Plenty of businesses pick one type of backup, set it up and stop thinking about it. The trouble is that cloud and local backups protect you against different problems. A backup drive sitting next to the server won’t survive a fire, and ransomware that reaches the server can often reach the drive too. A cloud-only backup has the opposite weakness, because pulling everything back down over an ordinary office connection can take the best part of a day.
Below you’ll find where each type earns its place and what it costs to run. After that comes the 3-2-1 rule, which is the usual way to combine the two, plus some quick checks for the backups you already have.
What’s the difference between cloud and local backup?
Local backup copies your data to a device you own and keep on site, usually a NAS or an external drive. A NAS (network-attached storage) is a box of hard drives plugged into your office network, so every computer can back up to it. Cloud backup sends the copies over the internet to a provider’s data centres instead.
Both give you a second copy of your files. Where they differ is in what they survive and how long they take to hand your files back.
When cloud backup makes more sense
Imagine the office floods over a weekend. The server, the NAS and every desktop are written off, but anything backed up to the cloud is sitting in a data centre somewhere else entirely, untouched. That’s the main argument for cloud backup: fire, flood, burglary and ransomware at your premises can’t reach it.
It also suits businesses with no IT staff on site. The provider runs the storage, and adding space usually just means moving to a bigger plan. Teams spread across home offices or several sites can all back up to the same service without anyone looking after a second location.
How long would a full cloud restore take?
Getting one deleted spreadsheet back from the cloud takes seconds. A whole server takes far longer, and some rough maths shows why. Bringing back 500 GB over a 100 Mbps connection takes at least 11 hours, and that assumes you get full speed the entire time, which you won’t. On a 30 Mbps line the same restore runs well past a day.
The provider also only looks after the storage. Choosing what gets backed up, spotting failed jobs and testing restores still falls to you or your IT support.
Why local backup still has a place
Local backup is the one you’ll use most, on ordinary days when a server drive fails or someone saves over the sales spreadsheet. Restoring from a NAS runs at the speed of your office network, so the same 500 GB that takes half a day from the cloud can come back in a couple of hours on a typical gigabit network. It also keeps working when your internet connection doesn’t.
Some businesses prefer it for control, because they know exactly where the data sits and who can get to it. That can help when clients ask where their information is kept, or when a contract sets strict rules on data handling. With very large volumes of data, a local setup can also work out cheaper over the long term.
Its weakness is that it shares a building with the systems it protects. A fire takes both. Ransomware is the sneakier risk, because it can encrypt any drive it reaches on the network, and a NAS that’s always connected is well within reach.
How do the costs compare over time?
Local backup puts most of the cost up front. You pay for the NAS, the drives and the setup, then very little each month after that. Cloud backup flips it round, with almost nothing to pay at the start and a monthly fee that climbs as your data grows.
What neither price shows is the time someone spends looking after it. Drives in a NAS wear out, and someone has to notice when one fails and swap it. Cloud backup takes most of that work away, though somebody still has to check the jobs are succeeding.
Read the contract before you sign
Check where a cloud provider stores your data and how long it keeps old versions. Look at the encryption too, and at what happens to your data if you cancel. If you hold client or customer records, those terms matter more than the monthly price.
Why most businesses use both
In practice, most businesses are best off running both. The local copy handles everyday restores quickly, and the cloud copy is there for the day the building itself is the problem. A common setup takes local backups every hour and automatically sends a daily copy to the cloud overnight.
Using the 3-2-1 rule
The 3-2-1 rule is a quick test of whether your setup covers the basics: three copies of your important data, on two different types of storage, with at least one copy off site or immutable. Immutable means the backup can’t be changed or deleted for a set period once it’s written, usually not even by an admin account, which is what makes it useful against ransomware.
For a 15-person office, that could be the live files on a server, a nightly backup to a NAS in the comms cupboard and an automatic copy to a cloud service. If the server dies, you restore from the NAS in a couple of hours. If the building floods, the cloud copy is still there.
Quick checks for your current backups
A few minutes with these will show you where the gaps are.
Ask whether your backups would survive a fire, flood or break-in at the office.
Find out how long a full restore of your main server or shared drive would take over your internet connection.
Check that at least one backup copy is out of reach of ransomware on your network.
Confirm your backups run automatically and that someone gets an alert when one fails.
Restore a handful of real files this month, not just a test folder.
Read your cloud provider’s terms on storage location, encryption and how long old versions are kept.
Choosing the right setup for your business
If you have no off-site backup at all, start with cloud. It’s the quickest way to protect against losing the building, and you can add a NAS later once you know how much data you’re dealing with. Cloud on its own is a reasonable place to stop if your team mainly works in cloud apps and could put up with a slow restore of the occasional large folder.
Local-only is hard to justify. It only makes sense if fast recovery and direct control matter more to you than the risk of losing the site, and that’s a bet most businesses shouldn’t take. If a day without your systems would cost you real money, run both.
Whichever you choose, put a restore test in the diary. It’s common for a business to find out its backups had been failing for months only on the day it needs them.
Filling the gap in your backups
Most offices already have half of this, usually a forgotten external drive or a cloud subscription someone set up years ago. Work out which half you’re missing and add it.
If you’d like someone to check your setup, Absolute Consultancy Services helps SMEs across Ashton-under-Lyne and the wider Northwest with IT support and cyber security, including keeping backups out of ransomware’s reach. Call the team on 0161 850 0682 or email info@absolutecs.co.uk, and ask how long a full restore of your systems would take today.