Discover How Critical Backups Are in the IT World
Think about the effort you put into documents and assignments at school or work – maybe an excellent presentation for an OpenClassrooms course! Then imagine losing all of it due to a computer failure or accident. According to data management company Datto, the cost of downtime for a business can be anything from $10,000 to $5 million, depending on size and the severity of the data loss.
What could I do to prepare for accidents such as losing an important USB memory stick, deleting the wrong file, or my computer breaking down?
You could use a backup solution! A backup solution is a tried and tested process through which up-to-date copies of essential data are kept somewhere safe, ready for retrieval in the event of a computer failure or accident.
Scale-up a data accident or failure to one for a business that loses a significant part of their customer accounts records, and you can see how such things can be a major problem, both technical and financial.
Another recent phenomenon that makes backup solutions vital is a ransomware or malware attack, where a business’s data is encrypted by a third party, who then demands a fee for its release. Such events can cause a business to cease trading, regardless of whether their data is eventually released or not.
Discover What a Backup Solution Is
At home or in a small business, you might protect your interests by copying your PC’s documents folder onto a USB memory stick or removable hard disk at the end of the day or when you finish working on an important document. You could then store this copy elsewhere to keep it separate from the work computer; you make a backup and keep it somewhere safe.
Why would you store your personal backups elsewhere? Wouldn’t that make it inconvenient if you want to retrieve them?
A business’s important live data might sit on one server or spread across multiple systems. There’s no way it would fit onto even a small pile of flash drives, so other backup solutions are needed; these can range from other disk storage to backup tapes or remote backups.
In the event of a hardware failure, if your backup is on the same device as the original - you’ll lose both copies!
Making a Backup Solution Tried and Tested
It is said that “a backup is not a backup until you have tested restoring it.” This saying comes from the lessons learned when supposed backups have failed to restore properly, or have been found to be empty!
Test restores choose samples from the backup pool and verify that they can be read properly and contain valid data. Full disaster recovery (DR) restores should be completed and verified, perhaps once a year.
The frequency of test restores is determined by company policy, customer contract terms, and industry standards, although some, such as ISO 27001, just state that tests should be performed regularly. See the “Annex A.12.3.1 Information Backup” comment in this document.
Identify the Different Backup Possibilities
As well as the “why” of backups, there are a few critical “hows” that can help you tailor yours.
Some data may be more vital or change more frequently than the rest, in which case you might want to backup some files more often. You could have several backup schemes with different timings. For example, most data gets backed up once a day, but some every 15 minutes; it comes down to perceived risk and the value of the data.
Once those decisions have been made, you need to consider how the backups are structured. It’s easy to say, “just backup everything, all the time”. However, the amount of storage you have or want to pay for, plus the speed at which you can get the backups to where they need to be (across your network or the internet), affects each backup activity, and there are three sizes of possible backup.
Backup Type | Pros | Cons | Good to know |
Full The backup everything option | Backups everything | Time-consuming Can get quite large and cost more for the media | You normally limit it to documents and data files rather than absolutely every file on a computer (such as the operating system) because this saves on media costs and time |
Differential Backs up everything that has changed since the last full backup | Restoring the last full backup + the most recent differential backup restores all your data | Will get larger and can take longer the further away they are from the last full backup
| Can be used in conjunction with full backups to make your backup plans simpler |
Incremental Backs up everything that has changed since the last backup was performed | Can be relatively quick to complete | Time-consuming to restore | Often uses the smallest amount of backup storage for each iteration |
Although you can technically intermix incremental and differential backups, it makes data restoration operations quite complex, so it is best to avoid it. Instead, most organizations implement a mix of full and differential backups.
Discover the Case Study of This Course
To help you work through specifying a backup solution, here’s a scenario that we will use over the remainder of the course:
PiraSTEM Technologies supports the education sector with training materials and electronics & computing kits for schools and colleges for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects. The company has about 90 employees and is in a rural location.
The business model is strongly based on intellectual property, and this data is a valuable business asset. PiraSTEM estimates it has about 15TB of business-critical data onsite, stored on a couple of servers and high-performance workstations. About 10-20GB of that data changes on a daily basis.
A third-party audit has identified they do not have a robust enough backup solution, and you have been brought in as a consultant to make relevant recommendations.
We’ll use this case study to help you form backup solution recommendations for PiraSTEM as you discover key considerations.
Let’s Recap!
Accidents happen! Human and computer failures can result in significant data loss.
Third parties may use the threat of losing data as leverage for financial gain.
There are three main types of backup: full, differential, and incremental.
You can plan ahead by implementing a validated backup solution that’s right for the circumstances.
You don’t have a valid backup unless you have verified that you can get the data back when needed!
Now that we’ve looked at some of the fundamental reasons why you should have a validated backup plan, let’s consider how you identify what type of backup you need.
