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Backups

Backup creates a separate, point-in-time copy of data that can be restored later, making it a foundational and irreplaceable component of any data protection strategy. Unlike RAID, replication, or versioning, backup offers both immutability from the moment it is taken and the portability to be stored on-site, off-site, or in the cloud.

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About this video

Backup occupies a unique and essential role in data protection that no other redundancy or recovery technology can fully replicate. Solutions such as RAID configurations, replication, journaling, and versioning each address specific availability or recovery needs, but they do not produce the kind of separate, static copy that a true backup provides. Because a backup captures data at a specific moment in time, that copy remains fixed and recoverable even when changes occur across live systems or mirrored storage. This point-in-time characteristic is what allows organizations to recover from data corruption, accidental deletion, or ransomware attacks where all connected copies may be affected simultaneously. Portability is another defining advantage of backup that sets it apart from most other data protection approaches. A backup copy can be stored on-site for fast recovery, off-site for disaster resilience, or in the cloud for scalability and geographic redundancy, giving organizations significant flexibility in how they design their overall strategy. Choosing the right backup software is a critical decision in that design process, as the appropriate solution varies based on the type of data being protected, the recovery objectives in place, and the specific operational environment. Together, the point-in-time integrity and portability of backup make it an indispensable component of any comprehensive data protection and business continuity plan.

What you'll learn

What's covered

Backup Fundamentals

Key terms

Backup
A copy of data captured at a specific point in time and stored separately from the source system, used to restore information in the event of data loss, corruption, or a security incident such as ransomware.
Redundancy
The duplication of critical components or systems to increase reliability and availability.
Disaster Recovery
DR
The process and procedures for recovering IT systems and data following a disruptive event.
Recovery Point Objective
RPO
The maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time, defining how far back data must be recoverable.
Replication
The process of copying and continuously synchronizing data from one location to another to ensure availability and fault tolerance in the event of a failure.
Redundant Array of Independent Disks
RAID
A data storage technology that combines multiple physical drives into a logical unit to improve performance, provide redundancy, or both, depending on the RAID level chosen. Common levels include RAID 0 (striping for speed), RAID 1 (mirroring for redundancy), and RAID 5 (striping with parity).

Topics

Data Backup Data Protection Disaster Recovery Backup Strategies Data Redundancy Storage Management

Transcript

It's interesting. I've stepped into a lot of situations where their technology was really outdated and problematic and really had some issues, but one thing that they usually had in place and had gotten right, at least to a certain extent, is backup. The reason is because everybody pretty much knows backup is hugely important. Without it, we could lose all of our information. So backup is just a given, and the importance of it is unquestioned.

What Makes Backup Different

There are a lot of solutions out there that help us duplicate data, such as RAID configurations and replication, or recover and go back to an earlier point in time, like journaling or versioning. But it doesn't take the place of the need for backup. Backup serves a very specific purpose and is really important.

The key to what makes backup so useful and so needed is that it makes a separate copy of something, a separate copy that we can restore at a later time. A key part of this is that it's a moment in time. There is a time at which we take a backup, this separate copy, and we can always go back to that even if there are things that change. Something like RAID is going to change on all copies of it; this is not going to change. The copy is going to remain the same from that moment in time.

The other thing that makes backup a little different than most of the other solutions that are out there is that it is portable. You can take it with you. It's a copy that you can store offsite or on-site or in the cloud, or wherever the case may be.

Backup Software

A pretty critical part to backup is choosing some sort of backup software. There's lots of different backup software out there that can help us back up whatever it is that we're trying to back up. The use cases for these are going to depend on what it is that we're trying to back up, and how we're trying to back it up, and other variables involved. But it's a pretty important piece to creating these backups.

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