Data protection backup refers to creating copies of data to restore in case the originals are lost or corrupted. It is an essential part of any organization’s data management plan to prevent data loss and ensure business continuity. Some key aspects of data protection backup include:
Why is data backup important?
There are several crucial reasons why organizations need a data protection backup plan:
- Prevent data loss – Hardware failures, software crashes, human errors, malware attacks, and natural disasters can lead to permanent data loss. Backups ensure important data can be recovered.
- Meet compliance requirements – Regulations often mandate backing up and archiving data for a minimum time. Backups help demonstrate compliance.
- Enable recovery from outages – If systems go down due to an outage or disaster, backups allow restoring data to resume operations quickly.
- Protect against cyber attacks – Backups make it possible to recover from ransomware and other malware attacks aimed at corrupting data.
- Support audits – Data backups provide point-in-time records required during audits and investigations.
Without a well-planned backup scheme, it can be impossible or expensive to recover lost data. Proper backups are essential for minimizing downtime and recovering quickly.
What data needs to be backed up?
While ideally all business data should be backed up, it may not be feasible or cost-effective to fully backup every piece of data. Organizations need to identify and prioritize their critical data to backup. This typically includes:
- Databases – Databases containing key business transactions, sales records, inventory, and financial data.
- File servers – File servers holding company documents, spreadsheets, presentations and other essential files.
- Email systems – Emails often contain important communications and records that need preservation.
- Business applications – Key apps that are essential for core operations, like ERP, CRM, HR apps.
- OS and configurations – The operating system, system settings, configurations and registry settings.
Less critical data like temporary files may require less frequent backups or no backups at all. Understanding the importance of different data helps optimize backup processes.
Backup types
There are different types of backup processes suited for various situations:
Full backup
A full backup copies all specified data. It produces a complete, standalone dataset that can fully restore systems in case of loss. Full backups take the longest to perform and require the most storage space.
Incremental backup
An incremental backup only copies data changed since the last full or incremental backup. It minimizes storage space and allows faster backups, relying on previous backups to restore datasets. Restores require chaining together multiple incremental backups.
Differential backup
Differential backup copies all data changed since the last full backup. It retains access to only the most recent full backup and differential backup. Faster than full but slower than incremental, it provides a middle ground.
Reverse incremental backup
Reverse incremental backup only stores data changed since the last reverse incremental backup. Unlike forward incremental, it relies only on the most recent incremental backup for restores. Restores are faster but backups take longer.
Mirror backup
Mirror backups continuously replicate data to a secondary storage system. This provides continuous protection and rapid failover and recovery in case of a disaster, but requires expensive storage.
Versioning backup
Versioning backup retains multiple versions of files and data over time. This allows restoring previous versions and provides protection against file corruption, ransomware, or accidental deletion.
Cloud backup
Cloud backup replicates data to remote cloud servers. It provides redundancy against local failures and integrates well with cloud-based systems and resources. But bandwidth limitations may slow backups and restores.
Backup media types
Data can be backed up to various media types and destinations:
- Disk – Direct-attached storage (DAS), storage area network (SAN), network-attached storage (NAS) provide disk-based backup storage.
- Removable media – Tape cartridges, optical discs, external drives are removable media often used for archival backups.
- Cloud storage – Backup as a service (BaaS) providers offer cloud-based backup storage that is scalable and offsite.
Each option has tradeoffs in capacity, security, cost, retention and recovery time. Organizations often use a tiered approach combining fast local backups with cheaper offsite archival.
Backup schedules
The frequency and intervals for running backups depend on data criticality and change rates. Some common backup schedules include:
- Daily – Daily backups cover critical data subject to frequent changes. Often done after business hours.
- Weekly – Weekly backups provide an additional recovery point for critical data and are common for file servers.
- Monthly – Monthly backups capture monthly reporting periods and milestones for databases.
- Quarterly or yearly – Long term archival backups may be scheduled quarterly or yearly.
Higher frequency backups limit potential data loss but are more resource intensive. Finding the right balance for each dataset is key.
Backup retention periods
Backup copies are retained for set periods before being deleted or overwritten. Typical retention periods are:
- Daily – Kept for 5 to 14 days.
- Weekly – Kept for 2 to 8 weeks.
- Monthly – Kept for 6 to 12 months.
- Yearly – Kept for 2 to 7 years or longer.
Longer retention protects against older data loss but incurs storage costs. Legal requirements may also dictate retention rules. Older backups are often moved to cheaper archival media.
Backup best practices
Some key best practices help create robust, reliable backup processes:
- Use the 3-2-1 backup rule – Maintain 3 copies, on 2 different media types, with 1 offsite copy.
- Encrypt and password-protect backup data to prevent unauthorized access.
- Use file-level backup for quick, granular restores.
- Ensure adequate capacity to meet retention requirements.
- Validate backups periodically by performing test restores.
- Document detailed policies, procedures and disaster recovery processes.
- Automate backup tasks using scripts or management tools whenever possible.
Following best practices avoids pitfalls like incorrect configurations, media failures and inadequate recovery testing.
Backup solutions
Several types of software solutions are available for managing enterprise backups:
Backup software
Backup software products provide a centralized platform to automate and orchestrate data protection across an organization’s IT environment. Popular enterprise solutions include Veeam Backup & Replication, Commvault, Veritas NetBackup, and Micro Focus Data Protector.
