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Page 1 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
In this e-guide:
In backup many things are pretty much as they have always
been. But many things have also changed, with the latest being
the advent of the cloud. This brings the possibility of the cloud
as a backup target but also the need to backup applications
that run in the cloud. In this e-guide we look at backup
fundamentals like choosing incremental or differential backup
as well as using snapshots to replace traditional backup. We
also provide an overview of strategic considerations for backup
in the age of the cloud as well as surveys of the key backup
products for SMEs and enterprise deployment.
Antony Adshead, storage editor
Page 2 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Backup product approaches vary as they take aim at the cloud
Antony Adshead, storage editor
Use of the cloud is a natural fit for backup and archiving use cases where the
vast bulk of backed-up data falls into the category of secondary data.
That’s not to say it is not important or valuable, however, and backup remains a
key task for IT departments.
So, how are the key backup software product suppliers – Veritas, Veeam,
CommVault, Dell EMC and IBM – adapting to the age of the cloud?
The cloud as a target has been universally available for several years now,
although not all suppliers have connectors to all three of the big public cloud
providers – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud
Platform (GCP) – with the latter the least well-served of the three.
For some backup products, cloud readiness doesn’t stretch much more than
cloud or object storage as a target through (most often) Amazon’s S3 protocol
and (sometimes) Azure Blob storage. In this bracket we can include CommVault
and IBM.
Page 3 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Dell EMC’s Networker and Avamar add the ability to backup to the cloud
through some of their own backup (Data Domain) or cloud-focused appliance
products too.
Where frontiers are being pushed is in the provision of cloud-native – or cloud-
to-cloud backup – backup and platforms that offer the ability to orchestrate data
protection across a variety of on-premise and cloud locations, with notable
mentions here being Veritas and Veeam.
Veritas
Out of the longer-established backup product providers, Veritas has most
obviously adopted the multi-cloud message and is clearly working to the
assumption that customers will work across a number of cloud environments in
addition to their own datacentres.
NetBackup – as the more developed enterprise product – arguably offers a
more rounded set of features than the midrange Backup Exec, and has
connectors to numerous public cloud providers beyond the big three.
The NetBackup CloudPoint platform offers end-to-end data deduplication,
automated discovery and backup without agents, visibility of data across
multiple clouds, data classification and migration of data to other geographies.
Page 4 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Meanwhile, the NetBackup Resiliency Platform offers the ability to restore data
from multiple cloud and datacentre locations. Applications are placed into
different resiliency groups and given priority for restore should an outage occur.
Automated simulations take the place of backup/disaster recovery testing, from
virtual machine to datacentre level, and there is integration with vSphere
application programming interfaces (APIs) for I/O filtering (VAIO).
NetBackup’s CloudMobility targets organisations that want to work in multiple
clouds and move data into, out of and between clouds and on-premise
locations. It aims to make these operations automated and offers the ability to
test migrations before carrying them out in anger to see if data and
dependencies will come out as expected.
By contrast, Veritas’s midrange-oriented Backup Exec product seems less
widely integrated with cloud operations than Netbackup. It is true, however, that
the big three’s public clouds can be a backup target while disaster recovery can
be orchestrated from the cloud in a link-up with Microsoft’s Azure Site Recovery.
So, what’s available via the big three cloud providers’ market places?
NetBackup is available in Microsoft Azure and the IBM cloud, AWS offers
Resiliency Platform and Backup Exec, and Google Cloud Platform offers Cloud
Point.
Page 5 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Commvault
Commvault Complete Backup & Recovery software can protect data from
enterprise datacentres and remote offices to the AWS cloud via S3 APIs, as
well as make use of S3-based cloud storage or Glacier “cold” storage. Backup
can be hybrid with on-premise capacity or “all in” with backup direct to cloud
capacity.
Commvault’s backup environment can use the public cloud as a backup target,
while cloud appliance versions of Commvault components are available in the
big three’s marketplaces.
Complete offers data deduplication and encryption of data in-flight and at-rest
and is also available as HyperScale physical appliances and as an as-a-service
offering for virtual machines, as well as for native cloud applications such as
Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce.
Veeam
In 2018, Veaam said: “It’s the year of the cloud.”
