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Businesses and organizations quickly realize three things in the course of their daily operations: any computer system can fail; anyone can make mistakes; incidents seem to happen when you least expect or are least prepared for them. As a result, data backup and recovery are critical to a company's success. Businesses need to plan and have data backup systems in place in case the worst happens, long before it does. Data backup systems that work well use an off-site server or separate drives to store your massive amounts of information. Without these systems in place, data recovery becomes difficult, resulting in a loss of information when the worst happens.

What are data backup and recovery?

Data backup and recovery is the process of backing up your data in case of loss and setting up security systems that allow you to restore your data accordingly. Data backup involves copying and archiving computer data to make it accessible in the event of data corruption or deletion. You can only restore data from a previous date if you have backed it up. Data backup is a form of disaster recovery, making it an essential part of any sensible disaster recovery plan. Data backup cannot always restore all the data and settings on your system. For example, computer clusters, database servers, or Active Directory servers may require additional types of disaster recovery because a backup and restore may not fully reconstruct the data. Today, you can back up a significant amount of data using cloud storage; therefore, archiving your data to a local system's hard drive or external storage is not necessary. In addition, you can configure your mobile devices using cloud technologies to enable automatic data recovery.

Off-site servers or independent drives

Offsite servers are suitable for data recovery because they provide massive amounts of data storage at nominal prices, especially when you compare that expense to the hassle they save in the event of a computer disaster. It is important in the long run to have a safe and secure place to store information away from your main business server. Data recovery is usually painless. Also, in the rare event that offsite servers fail, they additionally back up the data to their disks. This makes using an offsite server for your backup and recovery an effective method for protecting your information. Another effective method of backing up your company's data is to invest in standalone drives. Today, terabyte drives are relatively inexpensive if you purchase them from discount or high-volume stores. Since these drives are essentially plug-and-play, data storage and recovery become easy. In addition, there are several storage volumes available in the market. Depending on the types of data you need to run your business, you can choose to back up your data on a daily, weekly, or even monthly basis, although most businesses choose one of the first two options. However, for financial data, a daily backup is almost inevitable. External drives become invaluable in the process of protecting your company's data. As you can see, both external drive storage and offsite storage options are potential necessities. Which solution is best for you depends entirely on your type of business. Since data backup and recovery essentially work the same way, the real thought you need to make is whether you need a short-term or long-term solution and whether the short-term option costs more than the long-term one. Offsite storage offers more storage but at a recurring cost (payments) while external drive storage is often charged once (purchase cost) unless the drive fails.

Backup and recovery in the cloud

Cloud backup, or online backup, refers to a data backup strategy that involves sending a copy of your primary data over a public or proprietary network to an off-site server. The server is typically hosted by a third-party service provider (CSP) that charges you a fee based on bandwidth, capacity, or number of users. Implementing data backup in the cloud can help you strengthen your organization's data protection strategy without adding additional workload to your IT staff. The cloud backup process copies data and then stores it on various media or on a separate storage system that allows easy access in the event of a recovery situation. There are several options, including:

• Backing up your data directly to the public cloud. This involves saving data directly to a cloud infrastructure provider.
• Backing up your data to a service provider. In this case, you register data with a CSP that offers backup services in its managed data center.
• The cloud-to-cloud backup option is for data that lives in the cloud in SaaS (software as a service) applications. This method copies your data to another cloud.

When you first start using cloud backup services, the initial backup can take days to complete uploading to the network due to the volume of data. So, a technique called cloud bootstrapping is used, which allows a cloud backup provider to send you a storage device, such as a tape cartridge or disk drive, on which to back up your data locally before sending the device back to the CSP. Once the initial boot is complete, the provider only backs up your data over the network. Online data backup systems are often built around client software applications that run on a schedule determined by the service level purchased. If, for example, you have contracted with a CSP to perform daily backups, the application will collect, compress, encrypt and transfer your data to the CSP's server every 24 hours. To reduce the time required to complete the transfers as well as the bandwidth used, the CSP can only provide you with incremental backups after your first full backup. Cloud services primarily include the hardware and software you will need to protect your data. Many cloud subscriptions run on an annual or monthly basis. In addition, cloud backup services are now commonly used by SMBs (small and medium businesses) as well as large enterprises. For large businesses and organizations, cloud data backup services are used as an additional option.

