Backup and Recovery Strategies

1. What are Backup and Recovery Strategies?

  • Backup: Creating copies of data to protect against data loss.
  • Recovery: Restoring data from backups after a failure or loss.

2. Types of Backup

  1. Full Backup
    • Entire data is copied.
    • Pros: Easy recovery.
    • Cons: Time-consuming, requires more storage.
  2. Incremental Backup
    • Only changes since the last backup are saved.
    • Pros: Faster, saves storage.
    • Cons: Slower recovery as all backups must be combined.
  3. Differential Backup
    • Copies all changes since the last full backup.
    • Pros: Faster recovery than incremental.
    • Cons: Takes more space than incremental.

3. Backup Strategies

  1. 3-2-1 Rule
    • 3 Copies of data.
    • 2 Stored on different media (e.g., disk, tape).
    • 1 Kept offsite (cloud or remote location).
  2. Daily, Weekly, Monthly (DWM) Backups
    • Daily: Incremental backups.
    • Weekly: Differential backups.
    • Monthly: Full backups.
  3. Onsite and Offsite Backups
    • Onsite: Quick recovery but vulnerable to disasters.
    • Offsite: Protects against local disasters.

4. Recovery Strategies

  1. Cold Site
    • Minimal setup; resources configured only after a disaster.
    • Pros: Low cost.
    • Cons: Slow recovery.
  2. Warm Site
    • Partially set up with hardware/software; requires updates before use.
    • Pros: Balanced cost and recovery time.
  3. Hot Site
    • Fully functional, ready-to-use backup environment.
    • Pros: Fast recovery.
    • Cons: Expensive.

5. Key Backup and Recovery Tools

  • Veeam Backup & Replication: Popular for virtual and physical backups.
  • Acronis: Disk imaging and cloud backup.
  • Commvault: Enterprise-grade backup and recovery.
  • AWS Backup: Cloud-native backup for Amazon services.

6. Best Practices for Backup and Recovery

  1. Test backups regularly to ensure recoverability.
  2. Encrypt sensitive backups for security.
  3. Automate backup schedules to avoid human error.
  4. Maintain a disaster recovery plan (DRP) and update it periodically.

7. Key Terminologies to Remember

  • RPO (Recovery Point Objective): Maximum acceptable data loss (how often backups should occur).
  • RTO (Recovery Time Objective): Time required to restore data after an incident.
  • Snapshot: A point-in-time copy of data (quick but not a full backup).

8. Mnemonics for Quick Revision

  • Backup Types: “Fully Different Increments”
    • Full, Differential, Incremental.
  • Recovery Sites: “Cold-Warm-Hot”
    • Cold = Slow but cheap.
    • Warm = Midway.
    • Hot = Fast but costly.
  • 3-2-1 Rule: “3 Copies, 2 Media, 1 Offsite”