Cloud storage works for scale, protection, and cost. But regions go dark, fiber gets cut, and connections fail. For organizations that moved everything to the cloud, an outage means work stops. For organizations running a hybrid architecture with a solution like Tiger Bridge, work keeps going.
Here's why, and what IT teams should plan for.
Your applications never talk to the cloud directly
Tiger Bridge runs at the file-system level on your Windows server. Users and applications read and write to local storage, exactly as they always have. Tiger Bridge handles replication and tiering to the cloud in the background.
That design is what makes hybrid resilient. When the cloud connection drops, the local file system doesn't notice. Active files open at local speed. New files save locally. Nothing about your daily workflow depends on the cloud being reachable.
What happens during an outage
With Tiger Bridge, active data stays fully available during a cloud outage. Reads and writes continue at full speed.
New and changed data queues locally. When connectivity returns, Tiger Bridge resumes replication automatically. No manual intervention, no lost data.
Links to files still exist on the file system. To save local capacity, Tiger Bridge replaces cold file data with stub files that take up no local space. Opening a stub normally triggers an automatic recall of data from the cloud. During an outage, those files are out of reach until the connection returns. The data is safe; it's just on the other side of the link.
Plan your local tier for continuity
Outage resilience comes down to three decisions:
- Size local storage for your working set. Keep active data plus several days of new data on-premises. In surveillance deployments, three to seven days of local buffering is the standard.
- Tune your tiering policies. Keep recently accessed files local and offload only genuinely cold data.
- Add a second target for critical data. Replicate to another cloud region, provider, or a local disk or tape tier for an extra layer of protection.
Why hybrid wins
- Resilience in both directions. A cloud outage doesn't stop local work. A local failure doesn't lose your data: reinstall Tiger Bridge on a new server and access is restored without re-downloading files.
- Local performance, cloud scale. Hot data stays fast. Capacity behind it is effectively unlimited, so you stop buying hardware every time you run out of space.
- Real cost control. Tiger Bridge customers see over 60% storage cost savings and a 90% smaller local footprint. Cold data moves to archive tiers automatically.
- Zero disruption. Same paths, same workflows, same Active Directory permissions. Users don't need retraining.
- No vendor lock-in. Data stays in its native format and works with Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, Backblaze, Wasabi, and more.
The bottom line
Cloud-only architectures put every file behind a network link. Hybrid architectures keep what matters close and put the cloud to work for scale, protection, and cost. With Tiger Bridge, a cloud outage becomes a minor delay, not a business stoppage.
Modernize without compromise. Adopt cloud at your own pace.