Reliable backups are one of the foundations of business continuity. However, deciding where those backups should be stored is just as important as deciding what
data should be protected.
Two common approaches are:
Onsite backup and disaster recovery
Offsite or cloud-based BCDR
Both approaches provide valuable protection, but they address different risks.
For many organizations, the strongest disaster recovery strategy uses a combination of both.
Onsite Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery (BCDR) keeps recovery infrastructure within your organization’s local environment.
Depending on the solution, copies of important systems and data can be maintained on dedicated recovery hardware located at your primary business location.
The major advantage is speed.
Because recovery data is located locally, critical systems may be restored quickly without first transferring large quantities of information from a remote environment.
BCDR Professionals offers onsite BCDR solutions designed to align with an organization’s existing network, storage, and infrastructure while supporting rapid local recovery.
Restoring large applications, databases, and servers across a local network can often be faster than downloading substantial amounts of information from cloud storage.
Organizations maintain direct access to their recovery infrastructure and can integrate it closely with existing IT environments.
Local recovery may remain possible during certain internet outages because the recovery system is located onsite.
However, onsite systems have one important limitation: they may be exposed to the same physical disaster affecting the primary infrastructure.
Fire, flooding, theft, electrical damage, or another location-wide event could potentially affect both production systems and onsite backup equipment.
That is where offsite BCDR becomes especially valuable.
Offsite BCDR stores protected copies of business data away from the primary business location.
Today, this frequently involves encrypted cloud-based backup infrastructure.
If your primary location experiences ransomware, severe hardware failure, fire, flooding, or another major disruption, offsite data remains physically separated from the affected environment.
BCDR Professionals’ offsite solutions are designed to provide automated backups, secure cloud storage, ransomware protection, and recovery capabilities when the primary business environment has been compromised.
If an entire office or server location becomes inaccessible, remotely stored backup data remains available.
Separating backup copies from production systems helps prevent a single compromised environment from becoming the only point of failure.
Cloud backup platforms can automatically protect information according to predefined schedules, reducing dependence on manual backup processes.
Cloud storage can often expand more easily as organizational data grows.
There is no universal answer.
The right approach depends on your organization’s:
Systems
Risk tolerance
Recovery objectives
Available IT resources
Regulatory requirements
Businesses requiring extremely fast recovery may benefit greatly from onsite BCDR.
Organizations especially concerned about ransomware or physical disasters need offsite protection.
Businesses with highly critical infrastructure will often benefit from having both.
A hybrid BCDR strategy combines local recovery speed with geographically separate backup protection.
For example, an organization could maintain an onsite recovery appliance for rapid restoration while simultaneously sending protected copies of critical data to secure offsite infrastructure.
If a server fails, local recovery can be used.
If the entire location becomes unavailable, offsite recovery provides another path.
This reduces reliance on any single backup location.
Another frequently overlooked area is cloud application data.
Businesses may assume that because information is stored inside a cloud service such as Microsoft 365, an independent backup is unnecessary.
However, data-loss scenarios can still occur due to:
Accidental deletion
Retention limitations
Account compromise
Malicious activity
Dedicated SaaS backup provides another recovery layer for important cloud-hosted business information.
BCDR Professionals includes SaaS backup among its services for protecting Microsoft 365 data and quickly restoring critical information when required.
Backup decisions should ultimately be based on how quickly your organization needs to recover and how much data it can afford to lose.
That means defining your:
The Recovery Time Objective is the maximum acceptable period a critical system can remain unavailable.
The Recovery Point Objective is the maximum acceptable amount of recent data that could be lost.
Organizations with demanding RTO and RPO requirements will typically need more frequent backups, stronger replication, and faster recovery infrastructure.
Simply having a backup is not enough.
Businesses need:
Reliable copies of their data
Clear restoration procedures
Defined recovery objectives
Regular testing to confirm recovery systems work as expected
BCDR Professionals provides onsite, offsite, and managed BCDR solutions designed around the infrastructure and recovery requirements of individual organizations.
Want to determine whether onsite, offsite, or hybrid BCDR is the right fit for your organization?
Speak with BCDR Professionals about building a backup and disaster recovery strategy around your business requirements.
