Cloud Replication: A Comprehensive Guide 101

The Cloud has now become an integral & ultra-important part of the digital world that lets organizations manage large volumes of complex data with ease.

It further helps them ensure high data availability and accessibility at all times, thereby providing a robust recovery mechanism in case of any unprecedented failure.

Cloud-based Replication thus plays a crucial part in ensuring the smooth functioning of the business processes and systems. It further helps organizations scale along with their growing data needs as they expand across platforms, regions, etc. without degrading the performance.

Understanding Cloud Replication

• Data replication refers to the process of transferring or copying data from a database of your choice from one server to another.
• It helps boost and maintain high data availability & accessibility, thereby facilitating data sharing and recovery.
• Organizations leverage the power of data replication to copy their data to the cloud to eliminate silos while addressing the increasing demand for real-time responsiveness.
• It helps them draw crucial insights and make data-driven decisions to drive growth & innovation across departments.
• A successful cloud initiative requires organizations to chalk a plan on how they want to replicate their data to the cloud server.
• To do this, they need to find a cloud-based data replication solution that is reliable, easy-to-implement, cost-effective, and helps transfer data from on-premises source systems to cloud-based destination systems with ease.
• By copying on-premises data to the cloud, enterprises can leverage cloud economies of scale-like data warehousing, application migration, and analytics.

Cloud Vs Traditional Data Replication

The following table provides a comprehensive comparison of the features of these two data replication strategies:

Cloud Data Replication	Traditional Data Replication
Data is replicated from physical storage to the cloud, or from one cloud instance to another.	Data is replicated from one physical storage to another within the company’s local network.
It uses fully-managed remote servers located across the town or the county.	It uses in-house hardware and software that is owned and managed by the organization.
Cloud-based software and resources follow a subscription-based pricing model, allowing users to rent them on a monthly/annum basis. These form the operating costs.	On-premise hardware and software, require users to purchase them at once, thereby making them a capital expense.
It is cost-effective as it only requires you to set up an account with the cloud service provider to start the replication process.	It requires you to invest in hardware and software licenses, and hence it has a high up-front cost.
It only requires you to have an active internet connection to start the replication process.	You may not need an active internet connection to perform traditional data replication.

Advantages of Cloud Replication

• High Availability:  In case the primary instance is destroyed by a major disaster like fire, storm, flood, etc., your secondary data instance will be safe in the cloud, allowing you to recover data.
• Cheap: Replicating data to the cloud is much economical than replicating and maintaining data in your data center. It helps minimize costs associated with managing the data center, including hardware, software, support cost, etc.
• Scalable: t allows users to either increase or decrease their storage requirements as their business expands or contracts. It doesn’t require users to purchase additional hardware.
• Secure: Most cloud service providers provide a fully-managed service and are solely responsible for maintaining physical and network security. It is, therefore, quite beneficial for a small business that lacks proper security staff. 

Top 5 Tools for Cloud Replication

Choosing the ideal Cloud Data Replication tool that perfectly meets your business requirements can be a challenging task, especially when there’s a large variety of data replication tools available in the market. To simplify your search, here is a comprehensive list of the 5 best Cloud Replication tools that you can choose from and start replicating data with ease:

1) Hevo Data

Hevo provides you with a truly efficient and fully-automated solution to replicate and manage data in real-time and always have analysis-ready data in your desired destination. It allows you to focus on key business needs and perform insightful analysis using BI tools. 

Join thousands using Hevo for leveraging data effortlessly. Sign Up for a 14-day free trial now. You can also have a look at our unbeatable pricing that will help you choose the right plan for your business needs!

Pricing Model of Hevo Data

2) Carbonite

• Carbonite is a robust data backup tool that houses an easy-to-use interface, allowing organizations to replicate their data without having any technical skills in a matter of minutes.
• It provides users with an intuitive web-based dashboard, allowing them to copy, monitor, and access their data with ease.
• It leverages advanced encryption mechanisms and provides users with enterprise-grade security, thereby keeping their data safe while in transit or storage.

