As sturdy as your system is, do you have a similarly built backup? It might not be on the top of your priority list when you develop a system, but it can be your saving grace in dire times. System failures, errors, and disasters are common and always fall upon you when least expected. As a result, your system might crash, and you can lose all your data. The situation can exacerbate when your customers, partners, and other stakeholders wait for your reply. Hence data backup and recovery is a significant part of any system and should be planned. It can be scheduled in the form of offsite servers or separate drives. According to the nature of your business, the right kind of data backup and recovery needs to be selected. To guide you on the best method for you, we have summed it up for you here.
What is data backup and recovery?
Data backup and recovery are vital for any business to prevent data loss and sustain operations, increase customer experience, promote productivity, and, most importantly, have peace of mind. But what exactly is data backup and recovery?
Data Backup
A copy of it is made and saved to protect your data against deletion, corruption, hardware failure, or ransomware attacks. This copy can be made locally, off-site, or both. Most businesses create an offsite copy for their continuity or disaster recovery plan. The copy can be accessed in case of any data corruption[1].
Data Recovery
Once you have a data backup, recovery is to retrieve the data from it. This entails copying data from the backup and placing it in the existing device. You may recover your data in different ways, such as copying it from the cloud to a local device or transferring it from one cloud to another. This process ensures that the working conditions from before are restored as they were to resume operations. Many IT companies sell solutions specific to data recovery, known as business continuity and disaster recovery, or BCDR, solutions.
Methods of data backup
There are different mediums through which you can back up your system;
1. Tradition tape or disk backup
As the name suggests, the tape is a traditional way to back up your data. Many big enterprises still use tape backups to store large amounts of data. This is because it has higher capacity, lower cost, and provides you with offsite storage. Similarly, disks were used to store data efficiently due to their high speed and efficient retrieving. Although compared to the existing technology nowadays, both mediums are slower.
2. Cloud and SAAS backups
Backing up through a cloud can be done in different ways. You can have direct cloud transfer, where there is no need for a local device, and backup files can be transferred easily to the cloud. Then there is a cloud-to-cloud backup on which files are directly transferred from one cloud to another. Lastly, SaaS backups are also quite common nowadays. In these, the files made in any application, such as Microsoft 365, are backed-up to a cloud. SaaS is cloud-based, but there is still a need for the protection of its data.
3. Business continuity/disaster recovery (BCDR)
IT companies sometimes provide a BCRD [2] solution for fast storage and recovery time. They protect cloud servers and physical, virtual, or SaaS applications. There are many steps involved when a BCDR is planned. From risk identification to testing the plan, BCDR secures your business.
Types of data backup
Data can be backed up in various ways. These ways are;
1. Full backups
This is when a company decides to transfer all of the data to a backup system fully. The data is saved from the server, database, virtual machine (VM) [3], or data source. Although this process takes a lot of time, it will keep you occupied for hours to days.
2. Incremental backups
Only new data is captured with this type since the last full, incremental backup was done. A full backup is necessary before incremental backups take place. Then the process continues where backup updates occur from the time onward the last they took place.
3. Differential backups
This is similar to incremental backup. Although it only captures the files that have changed since the last backup. The requirement with this kind of backup is that a full backup must be performed first. This type of backup is much quicker as less data is being backed up.
Types of data recovery
Recovery can be made through a number of methods. You must select the data backup and recovery type suitable for your business needs.
1. Granular recovery
You can use this method if you have fewer data and want only to retrieve a few files. It is also known as file-level or object-level recovery. It is quick and efficient.
2. Instant mass restore
With this type of recovery, you can recover files and hundreds of virtual machines (VMs). This process is fast, saving you time and resources.
3. Volume recovers
You can quickly recover your files and have an unlimited number of virtual machines (VMs). They may belong to an application group.
4. Bare machine recovery
In this method, you can restore an entire operating system, including its software, applications, and data, in one go.
5. Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) recovery
This process stores all the data and apps of a VM efficiently.
6. Instant volume mounts
This method can quickly restore an entire volume to a Windows VM. It is quick and saves you time.
7. Instant restores of VMs
With high efficiency and capacity, it can restore many VMs to any previous recovery point. It has readily available backup copies.
Conclusion
Data backup and recovery are essential to any system to ensure business continuity. Both data backup and recovery are not mutually exclusive but work best when deployed. You need a robust security plan to protect your business from data losses and unexpected disasters. This will protect your critical business data and provide a quality experience for your stakeholders. Select your business’s proper backup and recovery by analyzing the risks and requirements.
FAQs
1. What are the techniques for data backup and recovery?
In recovery, different operations are involved in restoring, rolling forward, or rolling back data. When data backup and recovery occurs, various strategies are used to save the database again losses and reconstruct that data.
2. What is the use of the three methods of data backup and recovery?
The three primary data backup and recovery methods are direct-to-cloud backup, cloud-to-cloud backup, and SaaS backup. Depending on the system you have in place, any of these methods can be implemented.
3. Why do I need data backup and recovery?
Data backup and recovery protect your data against losses, corruption, and cyberattacks. The process entails planning backup and recovery and testing it against different failures.
4. How is data backup an advantage?
There are many benefits of data backup and recovery. Firstly, it secures your data to be recovered and replicated easily. You can maintain standards of compliance while having a competitive advantage. You attain high performance and easy data management.
References:
[1]https://www.techopedia.com/definition/14680/data-corruption
[3]https://www.vmware.com/topics/glossary/content/virtual-machine.html
