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We are discussing at the company the migration of some on premises services to cloud alternatives. Is it market practice to backup servers on AWS, or repositories on GitLab.com, or files on Google Drive? I'm interested in the approach for self-developed servers and also data hosted on web services that I don't own the code or the database.

Personally I'm pretty confident on these big companies, I'm pretty sure that their backups will outlive mine 10 out of 10 times. But not backing up my company data may be a liability.

What is the best practice on this subject?

Spidey
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  • Related: [What's needed for a complete backup system?](https://serverfault.com/q/475849/126632) – Michael Hampton Dec 04 '18 at 17:35
  • `Personally I'm pretty confident on these big companies, I'm pretty sure that their backups will outlive mine 10 out of 10 times.` - Do they back up your data? If so, how long is it retained? How long do you need to retain it? – joeqwerty Dec 04 '18 at 17:36
  • If we talk email, can they do granualr restore ? it's a lot of questions you must ask – yagmoth555 Dec 04 '18 at 17:39
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    In some rare situations cloud providers have wiped out accounts and all their data because it supposedly violated the ToS in some way. Also hackers have compromised cloud accounts and wiped out data. You really should be running some kind of backup system separate from your main cloud accounts. – Zoredache Dec 04 '18 at 18:18
  • Credit card expiry with notifications going to an monitored email could mean a cloud account is deleted. User error is big issue, as humans are infinitely failable. I back up my small business AWS web server content my PC via S3 sync, which backs up to offsite disks. For commercial I'd backup key data to another cloud, Dropbox, or on-premise resources. – Tim Dec 04 '18 at 20:16
  • @Zoredache Shutting down VMs due to abuse or lack of payment has certainly happened. But I haven't heard of cloud providers deleting disk images without ample warning. But whether or not it has happened yet, it's still something customers should be prepared for. – kasperd Dec 05 '18 at 16:18

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YES

Often the backups a provider makes are not accessible to their customers but only to ensure the continuity of the service the provider offers.

If, for whatever reason (accident, negligence, malicious intent) your own unique data gets deleted or corrupted that is typically your own mistake/problem and might well be something you will need to recover from yourself. The cloud provider will have neither the responsibility or capability to help you.

Also don't mistake redundancy for backups.

HBruijn
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Yes!

AWS is a great option, you can use the S3 Glacier and backup for the long term.

Google Drive works best for files you will be accessing regularly.

Gitlab or Github work great to save your repos for sure.

Also do not forget to have onsite backup as well for quick recovery in the event of a loss.

Onsite, Offsite, Cloud backups are recommended.

tomw772
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The answer is: YES for ANY data which has any value to you, regardless of how and where it is stored.

Tomek
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