The company allows backup to the cloud as a target via Veaam Cloud Connect.
It allows cloud to be added as a tier/target with data reduction and encryption
from customer sites with full visibility of on-premise and cloud locations from its
user interface (UI).
Page 6 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Veeam’s most recent Availability Suite product updates have focused on tiering
and migrating data to public clouds.
Availability Suite’s Cloud Tier allows automatic tiering of data to object storage
in Amazon S3 storage, Azure Blob Storage, IBM Cloud Object Storage and
other S3-compatible service providers’ cloud and on-premise storage products.
Meanwhile, Cloud Mobility allows migration and recovery of on-premise or
cloud-based workloads, while Direct Restore allows customers to restore data
directly to the cloud and works with AWS and Microsoft Azure.
Veeam added cloud-native AWS backup functionality in 2017 with the
acquisition of N2WS and has since re-packaged it as Veeam Availability for
AWS.
IBM Spectrum Protect
IBM’s long-standing data protection suite – formerly IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
– allows for the cloud as a backup target or migration to object storage in “cloud
container storage pools”.
Targets can include IBM’s cloud and those of AWS and Microsoft included, as
well as third-party object storage/cloud products such as those from Scality, Dell
EMC, Huawei and Hitachi.
Page 7 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Inline data deduplication and encryption are built in and backup information can
be replicated between IBM Spectrum Protect servers.
Dell EMC
Dell EMC’s backup products are Networker, aimed at enterprise customers, and
Avamar for the midrange.
Both products can use public cloud (Amazon and Azure) and private cloud S3-
compatible object storage as a target using Dell EMC’s Cloud Boost appliance
functionality, as well as via Data Domain Cloud Tier.
Networker and Avamar are both available as cloud appliances in the AWS and
Microsoft Azure marketplaces.
Micro Focus (formerly HPE) Data Protector
Micro Focus Data Protector offers public cloud as a target, specifically to
Amazon S3 and Azure, plus private clouds that use Scality and Ceph object
storage.
In 2018, Data Protector added Cloud Bank object storage support for HPE
StoreOnce storage. Cloud Bank allows users of HPE StoreOnce storage to
upload deduplicated backup data to the Amazon and Azure clouds.
UK-based Micro Focus bought HPE’s software business in 2017.
Page 8 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Using snapshot backups to replace your traditional data backup system
W. Curtis Preston, guest contributor
Snapshot-based backup systems can literally change the game for anyone
interested in using them as their primary method for backing up and restoring
critical data. Snapshots offer significantly easier and faster backups than any
traditional backup system can provide, and they offer recovery time objectives
(RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs) that are also impossible with a
traditional backup system. In this context, a traditional data backup system is
one that backs up files by placing them into some kind of backup format (e.g.,
Symantec Corp. NetBackup image, EMC Corp. NetWorker saveset, IBM Corp.
TSM aggregate), and then places that format on tape or disk. However, not all
snapshot backup systems are alike, and not all of them have what it takes to
completely replace a backup system. In the following, we'll help you understand
the benefits and drawbacks of such a system and allow you to make your own
decisions as to whether or not you might want to investigate using a snapshot
backup system for your organization.
When discussing snapshot-based backup systems, there are a number of
misconceptions that must be dealt with before beginning the conversation. The
first of these misconceptions is that snapshots aren't backups at all -- they are
Page 9 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
point-in-time copies. There are those that believe that if a copy of data doesn't
change form -- such as being put inside a tar image -- then it's not a backup. It's
unclear where this idea came from, but changing form is not a requirement for
something to be a backup.
How are snapshot backups defined?
The Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA) defines a backup as "A
collection of data stored on (usually removable) non-volatile storage media for
purposes of recovery in case the original copy of data is lost or becomes
inaccessible; also called a backup copy. To be useful for recovery, a backup
must be made by copying the source data image when it is in a consistent
state." The only part of this definition that snapshot-based backups might have
trouble with is the "usually removable" part, but this is simply SNIA stating the
obvious that most backups are placed on tape.
SNIA's definition does bring up one very important aspect of snapshot-based
backup systems -- a snapshot is not really a backup until it has been replicated
to another storage system. This is because a snapshot is a virtual copy of the
data, not an actual copy of the data. If something happens to the volume upon
which a snapshot resides, the snapshot of the volume will be of no use -- unless
it was copied to another volume via replication.
