If you are a database administrator, you probably know how important backups of your data are. Backups can save us from all kinds of disasters including, but not limited to data corruption or accidental deletion, data breaches, etc.: however, all kinds of backups must also be stored somewhere, right? We have two options: backups can either be stored locally or in the cloud.

Why the Cloud?

These days, the cloud is a frequent option for many companies - whatever they would work on, software or not, the cloud is a very viable option. Why you ask? There are a few reasons:

• The cloud does not go down - data stored in the cloud is safe. The cloud does not “stop working” or “go down” either: unless something extremely terrible happens to your cloud services (like they burn down etc.) your data is safe 24/7/365. It can also be accessed from another location.
• The cloud encrypts your data - when you store data on physical hard drives, not only is it harder to access it when you need to, but it’s usually not encrypted, especially if you’re not very security-savvy.
• The cloud is scalable - while backing up data in a traditional way would require a lot of resources up front, the cloud does not have this problem. Cloud storage providers usually allow us to scale our resources back and forth: need 10GB of storage? No issues. Oh, your data has grown and you need more? Simple - click a button and you’re done. Isn’t that fantastic?

Backup Ninja and Backups

Of course, before even thinking about storing your data in the cloud, you have to know what you are storing there: you have to back up your data first. If you don’t have what to store, where to store something becomes irrelevant. Thankfully, there’s Backup Ninja - a service that is suitable for whatever database platform you might use: MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server, PostgreSQL, or even TimescaleDB - it supports them all.

Backup Ninja can also let you store your backups in the cloud. To see everything that it has to offer, first log into the service:

You will see a tab titled “Cloud Credentials” on the left, click on it - you will then be able to add a cloud service to your Backup Ninja account:

Choose a cloud provider and you will be able to set it up in just a couple of clicks - configure your credentials and you should be almost done!

From now on, when you add a backup, you will also be able to schedule it to be backed up on your cloud storage solution of choice - click Edit Schedule and click on Schedules. Then choose the cloud as your option:

See? That’s about as easy as it gets, it really is easy!

Summary

By storing your backups on the cloud you can be sure you avoid all kinds of disasters from data corruption to hard drive failure. The cloud is a safe storage location for your database backups because it’s always available, it’s safe and it does not “stop working” like hard drives can sometimes do. If you think the cloud is a reliable option for your database backups, be sure to give Backup Ninja a try - you will enjoy your backups being automated.