Cartika Warns That Snapshots Are not Reliable and Complete Backup Solution

Cartika, Inc. has warned cloud users that cloud server snapshots are are a useful tool, but should not be considered a reliable and complete backup solution.

The company has commented to clarify that snapshot backups should be considered one part of a comprehensive backup strategy.

A snapshot represents the state of a server at a particular point in time. They can be used to quickly restore a server to a previous state. But snapshots have several limitations that don’t impact alternative backup strategies.

Snapshots data is typically held on the same storage devices as production data, snapshots are not compatible between hypervisor systems, and the restoration of specific files from snapshots is time-consuming and often impractical.

“Snapshots are absolutely a useful and critical tool, and certainly represent some sort of backup, but, should they really be counted on or used as a backup?” asks Andrew Rouchotas, CEO, Cartika, in a recent blog post, “The answer is likely not, and certainly not in most common use case scenarios.“

Company’s Backup-as-a-Service product can be used in addition to snapshots to provide a complete backup solution. Snapshots can be used to quickly clone, copy, and roll-back servers, while the BaaS backups provide disaster-tolerant file-level backups that are both more resilient and more flexible than snapshots for many use-cases. Any compatible server’s individual files and complete filesystems can be restored to a virtual or physical server quickly and easily. Cartika supports the majority of server Oss.

For a limited time, company’s Backup-as-a-Service platform will be available with a 99% discount for the first month for new users with a special coupon code. Businesses can receive the coupon code required to take advantage of this risk-free offer by subscribing to Cartika using the form at the end of the blog post.

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Cartika CEO Warns Against Using Snapshots as Backups
As provided by most cloud vendors, they fail to account for number of data loss scenarios.
2014.12.26 | Press Release