Backup or restoration

In summary, the main difference between backup and restore is that the former is a copy of the original data that can be used in the event of a database failure, while restore refers to the process of restoring your database to its correct (original) state when a failure occurs. As mentioned earlier, backup refers to a representative copy of the data and includes the essential elements of a database such as data files and control files. Since unexpected database failures are inevitable, a backup of the entire database is required. There are two main types of backup:

1. Physical Backup: This is a copy of the physical database files such as data, control files, log files, and archived redo logs. It is a copy of the files that store the database information in another location and forms the basis of the database recovery mechanism.
2. Logical backup: It contains the logical data extracted from a database and consists of tables, procedures, views, functions, etc. However, keeping a logical backup alone is not recommended or useful because it only provides structural information.

Recovery, on the other hand, helps you restore your database to its correct state in case of failure. It improves the reliability of your database because it allows it to return to a consistent state after a sudden failure. It is quite possible to restore your database using log-based recovery. A log is a sequence of records containing transaction records. The log of all your transactions when stored in stable storage helps you restore your database after a failure. It contains information about transactions to be executed, transaction states, and changed values. This information is all stored in their order of execution.

Types of data backup

While the idea of data backup may be simple, implementing an effective and efficient strategy can be difficult. Backup software applications are developed to reduce the complexity associated with backup and recovery operations. Remember, backup is not the goal. It is simply a means to an end, which is to protect your data. The most commonly used types of backup are:

1. Full Backup: This is a basic, full backup operation that makes a copy of all your data onto another set of media such as a disk, tape, or CD. Therefore, a complete copy of all your data is available in one set of media. This takes longer to perform and requires a lot of storage space, so this type of backup is usually used in combination with a differential or incremental backup.
2. Incremental backup: This operation copies only the data that has changed since your last backup operation. A backup application will record and keep track of the time and date that all backup operations take place. This operation is faster and requires less storage media.
3. Differential backup: Similar to an incremental type, this backup copies all data that has changed from a previous backup, but each time it runs, it continues to copy all data that has changed since the previous full backup.

 

Importance of data backup and recovery

The purpose of a backup is to create copies of data that you can restore when your primary data fails. Primary data failures can result from several issues, including software or hardware failure, human-induced events, data corruption, malicious attacks, and accidental deletion of data. Therefore, backups allow you to restore your data from an earlier point in time to help your business recover quickly from an unexpected event. Storing a copy of your data on separate media is necessary to prevent corruption or loss. The alternate media can be as simple as a USB flash drive or external drive, or more substantial, such as a tape drive, disk storage media, or a cloud storage container. You can either place the alternate media in the same location as your primary data or store it remotely. If you are located in an area with a high possibility of weather-related events, using a remote location is warranted. For best results, make your backups regularly and consistently to minimize the amount of data lost between backups. This means that the more time that passes between your backups, the more data you are likely to lose when restoring after a failure. So don't wait months to make your backups. In addition, keeping multiple copies of your data gives you the flexibility and assurance to restore your systems at a time when they were not affected by malicious attacks or data corruption.

What is disaster recovery backup?

In IT, disaster recovery (DR) is part of security planning and is developed in conjunction with a business continuity plan. It refers to policies and procedures that focus on protecting an organization or business from any significant effects in the event of an adverse event, which may include device or building failures, cyber-attacks, or natural disasters. Disaster recovery is critical in designing strategies that can help your organization quickly recover its hardware, applications, and data to ensure business continuity. It is sometimes considered a subset of business continuity. Designing an appropriate disaster recovery plan requires the preparation of a thorough business impact analysis and risk assessment. These steps help identify the specific IT services that can support your organization's critical business activities. They also help define recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives. Incident recovery measures can be classified into three categories as follows:

• Preventive measures: are designed to prevent an event from occurring.
• Corrective measures: are put in place to correct a system in the event of a disaster or negative event.
• Detection measures: focus on the discovery and detection of negative events.

