Backup: User based vs. Centralised

As we speak to more and more people about our Online Backup to the cloud software solution and service, we are finding answers to the more common questions about what we provide, you will have noticed that by the content of the site recently. We are posting it online to make it easier to understand the benefits of what we offer and where be differ from a tape based central backup solution like Symantec BackupExec for example.

There are basically two ways to backup data files, centrally or at the edge on users machines. There are mixed solutions, but they are less common.

Centralised Backup

The standard deployment of a centralised backup is to have a tape drive (or more commonly now days a tape library/tape robot system) connected to one or more servers (or direct to the SAN). Backups are then run at regular intervals, traditionally overnight. The tape(s) are then taken away to be stored offsite. This is so that should the building be demolished, the tapes you backed all your data onto are not destroyed also.

Centralised backup is an excellent solution for many environments. There is a good reason it is the standard configuration for backup. However, it has limitations and risks that are worth considering. To start with, the data needs to be accessible to the backup software/server/tape drive. So typically a centralized backup solution will backup data stored on servers and not on users machines. Which works well in the traditional office environment and when staff are well trained to avoid putting data on their local machine.

The other big limitation of centralised backup is that it is time consuming to and can create a heavy load on the network and servers. You are often copying every single file on your network to one location and trying to write it to a magnetic tape as fast as the tape drive can handle it. Common issues surrounding this are backups slowing down the servers. Also the backup can take a very long time, many hours even, and start occuring during office hours and affecting staff performance.

Also the traditional model leaves huge (24 hour) windows of risk where data is on disk but not backed up. So if John down in accounting corrupts the excel spreadsheet he worked on all day, you have to restore from last night. If he corrupts the file in the afternoon all his work from the morning is lost. Again, there are solutions out there that can do multiple backups through out the day, but they are both expensive and complicated.

User Based Online Backup to the Cloud.

Our solution is different to the traditional model, we recommend for most users they backup every 5-15 minutes. Yes, as much as every 5 minutes. Here in the office we backup every 15 minutes. We can do this because each one of our backups only needs to send the changes to the data we have made in that 15 minutes period, which is normally pretty small. It means that should a file get corrupted or we just decide we hate what we have written in a document, we can roll back changes by restoring anyone of the backups we take every 15 minutes. I can restore the one from 15 minutes ago, from 30 minutes ago from 3:15 ago, which ever one suits me best.

Also, this restore process is something I do through an easy to use interface on my own machine. It happens immediately and IT do not need to be involved at all. So no need to call the IT guys/girls and ask for a file to be restored from tape, no more waiting for the tape to come in from the offiste storage site (the next day?) and then wait for someone to restore the file for me and eventually let me know its there, just to find it’s the wrong file or the wrong version.

The backups are automatically stored offsite, and so if my laptop or PC dies, the data has already been backed up offsite. So if a herd of elephants stampeds trhough the office destroying all the machines, I know my data is safe.

If a machine is left that can connect to the internet, I can access all my files right away. I can access the web interface from any machine and copy down the files I need and keep working. This might be a office pc, my personal laptop or a computer in an internet cafe or client site. This is all within my control as a user.

There are limitations to consider of course; our service is not good for making system state backups that include the operating system. So it is not good for people looking to be able to restore an entire machine in the event of a serious issue. For that you want to look at the more expensive and complicated solutions, and probably look at disk to disk replication. It is a approach fraught with problems, we find most people who actually have to do this regularly (large organisations) prefer to start from a standard build of all new machines and then install/restore applications and data unique to the user afterwards, it is easier and quicker on the whole.