Here are some things to consider when backing up and Archiving Data in the Cloud
- Cost to Store the Data – generally you will use the following formula to calculate your Costs on either a monthly, yearly, or full-cycle Cost.
- Cost per TB = [Cost per GB] X 100
- Cost per Month = [Cost per TB] x 12
- Full Lifecycle Cost = Cost TB x 60
- Cost to Restore the Data – Generally there is a Restore cost and a data transfer cost, depending on where it is restored.
- ex. In AWS, it costs $0.09 / GB to restore when restored through the internet and $0.004 when restored through the VPN. If stored in the S3 Inactive Tier, it will cost $0.01 / GB to restore. In total, it will cost $0.05 / GB to restore through VPN and $0.10 to restore through the internet.
- Time to Restore data – Generally, the more expensive the data costs to restore, the less time it takes to restore said data. If you are comparing restore time from tape / using Iron Mountain for restore; Restore times within 1 day are usually acceptable. If you bemoan the thought of having to manually restore data for users and see that it grows on trees, you generally will want Active restore tiers and not Glacial / Archive Tiers.
- AWS has the S3 – Inactive tier which is ideal for immediate restore for Archiving purposes. Generally data restore falls off after 6 years. It also costs 12x as much as S3 Glacier – Deep Archive.
- AWS has the AWS S3 – Glacier – Deep Archive Tier which is optimized for storing data that is normally stored on Tapes. As it costs only $1 / TB / Month, use it as your eventual storage tier. Standard restore allows for restores within 12 hours while Bulk restore allows for restores within 48 hours.
4. Advanced – Storage Tiering to Optimize Long Term Costs – Generally, time the archiving tiering with the expected frequency of restore. For archiving purposes, you can perhaps store your data in the following ways. As Data restores normally fall off after 6 years, your archiving rules should A) archive data after 2 years, B) Store it in S3 Inactive for 3 years , C) store it on Glacier for another 2 years, and D) transition it to S3 Glacier – Deep Archive for the rest of the time the data is usable.