In a traditional backup system, backup software and tapes create the ability to
restore multiple points in time. This is a critical function of a backup system, as
Page 10 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
data corruption or other factors may require us to restore the system to a point
in time other than the most recent backup. In a snapshot-based backup system,
the snapshots provide this functionality. Multiple snapshots -- each created at
different times -- are used to present multiple virtual views of the file system as
they existed at different points in time.
Another important function of a backup system is to provide a copy of the data
in case of disaster. A traditional backup system does this by sending tapes off-
site via an off-site vaulting vendor such as Iron Mountain. A snapshot-based
backup system accomplishes the same thing via replication. In fact, a snapshot
backup system can place multiple copies of the data in multiple locations using
replication. For example, operational recoveries may come from an on-site
storage system that is physically different than the storage system being backed
up, and disaster recoveries may come from an off-site storage system that
receives a replication stream from the same system. This may be accomplished
by having the primary storage system replicate to both systems, or having it
replicate to the on-site storage system, and having that system replicate to the
off-site storage system. There are advantages and disadvantages to each
approach.
The last part of the SNIA definition of backup is that the data must be in a
consistent state when it was copied. With traditional data backup applications,
this is usually done via file system and database agents, and snapshot-based
backup systems must also figure out a way to make sure that data is copied in a
Page 11 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
consistent state in order for the backups to be worth anything. It's not
acceptable simply to make a snapshot of the database and ask the crash
recovery system of that database to make the image consistent during recovery.
The snapshot must be created in a way that is supported by the database
application. One example of this would be snapshot systems that integrate with
Windows Volume Shadow Services (VSS), as it acts as an intermediary
between a snapshot system and the applications that need to be placed in a
consistent state. Before considering any snapshot-based product as the core of
your backup system, make sure the product has a good answer to this particular
requirement.
Another area where snapshot backup systems often fall short is the vendors
that make them feel that since all you have to do is "cd" into a certain directory
and grab the file you need, there's no need for any centralized backup catalog
or index, the way traditional backup systems have. While it is true that a
snapshot backup system is somewhat "self-indexing," it is also true that
sometimes people don't know where the file they need to restore resides, and a
backup catalog can help with that. With some products, this functionality may
actually be provided by marrying a traditional backup product and a snapshot-
based product, as some traditional products offer indexing of snapshot-based
backups via NDMP.
Page 12 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Make sure your snapshot backup product can scale
Where the rubber meets the road is in configuration, monitoring and reporting.
What works for a small shop with one storage system isn't going to work with an
enterprise with hundreds or thousands of them. When examining this area of
functionality, be sure to ask yourself how well a particular product's capabilities
will scale if the size of your data center grows drastically over time. Some
systems require you to maintain snapshot and volume relationships via the
command line where others have sophisticated Web-based user interfaces to
do that for you.
The most important question for any backup administrator to answer every day
is "Did the backups work?" Larger shops may actually have a staff of operators
watching backups as they are performed, and smaller shops may have a single
person who checks last night's backups first thing in the morning. Either way,
the monitoring functionality of the backup system must be able to answer this
question quickly and efficiently.
Reporting is slightly different, as it helps to understand backup trends over time.
Are there certain volumes that have difficulty backing up on a regular basis? Is
there enough capacity for snapshots and production data? Are there any
snapshots that are taking up significantly more room than other snapshots?
These questions are answered by the reporting functionality of the product.
Page 13 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
One final thing to consider if you are thinking about replacing your traditional
backup systems with a snapshot backup system is that most of the former are
host-based and most of the latter are storage-based. The significant increase in
server and storage virtualization increases the difficulty of doing storage-based
backups. In a world where a "server" can magically move from one physical
server and its associated storage to a completely different server and storage
resources with a single mouse click, host-based backups are the easiest way to
ensure that that server (actually a VM) is backed up no matter where it resides.
Storage-based backups need to account for this particular phenomenon.
It's possible under certain circumstances to completely replace a backup system
and all of its functionality with a snapshot-based system. Just make sure you
think through all of the things that your backup system does for you today, and
make sure that your new system can do those things as well.
