Yeah, "the cloud" is just a bunch of warehouses full of large servers. They should call it "the warehouse", but that doesn't sound as cool.
Redundant hardware is necessary if your stuff is mission critical, few people bother with backups as if hard drives last forever. Saying that I have some computers over 10 years old that have original hard drives. On the other hand I have a refrigerator door full of Super Magnets from newer hard drives. The bigger the drive the more susceptible to failure at least in my use.