# Backup and recovery for hybrid architectures
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The cloud-native and on-premises deployments discussed in this guide can be combined into hybrid scenarios where the workload environment has on-premises and AWS infrastructure components. Resources, including web servers, application servers, monitoring servers, databases, and Microsoft Active Directory, are hosted either in the customer data center or on AWS. Applications that are running in the AWS Cloud are connected to applications that are running on premises.

This is becoming a common scenario for enterprise workloads. Many enterprises have data centers of their own and use AWS to augment capacity. These customer data centers are often connected to the AWS network by high-capacity network links. For example, with [Direct Connect](https://aws.amazon.com/directconnect/), you can establish private, dedicated connectivity from your on-premises data center to AWS. This provides the bandwidth and consistent latency to upload data to the cloud for the purposes of data protection. It also provides consistent performance and latency for hybrid workloads. The following diagram provides one example of a hybrid environment approach.

![\[A data center communicating with AWS using AWS Direct Connect, Amazon Route 53, Amazon CloudFront.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/backup-recovery/images/aws-direct-connect.png)


Well-designed data protection solutions typically use a combination of the options described in the cloud-native and on-premises solutions in this guide. Many ISVs provide market leading backup and restore solutions for on-premises infrastructure and have expanded their solutions to support hybrid approaches.

# Moving centralized backup management solutions to the cloud for higher availability
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By using your existing backup management solution investments with AWS, you can improve the resilience and architecture of your approach. You might have a primary backup server and one or more media or storage servers located on-premises across multiple locations close to the servers and services they are protecting. In this case, consider moving the primary backup server to an EC2 instance to protect it from on-premises disasters and for high availability.

To manage the backup data flows, you can create one or more media servers on EC2 instances in the same Region as the servers they will protect. Media servers near the EC2 instances save you money on internet transfer. When you back up to Amazon S3, media servers increase overall backup and recovery performance.

You can also use Storage Gateway to provide centralized cloud access to data from geographically dispersed data centers and offices. For example, a file gateway gives you on-demand, low-latency access to data stored in AWS for application workflows that can span the globe. You can use features such as cache refresh to refresh data in geographically distributed locations so that content can be easily shared across your offices.

![\[Communication between AWS and a corporate data center, a co-location center, and a branch office.\]](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/backup-recovery/images/multiple-location-architecture.png)