor to Veam Backup and Replication.

IDrive 

IDrive is a ‘tolerable’ backup solution for small-medium business .  The business solution is called iDrive Backup.  Two business plans are available;

• Small Business   
• Enterprise

IDrive supports  backup of Windows and MacOS .  Linux backups are not supported.

IDrive is focused on backing up on-premises physical machines to their datacenter.

The small business solution is best used for backing up less than 1 TB of data,

The enterprise solution is best used for backing up more than 1 TB of data.  

Neither of the business backup solutions provides functionality which competes with top tier providers.  

iDrive  Enterprise is a direct competitor to SOS Online Backup for Business.  

Backblaze b2   

Backblaze B2  provides Amazon S3 equivalent object storage with a price point 1/4 of  S3 hot. 

Backblaze B2 provides four sets of backup functionality;

• Workstation/pc backup  
• Server backup     
• NAS backup   
• Storage for the Veeam Backup & Replication solution

Backblaze is a direct competitor to  Wasabi Hot Cloud.

Backblaze is a product collaborator with MSP360 in the server backup arena.