There’ve been three basic types of data backups for quite a while namely; incremental, differential and full. Though recently, software vendors associated to the field have introduced some new categories or backup types that you mightn’t be familiar with.
What you’ll learn here?
After reading the article, you’ll be familiar with full, incremental and differential backups along with the new ones such as synthetic and incremental-forever. As a matter of fact, you’ll also learn which type of data backup fits best for your organisation.
Full backup
Full backup is just what the name implies; a full replica of entire data set. Although it provides the best protection, most organisation only utilise them periodically as they’re time consuming and take lots of disk or tape space.
Incremental backup
Since full backups are too much time taking, incremental backups came forth as a perfect solution and a way to decrease the amount of time initially consumed during full backup. This particular type only backup particular fragment of data (not entirely) which is the biggest difference. For more clarity, consider the following scenario!
Suppose you created a full backup on Sunday following incremental backup for rest of the week. The next day’s backup would only cover the data that has been modified since Sunday.
Perhaps the biggest disadvantage is restoring time that’s too much. Day to day backup would be done consecutively/separately and if any of the tapes goes missing or somehow damaged, you won’t be able to perform full restoration. So you need to be extra careful as it’s a matter of corporate data files.
Differential backup
This particular type is identical to incremental as differential backup takes into account a full backup followed by subsequent turns while covering data that has been modified. The only difference is its ability to collect all the information changed since the last full backup and not day-to-day. Consider this as a combination or somewhere in between both full and incremental backup! Shorter restoring time is the primary advantage as well as less disk space consumption.
Synthetic full backup
It’s a variation of incremental that involves a full backup followed by series of incremental however synthetic full data recovery takes things one step ahead. What makes it different is that the backup server actually performs a full recovery process by combining with incremental. The end result is element of vagueness from the full backup which is originally created in the traditional way. The biggest advantage is the ability to provide full backup in less time and decreased bandwidth as compared to other genres.
Incremental-forever backup
Typically used by disk-to-disk-to-tape recovery process! The basic impression or concept comes from incremental backup that begins by taking full recovery of the data set followed by successive incremental recovery. Accessibility/availability of data is the biggest distinguishing factor; while you do require a tape of full and sequential recovery files, it stores the entire data either on a large collection of disks or a tape library whereas the process is entirely automated. This is so that you don’t need to figure out the sets that need restoration thus saving your precious time. The process is completely transparent while mimic the full recovery procedure.
Which type of backup fits best to your organisation?
To determine the type of backup for your organisation depends on nature of work operations, where your business stands today and its perceptible tomorrow. Before you choose, come clean with the following factors;
Dictation of service-legal agreement in the light of recovery time, organisation policies in respect to storing data files off-site! While off-site shipment is an option, it’s not too much of a wise decision for you need to bring back all the tapes before executing restoration procedure.
Also recall the type of backup that your application supports. It’s quite obvious that synthetic-full and incremental-forever backup goes a long way when modernising the process is concerned but that doesn’t mean we neglect other types. The above would help you to choose the best feature for remote data backup.
Conclusion
Now that youre familiar with different types of data backup, be sure to pick as per business model and long-term requisites.