Next Article
Page 14 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What it is and why you need it
Stephen Pritchard, guest contributor
Spending on public cloud services will reach US$236bn by 2020, according to
Forrester.
It’s a trend driven by increasing numbers of applications being delivered from
the cloud.
Cloud computing is sometimes so easy that users and IT teams assume it “just
works”, and they are happy to leave data protection and backup to the provider.
So why are we seeing the emergence of cloud-to-cloud backup?
Data protection risks in the cloud
Moving applications, workloads or IT infrastructure to the cloud poses risks. It
means handing over control of a large slice of an organisation’s capabilities
to store and protect data to a third party.
Page 15 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
A cloud service will – or should – have multiple datacentres and multiple
redundant data stores to ensure business continuity and the ability to recover
data. It should also provide enterprise-grade security for data.
But there have been outages among cloud services. These are relatively rare,
but CIOs that fail to consider how their cloud data is backed up will put their
organisations at risk.
For businesses that use the cloud, the question is not whether cloud services
will fail, but how the business will cope when they do. Although cloud services
may offer a high degree of resilience, this will not be enough for all
organisations’ backup needs.
Cloud versus on-premise service levels
Cloud services do what they can to keep services running. But CIOs should
check the details of service level agreements. Public cloud services are unlikely
to guarantee availability or recovery times, and only offer a “best endeavour”
commitment.
When it comes to the data itself, businesses are even more at risk. Software-as-
a-service (SaaS) suppliers typically take responsibility for infrastructure
availability, but data loss is the sole responsibility of the client.
This could leave customers with a complex, costly and time-consuming data
recovery exercise after an outage.
Page 16 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Nor will a cloud service provider take responsibility for accidental data deletion.
Human error – from accidentally overwriting one field in a customer record to
the wiping of an entire dataset – is the customer’s problem. Backupify, a cloud-
based backup provider, estimates that one-in-three companies lose SaaS data.
Human error is the most common cause.
Cloud services may also delete data for any user whose subscription ends.
Microsoft, for example, wipes all data for users 30 days after their subscription
stops. Unless a business has a robust plan to capture users’ files when they
leave an organisation, vital data can be lost for good.
Cloud backup options
In small-scale scenarios, users can copy files from, for example, Office 365 and
G Suite to a local volume, or if security rules permit, an external drive. But this is
a manual process that might not be reliable, and will struggle to scale.
For larger files and larger applications, this is rarely practical. Enterprises using
infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) or SaaS applications can use application
programming interfaces (APIs) or third-party software to back up to local
servers, network-attached storage (NAS) equipment or their own datacentre.
But backing up cloud services to local storage is a step backwards. Instead of
taking advantage of the cloud, it forces companies to retain on-site
infrastructure, increases costs and limits flexibility.
Page 17 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Enterprises that back up software-as-a-service applications will have the
reassurance that they have copies of their data, but they will not be able to
replicate or run the SaaS environment in-house. This limits the usefulness of
local backups. At best, a business will face a lengthy recovery or migration to a
new platform.
Backing up cloud services to the cloud should be a better option.
Currently, just one in 10 businesses backs up their data to an IaaS supplier,
according to Gartner. But the firm expects this to double by 2020, as businesses
realise the importance of backups and more suppliers offer cloud-specific
services.
Cloud-to-cloud backup benefits
Cloud-to-cloud backup promises several advantages over local backups and
SaaS providers’ own offerings, including lower infrastructure cost, faster backup
and recovery, and far greater flexibility.
As with cloud infrastructure itself, cloud backups are accessible anywhere. And
organisations can also use re-use backups for data mining and analytics, for
example, without putting the original data at risk.
Page 18 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Broken clouds
Unfortunately for IT decision-makers, the cloud-to-cloud backup market is
fragmented and relatively immature. Given the diversity of cloud computing
environments on offer, backup services vary quite widely in capabilities.
Gartner says that in the past two years, backup providers have improved
support for cloud services, making it easier to protect IaaS data, and to back up
SaaS applications.
The area that has developed most over the past couple of years is backup for
infrastructure as a service. The main backup suppliers now have, or plan to add,
support for cloud copies of entire virtual machines (VMs).
