Backup storage media options include cloud storage, local hard drives, removable disks, tape drives, and hard copies, each with tradeoffs in speed, portability, and scale. Effective backup strategies combine onsite and offsite storage with a disciplined media rotation schedule.
Backup Media & Storage
If we're making a backup of a copy that needs to go somewhere, and there are several places that we can put this backup copy, what kind of media are we going to use for it?
One great option that we have nowadays is storing the backup in the cloud. This is great because we have access no matter where we go. Plus, if we want to do a restore in the cloud, we can do that as well. But I can tell you that a lot of times backing straight up to the cloud can be problematic, because our connections can be a little bit slower than if we were to back up locally. So many times what we do is we back up locally to a local hard disk, and then we'll move it up into the cloud so we have a copy up in the cloud.
Other ways that we could do this: we could do some sort of removable media. If that hard disk is a removable disc or a portable disc, we can take it with us. A tape drive is also another great option for that. At one point in time we used discs and DVDs, but we don't see that too much anymore. And then one other option not to overlook — you can't do this at scale — but making a hard copy of something is another great way to store a backup copy.
What we choose may vary also depending on if we're trying to store it onsite or offsite, but most likely we're going to want to have both in many backup solutions.
We're also going to have to think about media rotation. You're probably going to want more than one copy. Let me just give you an example of something that I've done in the past, so that way you have an idea of how this works.
This is an example of a tape drive. The tape drive that I had, I had a whole bank of tapes that would be backed up to, and there would be these cassettes, and you'd pull out the cassettes. So I would load up the cassettes and it would do a backup over the weekend or whatever the case may be. So I'd have this backup set that I would use, and then that would get rotated out and it would go into just a local storage where I had it available to us. So if we needed to do a fast restore, we could do that — we could load it back into the tape deck and then we could put it back into place.
And then we would switch out that tape deck with a new set. And then once that got filled up, then this one that was on site would go offsite into a safe, so I'd store it in a safe. And the one that just got created is a local copy that gets stored locally and then gets replaced with another set.
And then what would happen? It would just be a rotation, that these sets would then be moved, and the set that's offsite would come back in. I would put it in the deck. The set one would move to set two, and the set two would move offsite then. So all this media would be shuffled around. It would be rotated around.
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