Any reasonable disaster recovery plan helps you ensure business continuity, even in worst-case scenarios. It is also prudent to implement regular checks and drills to ensure you have effective disaster recovery measures that are followed by all your departments as well as the entire organization as a whole.

The importance of disaster recovery (DR)

Disaster recovery enables your organization to maintain or quickly resume critical functions after a disaster occurs. Today's businesses have become more dependent and accustomed to high availability, while tolerance for downtime has decreased dramatically. As a result, a disaster can have devastating effects on your business, especially in today's highly competitive markets. Since businesses will likely fail after experiencing a significant data loss, disaster recovery has become a critical component of operations. Recovery time objective (RTO) and recovery point objective (RPO) are two metrics used in DR and downtime.

• RTO: refers to the maximum time after a disaster for your organization to recover its files from backup storage and return to normal operations. In other words, RTO is the maximum downtime your organization can handle. If your organization's RTO is two hours, it can't afford to be down any longer.
• RPO: refers to the maximum age of files your organization must recover from its backup storage to resume normal operations after a disaster. The RPO will determine your minimum backup frequency. For example, if your organization's RPO is five hours, your system must back up data at least every five hours.

Therefore, RTO and RPO are critical in helping you choose the optimal disaster recovery procedures, strategies, and technologies for your organization. To meet tighter RTO windows, you will need to store your secondary data in a way that makes it easily accessible when needed. In-place recovery is an effective method for rapid data recovery. It involves the use of technology that can allow you to move your backup data files to an active state on your backup device, eliminating the need to move data over a network. This protects against server and storage system failures. To prepare for a disaster, you need to take a comprehensive approach that encompasses software, hardware, power, network equipment, connectivity, and testing to ensure that DR can be achieved within your RTO and RPO objectives. While implementing a comprehensive disaster recovery plan is no small task, its potential benefits are significant.

Why do you need a data backup and disaster recovery plan?

Without a solid data backup and DR plan, your business risks permanent data loss, unnecessary expenses, and massive downtime. Here are five compelling reasons for a data backup and DR plan:

1. All data is a target: whether you're a lawyer, dentist, pet store manager, or Fortune 500 company, your data is always vulnerable to threats. Accidents, viruses, malware, and hackers don't mess around. They'll attack your business for any number of reasons, such as settling scores, acquiring sensitive data, or just because they can.
2. It's easy to lose data: many data losses occur as a result of hardware malfunctions or human error, as opposed to natural disasters. This means that your data is very easy to lose.
3. Some data is priceless: some of your business data cannot be restored once it is lost.
4. Downtime is no fun: data loss causes downtime because, without that data, it becomes extremely difficult for your employees to work. It's hard to manage customers without their account status and contact information or work without any of your critical business applications. Without a good recovery solution in place, your recovery efforts automatically become rebuilding efforts.
5. Your reputation is critical: downtime and the loss of your data will affect how other stakeholders perceive your business and their relationship with you. A tarnished reputation can significantly hinder your business, especially when stakeholders cannot trust you with their data.

Backup and recovery software

Database management system (DBMS) refers to a software package that helps you manage databases easily and efficiently, allowing you to organize your data properly. DBMS has many advantages, for example, it allows you to store, manipulate and retrieve data from databases. It also allows you to perform transactions and protects your data. You may also need a good backup and recovery software such as Veritas NetBackup.

Conclusion

Disaster recovery and backup and recovery are not mutually exclusive. Best practices include both approaches. You need to have a regular and consistent data backup and recovery plan in place to protect your business and its data from unexpected loss. Remember, data backup is a form of disaster recovery plan while disaster recovery is part of an overall security plan. Preparing for worst-case scenarios allows you to ensure business continuity and quick recovery times for your critical business data.

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