Pricing Model of Carbonite

It provides users with three subscription-based offerings based on the number of computers you have in place, with the basic plan for 1 to 3 computers starting at $6/month.

3) AWS Migration Service

• AWS Migration Service is one of the most popular and secure data replication services by Amazon that allows users to migrate their data from numerous data sources, databases, etc. to AWS (Amazon Web Services) quickly and securely.
• It ensures that the source database remains fully operational during the migration process, thereby reducing the downtime associated with applications dependent on the source database. You can use the AWS Data Migration Service to migrate your data to and from widely used open-source and commercial databases.

Pricing Model of AWS Migration Services

AWS Migration Services follow an instance class-based pricing model and charges users based on the type of class instance they have in place and the hours of consumption. It allows users to leverage the migration free of cost, in case they are transferring data to Amazon Aurora, Amazon Redshift, Amazon DynamoDB, or Amazon DocumentDB for six months.

For further information on AWS Migration Services, you can check the official website here.

4) Veeam Backup and Replication

Veeam Backup and Replication is a robust data-center-based backup software that houses intuitive functionalities such as asynchronous data replication, cross-platform replication, instant failover mechanism, simulation/testing, orchestration, dashboarding, etc. It allows users to not only replicate their data but also transform the data and carry out analytics and numerous tests to draw crucial insights, helping them make data-driven business decisions.

Pricing Model of Veeam

It provides users with three subscription offerings, namely Veeam Backup Essentials, Veeam Backup and Replication, and Veeam Availability Suite, with the Veeam Backup Essentials plan available at $460/annum. You can also make use of the Veeam pricing calculator to determine the exact and unique cost for your business data needs. It further provides users with a 30-day free trial as well.

5) Nakivo

Nakivo is a robust data backup and replication tool that follows an integrated approach to data protection, ensuring that your critical applications and data remain safe. It provides users with a diverse set of functionalities, best-in-class product and customer support, along affordable pricing. It allows users to backup & replicates data to the cloud, tape, etc. It also provides support for disaster recovery orchestration for physical, virtual, SaaS, and cloud environments.

Pricing Model of Nakivo

Nakivo provides users with five different subscription offerings, namely Basics, Pro Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, Pro, and Enterprise plan, with the “Basic Plan” starting at $99/socket. It further provides users with a free trial.

Feature	Hevo Data	Carbonite	AWS Migration Service	Veeam Backup	Nakivo
Overview	Real-time data replication tool	Easy data backup solution	Migrates data to AWS	Backup with replication and testing	Backup & replication with recovery
Key Features	150+ sources, real-time sync	Web-based, encryption	No downtime, open-source support	Cross-platform, instant failover	Data protection for SaaS and cloud
Pricing	Starts at $149/month, free trial	Starts at $6/month	Instance-based pricing, free for AWS	Starts at $460/year	Starts at $99/socket
Free Trial	14-day free trial	No free trial	Free for 6 months (specific services)	30-day free trial	Free trial available
Security	Fault-tolerant, zero data loss	Encryption during transit/storage	Secure migration, low downtime	Failover mechanisms	Strong data protection

Conclusion

1. This article provided you with in-depth knowledge about Cloud Data Replication, its advantages & disadvantages, along with a comprehensive comparison of Cloud Replication vs Traditional Replication approaches.
2. If you’re looking for an all-in-one solution, that will not only help you transfer data but also transform it into analysis-ready form, then Hevo Data is the right choice for you! It will take care of all your analytics needs in a completely automated manner, allowing you to focus on key business activities.

Join thousands using Hevo for leveraging data effortlessly. Sign Up for a 14-day free trial now. You can also have a look at our unbeatable pricing that will help you choose the right plan for your business needs!

Frequently Asked Questions