What is Backup and Recovery?

What is Backup and Recovery?

Backup and recovery is the process of duplicating data and storing it in a secure place in case of loss or damage, and then restoring that data to a location — the original one or a safe alternative — so it can be again used in operations

Data Recovery process on a hard Drive

What are the 3 Types of Backups?

Backups are often bucketed into three categories:

Full backups – Like filling up an extra tire at the service station, think of this process as pumping all of the data stored on a production system into a backup system for safe keeping. Full backups protect every bit of data from a single server, database, virtual machine (VM), or data source connected to the network. These backups can take many hours, even days, depending on the amount of data being saved. The more modern a data management solution is, the fewer full backups it must perform, and when it does, the faster it goes. 

Incremental backups – Think of incremental backups as adding just a little more air each time you revisit the station  just in case  so you’re always ready to replace your tire. An incremental backup captures only new data since the last full incremental was performed. 

Differential backups – Like incremental backups, these add more air but the delta is from the last full backup, not the last incremental. Think of this backup as what’s different from the last time you even filled the tire with air. 

What is the Difference Between Backup and Recovery?

The key difference between backup and recovery is that the backup process is how you save and protect your production data and safely store it away so you have it for a later time, when you might need to use it.

Recovery is the process whereby you retrieve and restore that backup data to your production systems to avoid downtime.

What Are the Types Of Data Recovery?

The amount of data organizations create, capture, and store has skyrocketed over the last decade. And analysts anticipate the amount of new data generated will grow at more than 50% compounded annually.

Because enterprises and people are storing data in more places, new categories of data recovery have emerged. These include:

Granular recovery of files, folders and objects – Also known as file-level or object-level recovery, this is the process of quickly getting back one or just a few specific data sets from among many volumes

Instant mass restore – This process allows IT staff to recover not just files but hundreds of virtual machines (VMs) instantly, at scale, to any point in time, saving time and resources

Volume recovery – A process teams that need to recover an unlimited number of VMs at the same time use for faster recovery; for example, all VMs belonging to an application group

Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) recovery – This recovery process ensures all data and apps on a VM are restored quickly

Bare machine recovery – The process of restoring an entire operating system (software, apps, and data) in one process

Instant volume mounts – Teams can save time using a backup solution as a target to restore an entire volume to a Windows VM

Instant restores of VMs – This process restores a large number of VMs to any previous recovery point with backup copies fully hydrated and available immediately

What Is Disaster Recovery Backup?

For enterprises, a disaster is when a catastrophic event occurs that negatively impacts your people and/or your data. The event can be natural — a hurricane taking down a data center, for example. Or a disaster can be human-made such as a ransomware attack.

Disaster recovery is the process your IT organization goes through to restore data. And increasingly, organizations are setting aside a complete or full backup of entire environments — either on-premises or in the public cloud — to ensure all of their data could be made available, quickly, in the event of a catastrophe.

What Types of Data Sources Typically Need to Be Recovered?

All of the data sources that your organization protects may at some time need to be recovered. These include:

VMs (VMware, Microsoft, Nutanix)

Physical servers (Windows, Linux)

Databases (RDBMs) and Distributed Databases (NoSQL, Hadoop, Mongo, Apache, etc.)

Files (NAS)

Containers (e.g. Kubernetes)

Applications (Microsoft Exchange, SAP HANA)

SaaS applications (Microsoft 365, Salesforce)

Primary storage

Mainframes