Cloud backup services
Turnkey backup as a service (BaaS) from vendors like AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, Acronis and Carbonite offer flexible cloud storage for backups. This minimizes hardware costs but can have slow recovery times.
Disk imaging
Disk imaging tools like Clonezilla allow imaging partitions or entire drives for quick bare-metal restores. This protects against OS and disk failures.
Version control systems
Version control software like Git allows tracking and recovering previous versions of code files and documents. This protects source code and files from accidental loss.
Database backup tools
Native database tools like Microsoft SQL Server Backup, MySQLDump, and pg_dump are used to backup and restore database contents and transaction logs.
Agentless backup tools
Agentless backup tools can backup remote servers and VMs without installing software agents. Examples include Veeam Agentless Backup and Asigra DS-System.
Backup testing
Testing backup recoverability periodically through test restores is crucial. Key types of backup tests include:
Recovery validation testing
Restore backed up data to a test environment and verify it recovers successfully. This validates the backup process and media viability.
High availability testing
Failover applications to backup servers and infrastructure to validate high availability capabilities. Exercise redundancy mechanisms.
Disaster recovery testing
Simulate major outages and disasters and perform full-scale restores to secondary facilities. Examine RTO and RPO conformance.
Testing should cover different scenarios like recovery from cryptolocker, corrupted databases, and server failures. Mock tests or real-world events both provide valuable testing data.
Choosing a backup solution
Key criteria for choosing a backup application include:
- Breadth of platform support – Support for all critical hardware, OS, hypervisors, databases, apps.
- Scalability – Ability to grow with increasing data volumes.
- Backup performance – Speed of backups and restores.
- Data reduction – Data deduplication, compression to optimize storage.
- Security – Encryption, access controls, data integrity checks.
- Cost – Perpetual, subscription or cloud pricing.
- Usability – Intuitive interfaces and automation capabilities.
- Cloud integration – Hybrid, multi-cloud support and BaaS integration.
- Reporting – Backup monitoring, analytics, and reporting.
The right solution depends on the organization’s requirements, budget, infrastructure, skillsets and other factors. Proofs of concept can validate choices.
Implementing a backup solution
Key steps for implementing a new backup solution include:
- Document requirements – Datasets, recovery points, retention rules and performance needs.
- Assess existing infrastructure – Storage, servers, software, bandwidth constraints.
- Create policies and processes – Define backup types, schedules, retention, media usage, testing, disaster recovery.
- Select and purchase solution – Perform POC testing and select product.
- Install and configure – Install servers, software, storage. Configure backups and settings.
- Integrate and migrate data – Connect applications via agents. Migrate legacy data.
- Validate backups – Test backups and practice restores ensure the solution works.
- Train staff – Educate administrators, operators and end-users on the new environment.
- Ongoing management – Monitor, tune and maintain the solution, updating as needed.
Following best practices avoids pitfalls during deployment and ensures long term recoverability.
Maintaining backups
Effective backup maintenance is key for continued data protection. Important aspects include:
- Monitoring backup status, failures, bottlenecks and capacity.
- Tuning backup performance – Adding resources or tweaking settings.
- Periodic testing – Validating recovery and failover capabilities.
- Media refreshing – Replacing aging tapes, disks before they fail.
- Retention management – Adding capacity, moving older data to archival media.
- Software updating – Keeping backup software, agents, OSes up-to-date.
- Process reviews – Verifying policies are followed. Updating plans as needed.
Neglecting maintenance leads to backup failures. A proactive approach prevents unpleasant surprises during recovery operations.
Data backup options
Beyond traditional backup software, organizations have additional options for data protection including:
High availability clusters
Clustered servers with failover provide redundancy against server failures but do not protect against data corruption or deletion.
Continuous data protection
CDP backups continuously capture changes, providing fine-grained restore points between backups. Requires greater resources.
Data replication
Synchronous or asynchronous data replication creates redundant copies in real-time, but may replicate corrupted data.
Redundant storage
RAID arrays, erasure coding and redundant drive mechanisms limit disk failure data loss but not software data corruption.
Long term archiving
Archival backups using microfilm, magnetic tape, optical media or the cloud provide cost-efficient long term retention but slower recovery times.
Snapshots
Volume or virtual machine snapshots capture point-in-time backup copies efficiently with less overhead than full backups.
Using complementary data protection mechanisms strengthens resilience against both hardware failures and data corruption.
The future of data backup
Data backup technology continues evolving to meet new challenges:
- Faster networks speed backup and recovery performance.
- Greater storage efficiency reduces capacity demands.
- Improved security protects against cyber attacks.
- Increased automation simplifies administration.
- Cloud integration enables flexibility and lower overhead.
- Artificial intelligence enhances forecasting, troubleshooting and optimization.
- Blockchain-based solutions provide data integrity verification.
As data volumes and business reliance on digital systems grow, the importance of data backup likewise increases. Maintaining robust data protection and recovery capabilities will continue gaining priority in IT strategies.
Conclusion
Data backup provides the vital ability to recover from data loss incidents. Organizations rely on backup solutions to safeguard critical information assets and remain resilient. As data grows exponentially, improving and adapting backup systems using emerging technologies becomes crucial.
By understanding key backup types, processes, solutions and best practices, IT departments can develop data protection plans tailored to their specific recovery requirements, infrastructure and budgets. Ongoing testing, maintenance and improvement of backups helps ensure they deliver their full value when needed most after a disaster or failure. In the modern digital world, data backup is a foundational component of both data management and overall business continuity.
