Backup has become quite popular in the last few years. It has been linked to data protection and is widely used for the protection of data. Having said this, it is also important to understand what types of backups are available and which can be best suited for your company. Some sort of Backup and disaster recovery is required to backup the data at safe place.
Full Backups
‘Full backup’ is the most commonly used type of back up. As the name states, it makes a complete full copy of your data in another disk or cloud. This makes data available in a single state of media and is easy to recover it with faster RTOs.
However, one disadvantage is that it takes long to create a backup, especially if the size is in Terabytes. This is why, mostly, full backups are run periodically. The time interval is set by the enterprise according to their needs and data requirements.
Incremental Backups
Incremental backup means to change or back up only the edited or changed data since the last backup. This is done through time stamps. An organization or enterprise compares the time stamps of the old and new data and ‘backs up’ only the change data from it. This results in faster backups and since these are smaller copies of data, this will result in less use of storage space.
Differential Backups
Differential Backups are similar to incremental backups. It copies data that has been changed from the previous backup, initially, but, each time it is run afterwards, it will continue to copy all the data changed since the previous full backup. This way it will store more data than a standard incremental backup. The downside to this is that it will require more space and more time to complete as compared to incremental backups.
Mirror Backups
A mirror backup creates an exact copy of the data set but only the recent version is stored in the database, with no trace of the previous versions. Its advantage is that is has a fast recovery time as compared to a full back up which takes longer. This also makes it easy to access separate individual backed up files.
One drawback of this is that it requires a lot of storage space. This is a strong reason why enterprises don’t adopt this as it results in extra cost and maintenance. This is also not that much reliable as there are no redundant backups and if a copy gets deleted your data is lost completely.
Comprehensive Data Protection
There is no one way of backing up your data. Companies should use a comprehensive method which suits them best. A combination of these can be used for best results. For instance;
- Full Daily Backups
- Full Weekly & Differential Daily Backups
- Full Weekly & Incremental Daily Backups
A company will consider many aspects and things before going for a particular backup strategy. Typically, it depends on the data and storage requirements but other factors may play a role in decision making as well. Veeam backup to Azure can be used for backups.
In Conclusion
The choice of backup methods totally depends on the enterprise. Small businesses may run daily full backups while larger organizations may backup weekly full backup plus daily incremental backups. It basically depends on the organization and its data. Choosing the best one for your company ensure an efficient cost effective backup strategy.