How often should we back up our data? How much storage do we need? Do we need more bandwidth to back up offsite?

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Optimizing Your Backup Solution One Size Doesn’t Fit All

The answer to these questions is different for every business. It all depends on your company’s data growth, the rate at which your data changes, what type of media you plan to use, and how much downtime you can withstand.

Based on these factors, you can define which of three different techniques – Full, Differential, or Incremental – best suits your company’s backup needs. You may find that the most effective strategy for protecting your company’s data involves a combination of techniques.

Abstract

How to blend Full, Differential,

and Incremental backups to

meet your needs

White PaperOptimizing Your Backup Solution

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Recommended for

Full backups are ideal for protecting your most mission-critical data. They also serve as reference images for Differential or Incremental backups. Be sure to run a Full backup before performing system upgrades or major changes.

+ Simple

+ Reliable

+ Provides complete copies of source files

+ Time-consuming

+ Capacity-intensive

+ Requires long windows to complete, which can expose data to loss

Advantages Disadvantages

Full backups

Full backups are complete replicas of your source data on a backup target. This target may be comprised of a local disk or networked storage, for example. The target may also sit within the same building as the source data, at a remote location, or in a large data center in the cloud.

New backed-up data

How it works

Day 1

All data is backed up

Day 2

All data is backed up again

Day 3

All data is backed up again

White PaperOptimizing Your Backup Solution

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Recommended for

Differential backups are ideal for augmenting and updating Full backups at more frequent intervals and faster completion times.

+ Fast

+ Space-efficient

+ Captures only changes made to data since the last Full backup

+ Requires the most recent Full backup image for restore and recovery operations

Advantages Disadvantages

Differential backups

Differential backups capture the changes made to the source data over a specified interval of time since the last Full backup.

How it works

Day 1

All data is backed up with a Full backup

Day 2

Includes only data that is different from previous Full backup

Day 3

Includes only data that is different from previous Full backup

New backed-up data Previously backed-up data

White PaperOptimizing Your Backup Solution

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Recommended for

Incremental backups are ideal for backing up extremely large datasets and offsite backups over bandwidth-constrained wide area networks (WANs).

+ Fastest

+ Most space-efficient

+ Captures only changes made to data since the last backup, whether Full or Incremental

+ Restoration and recovery are more complex, take longer to complete, and are more susceptible to loss

+ Restoration requires the most recent Full backup and every subsequent Incremental backup image

Advantages Disadvantages

Incremental backups

Incremental backups capture the changes between the source data and the most recent backup, either Full or Incremental.

How it works

Day 1

All data is backed up with a Full backup

Day 2

Includes only data that is different from previously backed-up data

Day 3

Includes only data that is different from previously backed-up data

New backed-up data Previously backed-up data

White PaperOptimizing Your Backup Solution

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Because most companies depend on two or more data sets that may be completely different in nature, you will most likely want to implement multiple techniques. Below are some examples of how different companies may blend backup techniques to optimize their solution.

An e-commerce company might rely heavily on both highly volatile online transaction data and more inert customer data. An effective backup strategy for this company might involve as many as three different backup routines:

A dental office may opt for Incremental rather than for Differential backups. This approach – especially when coupled with software-enabled compression and bandwidth throttling – can shorten backup windows when backing up to remote sites or to the cloud.

For this e-commerce company, the described backup schedule balances the need to protect data and ensure easy restoration against the need to maximize storage efficiency.

Sample e-commerce company

Sample dental office

+ Full backup – for the transaction data – that runs nightly to create reference captures for following Differential backups

+ Differential backup also for the transaction data that runs every two hours

+ Full backup for the customer data that runs at three o’clock every Sunday morning

White PaperOptimizing Your Backup Solution

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Protect your company’s data effectively and efficiently with Carbonite Server Backup.

Contact our sales team at 855-227-2249, or locate your nearest authorized Carbonite reseller at www.carbonite.com/partners/partner-finder.

Because each backup technique brings its own particular strengths and weaknesses to bear – and these will differ for backup and restoration scenarios – you need to have a clear understanding of your company’s application environment, pace of data growth, data volatility, and the amount of downtime you can accept without suffering irreversible harm.

When selecting a backup solution, make sure that it not only supports all three of these techniques, but also that fine-tuning them (or even overhauling them) won’t be time-consuming. Certain advanced products, such as Carbonite Server Backup, enable you to change backup settings (and bandwidth management preferences) quickly and easily. Keep in mind that business models and application environments will remain subject to change as your customer tastes, market conditions, and technology landscapes evolve.

Choosing the right backup solution