For backups of private clouds, cloud gateways are an option. These use a cloud
service APIs to enable backup and data recovery. Suppliers also provide
virtualised backup and deduplication applications that can run in the cloud.
The market is moving from providing a simple “data dump” to cloud storage, to a
more sophisticated, managed service provided on a pay-as-you-go or per-user
model.
Fail to plan, plan to fail
There are pitfalls, however. Backing up SaaS applications, in particular, remains
complex.
Page 19 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Native data backups from Salesforce.com, for example, are not exact copies of
the application’s internal data. These so-called “one-directional” backups may
miss metadata or be less rich than the original datasets. They can be restored
back to the SaaS, but data needs to be reformatted first, and reloaded as new
datasets.
And with any SaaS application, if the original service is not available, customers
will have no way to use their restored data.
Nor are backups of application data from IaaS services truly platform-
independent. “There are enough differences between data formats on the main
platforms to make restoration a significant task,” warns Forrester
analyst Naveen Chhabra.
The limitations of cloud backup even extend down to personal productivity
applications. Some applications in Office 365 are hard to back up. Sharepoint,
in particular, is only supported by a subset of backup suppliers.
Organisations need to do their own due diligence and testing. Although the cloud
backup landscape is developing, not all cloud copies of data are “visible” to on-premise
backup applications
Perhaps the easiest backups are for enterprise applications that can run on-
premise, or in public or private clouds. IT teams should be able to restore their
data to any provider that supports the application, to a VM running in the cloud,
or a local datacentre.
Page 20 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Organisations need to do their own due diligence and testing. Although the
cloud backup landscape is developing, not all cloud copies of data are “visible”
to on-premise backup applications.
Forrester’s Chhabra says organisations must always back up their data, so they
at least have copies. Restoring data in the cloud should be faster than an on-
premise data recovery operation. But CIOs should not assume it will be easy.
Cloud-to-cloud backup products and services are available from companies
including Cohesity, Commvault, Dell EMC (Cloud Data Protection), Rubrik,
Veeam, Backupify, Datto, Keepit.com and Skykick.
Next Article
Page 21 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Modern data backup strategy involves integration
Brien Posey, guest contributor
As information technology evolves, an organization's data backup strategy must
also evolve to ensure that the organization remains protected against data loss.
The mainstream acceptance of technologies such as virtualization and cloud
means that legacy backup tools and techniques may not be up to the challenge
of addressing modern data protection requirements, and a new platform may be
in order.
But which type of data protection product should you be using? There are
several different types of integrated products available, each with its own
strengths and weaknesses, for your data backup strategy.
Backup software running on physical servers
Numerous vendors offer backup software that is designed to run on a physical
server within an organization's own data center. The primary advantage to using
this type of platform for your data backup strategy is flexibility. Backup software
running on a physical server -- or even on a virtual server -- in a data center can
be outfitted to meet the organization's unique needs. The IT department can
Page 22 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
decide what type of hardware will be used by the backup server and can also
choose the type of backup medium.
Using an on-premises backup server is a good option for organizations that
need to protect data and workloads that primarily reside on premises. While an
on-premises backup server may be able to protect data residing in the cloud,
bandwidth constraints limit the volume of cloud data that can be backed up.
Data protection-optimized backup appliances
Data protection-optimized backup appliances have a lot of similarities to
backups based on backup software running on physical or virtual servers. After
all, a backup appliance is essentially just a highly optimized, self-contained
backup server.
Because integrated data protection appliances have been preconfigured by the
backup vendor, administrators are freed from the task of installing backup
software and then trying to get that software to recognize the backup target. The
vendor has already done all of the work. In the case of a physical appliance, the
vendor has also already selected hardware that is certified to be fully compatible
with the backup software.
As a data backup strategy alternative, some vendors offer virtual appliances.
They work almost identically to their physical counterparts, except that they are
Page 23 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
designed to run on an organization's virtualization hosts rather than using
dedicated hardware.
Backup appliances are widely varied in terms of capabilities, but many vendors
include target storage in their physical appliances. In many cases, backup
appliances can also act as cloud storage gateways, enabling backups to be
replicated to the cloud.
