What is Offsite Backup vs Onsite Backup?

What is an Offsite Backup?

Offsite backups are a type of data protection that provides a copy of a business’ production system data, which is stored in a different location from where the original data is stored.

Why should backups be stored offsite?

Offsite backup solutions have been used for decades as a way to protect data from potential disasters like fires, natural disasters, and other unforeseen events. The core goal of an offsite backup is to have a secondary location where the data is located, so if there is a fire at the original location then the secondary backup will be safe.

Having an offsite and onsite backup is key to ensuring business continuity and planning for disaster recovery.

Learn more about disaster recovery >

What is an Onsite Backup?

An onsite backup is a system backup of data that is stored locally. This type of backup is typically done on the business premises. Local backups are useful for protecting data from natural disasters, theft, or other types of disaster. They provide protection for disaster recovery, especially if the business relies heavily on computers.

An onsite backup typically includes all important data that has been saved to local media such as tapes, or hard disks. Sometimes an automated software package will be used to automatically perform the backup process.

Onsite Backup vs Offsite Backup

When it comes to choosing a backup solution. it’s not about onsite or offsite—you need to have both. They both have their pros and cons which is why deploying a BCDR Solution that does both is essential for businesses to drive business continuity.

Solutions such as Datto SIRIS, which is an all in one BCDR solution, create both a local and offsite backup in the Datto Cloud. With SIRIS you have your original data on your servers, a local backup on to the Datto SIRIS appliance and a third offsite backup in the Datto cloud.

Learn more about Datto SIRIS >

What to look for in an offsite backup solutions

When it comes to choosing a backup and recovery solution for your managed service business it can be complicated to find the right solution that fits your business. To help, we have put together the “BCDR Buyers Guide” for MSPs, Download it now.