Data Protection with Backups
Modified 2024-07-27
Purpose
- enable recovery after data corruption or deletion
- enable recovery from before
Data Protection Methods
- Backup
a mirror of the current live used data
- Replication / Synchronisation
copying data and move to another location
- Archiving
not a copy of the data, as certain copies of the data is not in use anymore
Data replication and synchronization can be used to replicate the backups in multiple locations, but in itself is not a replacement for a backup.
Backup Policy
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
time between backups (~1 day)
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
time to recover the data after an incident
- Backup Security
encryption and physical security
- Retention Period
earliest point of recovery of a backup (~90 days)
3-2-1 Rule
- 3
have 3 copies of the data, 1 original/production data and 2 copies
- 2
on 2 different devices (not including the off-site copy)
- 1
while having 1 copy off-site
Prioritize Data
Not all data is created equal. Pictures might only need to be backed up every 30 days, while my GTD system should be backup at least once a day.
Testing Recovery
- create a file inside a folder that will be backed up
- run the backup
- delete from the live data
- attempt restoring the backup
File and Image Backups
- file
archive copy of the files and folders
- image
clone of the entire hard drive
Backup Types
- full
all data is copied to another location
- incremental backups
only saves information since the last backup
- differential backup
only saves information since the last full backup
Full backups are required from time to time, while incremental or differential can be used between full backups.
Backup Media
- tapes (requires a tape drive)
- hard drives
- cloud storage