Secondary storage systems dedicated to integrated data protection
There are currently a small number of vendors that provide hyper-converged
systems, which include secondary storage, as the basis for their backup
products. These integrated products tend to be more expensive than backup
appliances because they require a substantial amount of hardware. However,
hyper-convergence offers several advantages.
One benefit is scalability. As an organization's data grows, the backup capacity
can easily be increased by adding modules.
Another advantage is that hyper-convergence is well-suited to providing instant
recovery capabilities. Modern backup products based on the use of physical
backup servers or backup appliances usually include instant recovery
capabilities. Instant recovery enables failed virtual machines (VMs) to be
immediately brought online, running directly on the backup server, while a
restoration is performed in the background. The caveat to this process is that
Page 24 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
the backup server must have sufficient memory, network, storage and CPU
resources to be able to run the protected VMs. Since hyper-converged products
are usually made up of several servers, they often have far greater capacity to
host instant recovery workloads than an appliance or a physical backup server
might.
Cloud-based products
Not surprisingly, there are several vendors that offer cloud-based backup
services. These services are great for backing up data and workloads that are
running in the cloud. Although some of these services are also able to protect
workloads residing on premises, organizations must consider the bandwidth that
will be required for the data backup strategy.
Next Article
Page 25 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
SME backup products offer diverse routes to the cloud
Antony Adshead, storage editor
Computer Weekly recently surveyed the main backup software providers and
those that supply a new breed of backup appliances, all built for the cloud era
as a target.
Here we look at the rest – all small and medium-sized enterprise (SME)/mid-
market products – and find a mixed set of suppliers and products that include
Acronis, Druva, Nakivo, Zerto and Barracuda.
The first three of the five fit into the backup software model, although they differ
significantly in terms of offer and origins.
Acronis has the widest spread of source and target compatibility, including
cloud-to-cloud backup, and made its name with image-level backup that allows
it to restore to any platform.
Druva’s origins are in endpoint backup, but it has diversified to provide a broad
platform that also includes cloud-to-cloud backup.
Page 26 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Meanwhile, Nakivo offers specialised virtual machine backup and backup to
public cloud.
The last two providers offer some diversity from regular backup products. There
is Zerto, which builds around replication rather than “traditional” backup, and
then Barracuda, which concentrates on on-premise physical appliances with the
cloud as a replication target.
Acronis
Acronis Backup protects data on virtual, physical, cloud and mobile platforms
and can use local capacity and the cloud as a backup target. It incorporates
inline and global data deduplication, and management is from a web
management console.
Acronis Backup includes backup for Microsoft Azure virtual machines (VMs) and
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud instances, as well as cloud-to-cloud backup for
Microsoft Office 365.
Workload migration between different clouds, virtual systems and physical
machines is also possible, as is recovery to different systems.
Acronis Cloud Storage provides disaster recovery by storing backups in one of
Acronis’s datacentres. The Acronis Cloud supports the backup of
disks, partitions, servers, data and mobile devices and recovery of files, folders,
applications or an entire system.
Page 27 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
The supplier bases many of its products on the Acronis AnyData Engine, which
handles virtual and physical server protection and is compatible with many
forms of data.
It supports several forms of data migration, including virtual to virtual, virtual to
physical, physical to virtual, and physical to physical.
Druva
Druva made its name providing backup for endpoint devices such as mobiles
and laptops, but has broadened out to virtual and physical server backup, cloud
server backup and archiving, and disaster recovery.
Its original product, Druva inSync, backs up endpoint data and cloud
applications, such as Microsoft Office 365 and Salesforce. It also provides
archiving, data compliance monitoring, legal hold management and e-discovery.
Meanwhile, Druva Phoenix is a software agent that backs up and restores data
in the cloud. Use cases include cloud backup, recovery and archiving for VMs
and physical servers.
Druva CloudRanger provides protection and management of data in Amazon
Web Services (AWS), with management of an organisation’s complete AWS
footprint from one dashboard.
Page 28 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Nakivo
Nakivo Backup and Replication offers VMware and Hyper-V backup, including
to public cloud. It had historically targeted SMEs, but in the past few years it has
also aimed at enterprise customers.
Other VM backup specialists, such as Veeam, have embraced physical
machine backup, but Nakivo is yet to do so, and it also lacks support for tape as
a target.
