Hybrid Backup: Secure Local and Cloud Backups in One Job

By Josefine Fouarge, MD, NovaBACKUP Europe GmbH

Maintaining multiple backups in separate locations is crucial to ensuring your data is secure and recoverable in the event of a breach or loss.

But continuously managing and maintaining multiple backups can be a cumbersome task-especially for MSPs that need to handle backups for multiple customers.

At NovaBACKUP Europe GmbH, we want to do everything in our power to make secure, compliant backup as simple and accessible as possible.

In the last update to our software, we added cloud storage to automatically give everyone access to an offsite backup location. And, as the next stage, we’re making handling multiple backups a whole lot easier with our new feature: Hybrid Backup.

Hybrid Backup enables to run backups to an onsite and an offsite location in one backup job. You can set your backup to run concurrently to a local and cloud location all in one go. You also get complete control to set different retention periods for each location.

Read on to discover why it’s so important, what it can do, and how it can save you time and hassle.

Data is critical for every business to thrive. And to protect it you need to back it up regularly. Regulations demand multiple copies of data for backup compliance – particularly when it comes to businesses that hold sensitive information like dental and medical practices. And whether you handle your own backups or are a MSP that’s responsible for protecting that information for your clients, it’s up to you to make sure those standards are met.

What’s more, if you only have one backup in one location, you’re at risk of it being corrupted by fire, storm, or flood damage. Or you could lose it to ransomware and bad actors – a threat that can’t be ignored, with 83% of organizations experiencing more than one data breach during 2022 alone¹. So it’s essential to follow at least the 3-2-1 rule and keep multiple secure backups of your or your clients’ data.

Have 3 copies of your data stored on different types of media with one backup kept offsite

The best way to keep data secure? Local and cloud backup.
The cloud is a great option for an offsite backup location.

And local and cloud backup each come with their own benefits:

• Local backup: A direct-attached HDD or NAS means you can quickly restore systems or individual files.
• Cloud backup: With cloud, you can still recover your data if your local backup is lost or damaged. And you can access your backup data from anywhere.

Having both means you get all of it, safeguarding your data vs. deletion or damage. This hybrid configuration gives you quick and easy access to backup data on site and keeps it protected from local disasters like fires and floods.

Maintaining multiple backups is crucial, but it’s not always
Unfortunately, backing up to multiple locations takes more effort. Instead of running one backup and keeping that maintained and monitored, you need to run separate backups to your onsite and offsite storage. That means more time, bandwidth, system load, and cost. Plus, you need to remember to make changes to both backups every time you need to update the system or an individual file.

Having multiple backups also means you need to know exactly where data is whenever you come to recover it to avoid spending time searching through each backup individually.

All of this is particularly difficult to deal with if you’re a MSP that has hundreds of machines to backup, monitor, and manage across multiple locations and customers.

It is definitely worth the extra work of multiple backups to keep critical data safe-but at NovaBACKUP we want to make it as simple as possible. So, we’ve added a dedicated hybrid backup feature to our solution to help.

NovaBACKUP‘s Hybrid Backup takes away the stress of managing multiple backups

Our hybrid backup feature takes all the hassle out of running and maintaining multiple backups-and it simplifies recovery, too.

With Hybrid Backup, you can set up and manage multiple backups in one backup job and just a few clicks. You can even set different retention periods for each location-giving you complete control over your data. 

Your Quick Guide to Hybrid Backup
Instead of setting up and running two separate backups, one to local and one to cloud, Hybrid Backup enables you to perform both backups in one go.

Simply select the data you’d like to backup and the local device you’d like to backup to. Then go to settings and click “Enable Hybrid Backup.”

You’ll be able to select what cloud you’d like to backup to and set separate retention periods for your local and cloud versions.

Details are in our Quick Start Guide.

Streamlining multiple backups in our software means you can run them automatically and concurrently.

Hybrid Backup first backups data from a machine to local backup storage. Then, as soon as the backup to the local storage is done, it starts sending any new or altered data to the cloud, reducing both the space your backups use and the time they take to run.

This lightens the load on systems and bandwidth, with the second backup running directly from the local backup to the cloud without going back to the machine to re-pull all the same data again.

Frequent backups provide better protection–particularly in critical industries
It’s common to run backups overnight, when systems aren’t needed for anything else. But in industries that hold critical data-like dental and medical practices – only running backups once a day puts you at risk of losing critical patient information, such as consultation notes and test results, from earlier in the same day.

The time and bandwidth savings that Hybrid Backup delivers in conjunction with NovaBACKUP’s incremental forever backup scheme mean you can perform more backups throughout the day. That way, you can make sure critical data is always protected from loss, and save your clients the hassle of needing to repeat appointments if the original data is lost, damaged, or corrupted.

At NovaBACKUP we aim to make sure no part of our backup solutions wastes your budget, and that includes ensuring the most effective use of storage space.

We use incremental forever backups, and only backup the changes to files and folders that have occurred since your last backup ran. This reduces duplicate data in your local backup storage-providing a more effective use of space. It also does the same in your cloud backup environment, meaning you use less cloud storage and consequently reduce your costs. And with Hybrid Backup, both locations can be kept updated with ease.

Benefits that extend beyond backup and into recovery
Hybrid Backup doesn’t just save you time and effort during backups; it also simplifies data recovery.

The feature gives you visibility of backups from all your backup locations in one view. And when you want to restore a file, NovaBACKUP can find it for you. Instead of having to know exactly where the data is that needs to be recovered, you can request it from both your local and cloud backups simultaneously.

If, for example, you’re looking to restore a particular file from a specific point in time, our solution will first attempt to find and restore it from your local backup for a quick recovery and then pull any missing pieces from your cloud backup.

This is particularly useful if you set different retention periods for your local and cloud backups

Say you set local backup to keep all versions of files from the last 30 days, and cloud backup to keep every version from the past 90 days. If you secured your data using the Hybrid Backup feature, you won’t need to keep switching between pulling data from your local and cloud backups, you can simply request a folder and the solution will grab it from wherever it needs to.

Saving time and complexity for MSPs
Our managed backup solution is all about making the lives of systems integrators, MSPs, and resellers easier. And for that, Hybrid Backup is an excellent tool in our belt.

Instead of having to run and keep track of multiple separate backups for each of your customers, our combined approach means you can run backups to your onsite and offsite storage in one go and with one command. The incremental nature of the backups will save time and storage-and you get simpler recovery, too, with local and cloud data accessible.

At NovaBACKUP, we’re constantly looking for ways to make backup as easy as possible for specialized industries and MSPs to access-and this feature is no different. Developed by our team of dedicated backup experts, Hybrid Backup takes away a common headache in the simplest way, making secure backup easier for anyone looking for robust data protection.

“We have never lost a file from a customer using NovaBACKUP solutions. More than one time our customers have been saved from threats like ransomware. It’s our go to backup solution for all our customer’s needs,” said Jose Eduardo Oliveira, partner, Qualitas Network.

As experts in backup and DR, we make sure to use our extensive experience to help our customers meet strict data protection goals. As well as offering powerful backup technology, our team of backup experts is dedicated to providing support. We offer a personalized approach to deliver the right data protection for you and your customers.

You can try NovaBACKUP to experience Hybrid Backup and all our other great features for yourself. Start your free trial.

Want to see all the new features? Take a look here.

¹ Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023, IBM