Data backup is a practice that combines techniques and solutions for efficient and cost-effective backup. Your data is copied to one or more locations, at pre-determined frequencies, and at different capacities. You can set up a flexible data backup operation, using your own architecture, or make use of available Backup as a Service (BaaS) solutions, mixing them up with local storage. Today, there are plenty of corporate storage TCO solutions to help you calculate costs, avoid data loss, and prevent data breaches.
Data backup is the practice of copying data from a primary to a secondary location, to protect it in case of a disaster, accident or malicious action. Data is the lifeblood of modern organizations, and losing data can cause massive damage and disrupt business operations. This is why backing up your data is critical for all businesses, large and small.
What is Data Backup and Why is it Important
Typically backup data means all necessary data for the workloads your server is running. This can include documents, media files, configuration files, machine images, operating systems, and registry files. Essentially, any data that you want to preserve can be stored as backup data.
There are many ways to backup your file. Choosing the right option can help ensure that you are creating the best data backup plan for your needs. Below are six of the most common techniques or technologies:
A 3-2-1 backup strategy is a method for ensuring that your data is adequately duplicated and reliably recoverable. In this strategy, three copies of your data are created on at least two different storage media and at least one copy is stored remotely:
This strategy is considered a best practice by most information security experts and government authorities. It protects against both accidents and malicious threats, such as ransomware, and ensures reliable data backup and restoration.
Server backup solutions are typically designed to help you backup server data to another local server, a cloud server, or a hybrid system. In particular, backup to hybrid systems is becoming more popular. This is because hybrid systems enable you to optimize resources, support easy multi-region duplication, and can enable faster recovery and failover.
You can set up centralized storage such as Network Attached Storage (NAS ), Storage Area Network (SAN), or regular hard disks mounted as a network share using Network File System (NFS) protocol. This is a convenient option for making large storage available to local devices for backup. However, it is susceptible to disasters affecting your entire data center, such as natural disasters or cyberattacks.
Modern tape technology such as Linear Tape-Open 8 (LTO-8) can store up to 9 TB of data on a single tape. You can then ship the tape to a distant location, preferably at least 100 miles away from your primary location. Tape backups have been used for decades, but their obvious downside is the extremely high RTO and RPO due to the need to physically ship the tapes to and from a backup location. They also require a tape drive and an autoloader to perform backup and recovery, and this equipment is expensive.
When using cloud providers, you have access to a variety of storage services. Cloud providers charge a flat price per Gigabyte, but costs can start to add up for frequent access. There are multiple tools that let you backup data to S3 automatically, both from within the cloud and from on-premise machines.
Data backup is the process of protecting data in case of a disaster, accident, or malicious action, by copying it from one location to another. Data is the lifeblood of any organization, losing data can lead to serious damage and interrupt business operations. Therefore, backing up your dataup is critical for both large and small businesses.
Data archives and backups are not the same. Even though they are both used to store data, you should use them for different purposes. Data backups protect data that is currently in use. This enables you to restore corrupted or lost data from a single point in time.
Cloud backup refers to the procedure of storing copies of cloud data in another location. This enables you to restore information in case of data compromise, downtime or damage. Additionally, organizations often need to backup cloud data to comply with regulations. They can face penalties and fines if they neglect to do so.
Storage tiering is a method for efficiently using storage systems according to their importance or business value. A tiered storage solution provides several types of storage, including SSD disk drives, tape storage, and magnetic disk drives. The most frequently-accessed or important data is stored on the fastest, and most expensive SSD and the least important on the slowest, cheapest media.
Data protection relies on technologies such as data loss prevention (DLP), storage with built-in data protection, firewalls, encryption, and endpoint protection. Learn what is the difference between data protection and data privacy, and how to leverage best practice to ensure the continual protection of your data.
Cloud backup enables your organization to send a copy of your cloud data to another location so that if your data is compromised, you can restore information, ensure business continuity, and defend against devastating IT crises.
Copying data directly to cloud infrastructure providers like Microsoft Azure or Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) tends to come at a lower storage cost than other backup options; however, organizations incur greater risk by leveraging public cloud space because:
Organizations with big budgets and existing infrastructure can consider on-premise, private cloud backup. In this arrangement, data is protected behind your own firewall and gives you complete control over internal data, but is costlier as you still need to pay for:
This makes the private cloud option less than ideal for budget-conscious companies. Moreover, knowing that data management, maintenance, and risk is their responsibility, most companies prefer to focus on their core business rather than managing on-premise, private cloud backups.
This type of backup means that some data will be backed up and stored on-premise, often in a physical form, while other data will be backed up to a cloud. Some information may be backed up in both ways.
This particular option has been growing in popularity over the years because for companies working with an abundance of SaaS data, the private cloud provides versatile compatibility where on-premises backup infrastructure does not.
In choosing a data backup solution, individuals can take cues from how businesses develop their own data backup strategies and do this by considering the recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO):
Cloud backup, also known as online backup or remote backup, is a strategy for sending a copy of a physical or virtual file or database to a secondary, off-site location for preservation in case of equipment failure, site catastrophe or human malfeasance. The backup server and data storage systems are usually hosted by a third-party cloud or SaaS provider that charges the backup customer a recurring fee based on storage space or capacity used, data transmission bandwidth, number of users, number of servers or number of times data is retrieved.
Implementing cloud data backup can help bolster an organization's data protection, business continuance and regulatory compliance strategies without increasing the workload of IT staff. The labor-saving benefit can be significant and enough of a consideration to offset some of the additional costs associated with cloud backup, such as data transmission charges.
Most cloud subscriptions run on a monthly or yearly basis. Initially used mainly by consumers and home offices, online backup services are now commonly used by SMBs and larger enterprises to back up some forms of data. For larger companies, cloud data backup can serve as a supplementary form of backup.
In an organization's data center, a backup application copies data and stores it on different media or another storage system for easy access in the event of a recovery situation Although there are multiple options and approaches to off-site backup, cloud backup serves as the off-site facility for many organizations. In an enterprise, the company might own the off-site server if it hosts its own private cloud service, but the chargeback method would be similar if the company uses a service provider to manage the cloud backup environment and receives a regular bill for backup storage and services.
There are a variety of approaches to cloud backup, with available services that can easily fit into an organization's existing data protection process. Varieties of cloud backup include the following:
When an organization engages a cloud backup service, the first step is to complete a full backup of the data that must be protected. This initial backup can sometimes take days to finish uploading over a network as a result of the large volume of data being transferred. In a 3-2-1 backup strategy, where an organization has three copies of data on two different media, at least one copy of the backed up data should be sent to an off-site backup facility so that it's accessible even if on-site systems are unavailable.
Using a technique called cloud seeding, a cloud backup vendor sends a storage device -- such as a hard drive or tape cartridge -- to its new customer, which then backs up the data locally onto the device and returns it to the provider. This process removes the need to send the initial data over the network to the backup provider. One example of a device that employs this technique is AWS Snowball Edge.
If the amount of data in the initial backup is substantial, the cloud backup service might provide a full storage array for the seeding process. These arrays are typically small network-attached storage (NAS) devices that can be shipped back and forth relatively easily. After the initial seeding, only changed data is backed up over the network. 2ff7e9595c
Comments