It offers backup to Amazon EC2 via S3 and to Microsoft Azure.
On first deployment, Nakivo takes a full backup but after that, it only
takes incrementals. A self-backup feature automatically backs up the system
configuration.
Zerto
Zerto offers a multi-platform hybrid cloud data protection product centred on
replication that includes bi-directional operations between on-premise virtualised
datacentres and AWS, Azure and IBM clouds, as well as with more than 350
cloud service provider offerings.
Core to the environment is Zerto Virtual Replication, a hardware-agnostic,
hypervisor-based replication tool that uses continuous replication and
automates failover and failback in VMware environments.
Page 29 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Traditional array-based replication requires homogeneous storage systems, but
Zerto Virtual Replication allows for replication to any storage system, as well as
hybrid and public clouds.
It can perform intercloud and intracloud data movement, using AWS, Microsoft
Azure and IBM Cloud environments. Last year, Zerto Virtual Replication 6.0
expanded its replication capability to protect applications and data to and from
clouds and between multiple clouds.
Zerto aims to bypass traditional backup altogether with a single environment
across on-premise and the cloud in which users can search for files and recover
from any point in time.
Barracuda
Barracuda majors on backup appliances that replicate to the cloud.
It offers 12 different appliances that range in local capacity from 1TB to 112TB.
The option of encrypted appliances up to 96TB is also available to protect
against physical theft of hardware.
A virtual appliance, Backup Vx, is available for deployment as a VM.
All Barracuda appliances offer inline data deduplication and software replication
to the Barracuda Cloud, a remote physical or virtual backup appliance, or AWS.
Page 30 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Restores can be to bare-metal servers or image-based restores to virtual
environments.
Barracuda also offers cloud-to-cloud backup, with protection for Microsoft Office
365, Exchange and Sharepoint Online, as well as Onedrive.
Next Article
Page 31 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs differential backup
Antony Adshead, storage editor
Incremental or differential backup: Which should you choose? In this article, we
take a look at these two key concepts in backup, looking at the pros and cons of
each, as well as point to resources that can help with other backup methods,
such as synthetic full and incremental forever backups.
The most fundamental type of backup is a full backup, which copies all data in a
given system. Differential and incremental backups are defined by how they
build on that full backup.
A differential backup copies files that have changed since the last full backup
was taken. So if a full backup was done on Monday, the differential on Tuesday
will copy files changed since Monday’s backup copied everything. Then,
Wednesday’s differential will copy everything that changed since Monday’s full
backup.
The big advantage of differential backups is that when data needs to be
restored it can be built from the full backup and the latest differential copy.
Page 32 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
The key drawback is that the size of the differential backup increases every time
one is made until the next full backup job. That can lengthen backup window
duration and will impact on storage space needed to store the differentials.
Where differential backups copy everything that changed since the last full
backup, incremental backups copy everything that changed since the last
backup. So, if a full backup was carried out on Monday, the incremental on
Tuesday will will just copy what has changed since Monday. Likewise,
Wednesday’s incremental copies only the changed data since Tuesday’s
incremental took place.
The main benefit of incremental backups is that less is copied every day than if
you carried out differential backups. That means you get a shorter backup
window on days between full backups, and less storage space is needed for
them.
The key disadvantage of differential backups is that when you want to do a
complete restore, it has to be built from the most recent full backup and all
incremental between then and the point to which you want to restore.
Look out also for variants on full, incremental and differential that may be
offered by some backup product providers.
These include: Synthetic full, which builds a “full” backup from a real full and
subsequent incrementals; incremental forever, which stores fulls and
subsequent incrementals to allow restores to chosen points in time, and;
Page 33 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
reverse incremental, in which a synthetic full is the default, but incrementals are
kept to allow rollback to a specified point.
Page 34 of 34
In this e-guide
Backup product approaches
vary as they take aim at the
cloud
Using snapshot backups to
replace your traditional data
backup system
Cloud-to-cloud backup: What
it is and why you need it
Modern data backup strategy
involves integration
SME backup products offer
diverse routes to the cloud
Backup 101: Incremental vs
differential backup
Backup fundamentals in the age of cloud
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