Building a Private Cloud for Backup Storage

Managed backup and data storage is a hot business in today’s highly-connected data-heavy environment. According to the Spiceworks State of IT 2016 spending report, managed backup and storage services is one of the top business investments, brandishing up to 13% of total budget allocation. Acronis Backup Cloud is designed for resellers and service providers to address this opportunity directly, with a hybrid cloud backup service that protects your customers’ data wherever it may reside.

Despite the popularity of cloud services, one of the biggest questions facing businesses today is “Where exactly in the cloud is my data stored?”

With the economic slowdown in major markets and the UK’s exit from the European Union, business owners are more than ever keeping an eye on where their “cloud” resides. According to the Spiceworks report, “nearly 40% [of IT professionals] say global political instability causes their organization to reconsider where they purchase tech products and services.”

By offering a data protection service powered by Acronis Backup Cloud, you can always provide a definitive answer to this important question. Whether you choose to back up your customer data to a selected Acronis datacenter, or provide your own private cloud storage, you will always be able to tell your customers exactly where their data resides.

Acronis Backup Cloud storage configuration screen.

By providing your own private cloud storage for your customer backups, you will differentiate your business from the competition while providing a trusted location for your customers’ data. (You’ll also save money on your Acronis subscription by hosting your own storage.) You are your customers’ trusted service provider, so no matter what happens in the world you know that you are in control of your customers’ backup data.

With Acronis Backup Cloud there are two options for adding your own private-cloud storage destinations to your data protection offering. Service providers who want to invest in their own infrastructure can use Acronis Storage software to create a universal data storage array using commodity hardware. Another option is to use an Acronis Storage Gateway virtual device to leverage existing storage destinations. Today we’ll focus on the latter.

Network topology used by Acronis Storage Gateway. The dotted lines mean that a gateway can only have one backend at a time.

The Acronis Storage Gateway, a component of the Acronis Backup Cloud that is provided free to all Acronis partners, makes it easy to configure almost any storage target for use with your customers’ backup services. The multi-tenant gateway software supports connecting to your existing storage infrastructure using NFS, or connecting to private third-party storage services from Microsoft Azure, Amazon S3, IBM SoftLayer, OpenStack Swift, and more.

Creating your own storage destination for your customers’ cloud backups is a very easy task to accomplish. Simply deploy the gateway software to a Linux machine, configure the back-end storage for the appropriate service, and then register the gateway with your Acronis Backup Cloud subscription. The registered gateway is immediately available as a cloud destination for any new customer you provision. For Microsoft-centric service providers, using Azure storage as a backup destination is even easier. Setting up the Acronis Storage Gateway in Microsoft Azure is done through a solution template that automatically installs the software and guides you through entering the required information right in the Azure portal.

Acronis Storage Gateway solution template in Microsoft Azure.

Hosting your own private-cloud storage with Acronis Backup Cloud is an easy way to provide valuable backup services in places where cloud destinations are a selling factor. The software deployment model allows you to leave the heavy-lifting of cloud management services to the Acronis cloud while delivering geographically-local cloud storage that you fully control. This helps you provide service stability in a potentially volatile digital market. Increase customer satisfaction, decrease your subscription costs, and dependably grow your business with Acronis Backup Cloud.

Want to know more about how Acronis Backup Cloud can help drive your data protection business? Read about top features and integrations on the Acronis Backup Cloud product page. When you’re ready to try it for yourself there is a free 30-day trial available to you. The Acronis Storage Gateway is free to download from the console during the trial, and you can move seamlessly in to production should you decide this is the solution for you. Thanks for reading, and keep on backing up!