RSS Feed
Online Backups
|
|
|
Online Backups - Restore Anywhere, Anytime
As the amount of data stored on servers continues to increase exponentially, tape backups are becoming more cumbersome. Because of this trend, mid-sized enterprises are relying on off-site backups more than ever, and in fact, its popularity is sweeping the small to mid-sized market like a wildfire. With an ever-increasing maturity of solutions, Online Backups are definitely a viable supplement (and sometimes replacement) to tape backups. Like most wildfire-trends, however, savvy IT Directors and Network Administrators will need to understand the full purport of the technology, where it works best, and where there are still gaps.
What are Online Backups?
Online Backups are more than just a piece of software, an Internet connection, and a data center. Online Backups are systems that provide a complete solution to a specific problem, whether it's application specific, or device-class specific. Think of Online Backups working in the same manner as a classic tape backup: it backs up databases, files, e-mail, system state, etc., but instead of going to a tape, it all goes to a data center geographically distant from the servers.
Note: Online backups are also popular for laptops, but this article's focus is on servers.
Online Backups Will NOT:
- Provide a failover solution
- Create a cold-site, a warm-site, or a hot-site
- Be a replication or collaboration solution
- Be a replacement for on-site backups
Online Backups may be a part of a failover, hot-site, or replication solution, but typically they only allow you to restore the data back to your original equipment.
Also, great care should be taken when evaluating Online Backups as a replacement for tape backups or other forms of on-site backup. In the case of a crashed RAID, a site-level outage, or another major issue, restoring a large amount of data over the Internet is not a feasible solution unless days of downtime are acceptable. The vendor providing the Online Backup solution should have the ability to deliver a mass-storage device with all of the necessary data within a time period that is accordance with contingency plans. There is no point is remotely backing up data if you cannot get to it immediately in the event of a disaster. In the case where very little downtime is permissible, it is recommended that the organization continues maintaining some form of on-site backup, and an online restore would only need to transmit differences instead of all data.
How do Online Backups Work?
A third-party backup program is installed on a server, which then performs a full backup according to a schedule. The data is compressed and then uploaded to a remote storage server in a data center. All of the communication is encrypted, with SSL being the most popular method of encryption. Most Online Backup programs will perform "in-file deltas", which are akin to incremental backups, but with one major advantage: only the parts of the file that changed are transmitted, not the entire file. What this means is that the very first backup may take several hours or days depending on the amount of data, but subsequent backups will take several minutes to just a few hours.
Standard Features of Most Online Backups
The following are some of the standard features that most Online Backup solutions offer. You will want to make sure that the Online Backup solution that is being considered or has been implemented provides these as a minimum:
- Ability to create granular backup schedules with multiple recurrences.
- Encrypted in transit (over the Internet) and encrypted on the backup server at the data center.
- Open file backups and ability to backup System State.
- Backups of Microsoft Exchange, using brick-level capability.
- Microsoft SQL Server and other database backups.
- In-file deltas to conserve bandwidth and increase speed of backups.
- Versioning and point-in-time restore with advanced retention policies.
- Web-based or other form of easy file restoration in the case of a disaster.
- Ability for data center to provide a mass-storage drive with all data in case of total server failure.
Alternatives to Online Backups
There are alternatives to Online Backups that may be feasible in some environments. A few examples of these alternatives are:
- Mutual replication to branch offices using a replication technology such as Windows 2003 R2 DFSR.
- SAN replication with retained snapshots to a data center or branch office.
-
Remote backups to another branch office using various third-party programs.
More Information
Contact us today if you would like to learn more about Online Backups and whether it's right for your organization.
Write a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.