Q: What are some pros and cons of offsite vs. onsite storage?

A: Simply put, offsite storage gives you protection from having something happen to your local data. On the other hand, local onsite data should be faster to restore and avoids the cost of accessing data over a network. A hybrid approach combines local onsite data storage with offsite storage to store backups for data protection, disaster recovery and business continuance.

When deciding what's right for your organization, some things to keep in mind are the availability and type of network bandwidth, the recurring cost of network bandwidth, the cost of the offsite storage provider and what changes are needed for your infrastructure to support offsite storage. Also keep in mind data security requirements to counter any and all applicable threat risks when moving and storing data offsite as well as onsite. In addition to network bandwidth, pay attention to network latency, which indicates how responsive the network is.

--Greg Schulz, founder and senior analyst, The StorageIO Group