Austin Lane

This is the second part of the series of articles on the various backup options that a business has available. Like online backup strategies, continuous protection backup strategies are fairly new to the marketplace.

Continuous Protection Benefits

• Ideal for backing-up remote systems. — Continuous protection schemes work by taking the approach that a source-code versioning system would for a development project. Most perform a full backup of a system in the beginning, and have incremental backups that run continuously as data changes, which allows multiple versions of a file to be recoverable on a single backup media.
• Little data lost due to catastrophic failure. –  By their very nature, continuous protection backup systems are able to recover a failed system to a point just minutes before the failure occurred. As a result, if your business wants to have to recreate as little work as possible after a data loss, this is the way to go.
• Recovery can be performed at any time. — Assuming that the continuous protection backup system is available at all times, files can be recovered whether or not an internet connection is available or if the tape or hard drive you backup to is in the office or in its offsite storage location.

Continuous Protection Disadvantages

• High cost — Typical continuous protection systems require a dedicated server with lots of storage space to backup your various systems. This additional server requires another up-front investment plus the ongoing electrical and maintenance costs for the system.
• Requires another backup system — In most circumstances, the continuous backup system only creates a backup of your system to its internal storage. If you want to protect your data from fire, theft or acts of God, this is not sufficient. For this type of added protection, you would also want to utilize an online or tape or hard drive based backup system.

If you have any questions about Continuous Protection Backups, please contact Austin Lane IT Services.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Backup, IT Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.