As enterprise users run more of their workloads in the Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is driving migration with a data backup service that aims to increase the customer base of its market-leading platform.
Launched last weekOpens a new window by the cloud computing subsidiary of the Silicon Valley retailing and logistics giant, the new service embraces databases, file systems and stored volumes of data contained both in its hosted public cloud and in the so-called Storage Gateway that links those repositories with a customer’s on-premises servers.
Buoyed by forecasts that the as-a-service market for cloud backup will enjoy robust growthOpens a new window over the medium term, the move comes at the expense of providers – including fellow platform operator IBM – who hive a chip that ensures that customer data housed in server farms around the globe can be reliably replicated in the event of network crashes, power outages, attacks by hackers and other potentially business-crippling disasters.
One-Stop Backup Shop
Like AWS, Backup as a Service (BaaS) providers backup clusters with snapshots of data and state. Reports include, but aren’t limited to: node information, cluster and index settings and shared allocations in distributed computing networks. They also cover the same panoply of frameworks, including SQL, MYSQYL, NOSYQL, Hadoop and Oracle, which dominate enterprise database management.
The advantage, the company says, is in ease of use with the range of storage and compute offerings available in the AWS cloud, including:
- Amazon Elastic Block Store: a scalable platform for low-latency workloads that automatically replicates to ensure reliability and permits pay-for-provisioning pricing model aimed at users of Hadoop, Apache Spark and other distributed development frameworks.
- Amazon Relational Database Service: a platform that lets users automate set-up, hardware provisioning and patching processes, as well as the optimization of their databases for performance, memory use and input/output speeds.
- Amazon Dynamo DB: a fully-managed service for distributed databases that permits scalable storage, the retrieval of bulk data and tighter control of traffic volumes, as well as automatic encryption for sensitive datasets.
- Amazon Elastic File System: a file-sharing suite for Linux workloads that lets users scale their throughput via shared parallel access to compute capacity in the cloud for lift-and-share enterprise applications, among other use cases.
Unified Management Includes Regulatory Snafu
The prevalent feature of AWS Backup is a unified management system that builds on existing snapshot capabilities with new functionalities, including tiered storage using the company’s Simple Storage Solutions (S3) for objects, and Glacier warehouse for cold data. Tasks that require scripts for individual services and platforms can be automated and consolidated, allowing administrators to create policies and schedule processes with just a few mouse clicks.
With the new service, users can automate the creation and scheduling of backups both with policies and tagging, and define recovery points using collected snapshots and metadata about their repositories. They also can set rules around storage and lifecycle management of those data snapshots.
Compliance also is covered, AWS says, thanks to a policy-based approach tailored to meet regulatory requirements for the markets in which the service is offered. Backups are stored in encrypted vaults and users can restore their datasets on-demand and as needed, the company says.
Cloud Continues Stealth Move on Traditional Datacenters
While rivals trumpet their capabilities to provide backup across the range of platforms that enterprise users run as they migrate from on-premises and private clouds to hybridized structures, AWS is positioning its offer as a vehicle for onboarding more compute and storage workloads.
According to figures released this month by IDCOpens a new window , spending on hardware for cloud infrastructures edged ahead of that for traditional datacenters for the first time in the third quarter of 2018. Those numbers are indicative of boardroom trends that are moving away from capital investments in captive environments, towards the provision for compute, storage and IT services out of annual operating budgets.
Forecasts for spending on as-a-service backup, expected to surpass $4 billion by 2022, ratify spending. The figure represents a more than 25% compound growth rate over 2018 estimates, according to New York-based Analytical Research Cognizance: one that AWS hopes to corral a share in, in order to maintain the 40% it enjoysOpens a new window in the global market for cloud services.