This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Tom

The 3 AM disaster that changed everything: The decade-old AWS account suspended overnight. Ten years of work—gone. His mistake? Trusting a single provider.

The Problem with Single-Provider Strategies

Even reliable cloud giants fail through non-technical issues:

• Account suspensions from billing disputes

• Policy violations triggering automated locks

• Regional outages affecting entire ecosystems

When your primary provider, backups, and monitoring all exist in one place, you’re betting everything on a single point of failure.

My Four-Pillar Defense Strategy

1. Heartbeat Monitoring

bash

Backup validation script

backup_job() {
if backup_data && validate_integrity; then
curl -X POST “https://api.bubobot.com/heartbeat/backup-job“
fi
}

Heartbeat monitoring ensures backups actually complete with valid data, catching silent failures before emergencies.

2. Cross-Provider Distribution

• Primary: AWS (daily operations)

• Secondary: GCP (frequent backups)

• Emergency: Azure (catastrophic scenarios)

Geographic and jurisdictional separation protects against regional disasters and policy changes.

3. Automated Integrity Validation

javascript

const validateBackup = async (backupFile) => {
const checksum = await calculateChecksum(backupFile);
const expectedSize = await getExpectedSize();

if (checksum !== expectedChecksum || size < expectedSize * 0.95) {
throw new Error(‘Backup integrity validation failed’);
}
};

4. Regular Restore Testing

Multi-cloud backup health requires proving you can actually restore data across different providers with realistic RTOs.

Getting Started Today

1. Implement backup monitoring for current processes

2. Add secondary provider storage (start with free tiers)

3. Test restore operations across providers

4. Measure actual recovery times

Key insight: Backup systems that can’t reliably restore data are just expensive storage solutions.

The best time to implement comprehensive disaster recovery monitoring was yesterday. The second best time is right now.

What’s your backup strategy? Share your approach below!
Read more at https://bubobot.com/blog/why-i-back-up-to-multiple-cloud-providers?utm_source=dev.to

This content originally appeared on DEV Community and was authored by Tom