Google Will Upload Your Physical Backups into the Cloud
One of the unofficial rules of working in IT is to always have at least three backups of your data. Many experts recommend that one of those copies of your data be at least 100 miles away, in case of a natural disaster. For organizations that would like to send their data into the cloud, Google Cloud Storage is now providing an option called Offline Media Import/Export which gives organizations the ability to send data to Google through the post office.
Google has partnered with Iron Mountain on this storage endeavor in order to provide organizations with a fully compliant, data handling service. When Google receives your data, it is handled by Iron Mountain using a chain of custody system that is globally recognized. Once the data is ready to be moved into Google’s storage cloud, a technician will hook up any physical media that you’ve sent and move it into your Google Cloud storage account. This service is similar to Amazon’s Import/Export service, however, Google allows you to mail tape drives whereas Amazon does not support tape. With Google, you can also mail hard drives, USB, optical media and more.
For organizations that need a long term backup solution, Google can have this storage moved into the Google Nearline service. With Google Nearline, organizations can begin backing up their data for as little as 1 cent per gigabyte per month. CloudWedge recently wrote about Google Nearline’s latest promotion, which involved Google giving away up to 100 petabytes of cloud storage for free.
Once the data is done uploading into the cloud, Google will mail you the media back. You can also request that Iron Mountain destroy your disks, or you could use Iron Mountain’s vault service to store your physical data long term.
