Speed Benefits of Image Based Server Backups
The majority of businesses know that server backups are essential, however the majority of businesses do not test their backups so do not know how long it takes to restore their servers.
During working hours could you do without your server for 1 hour, 2 hours, 5 hours, 1 day, even longer? Typical backup software will backup servers on a file by file basis, this is time consuming to backup but more importantly time consuming to restore.
Image based backup software will backup servers on a drive basis this is by far a quicker means of backing up, and when it comes down to restoring it can take minutes to recover the server even to a totally different server.
An example includes: Run a full Image Based Backup overnight of a server with 200gb of data to network storage - this takes approximately 1 hour.
Every 10 minutes of the working day an incremental backup is performed - this taking approximately 15 seconds each time All backups are automatically copied to a portable hard disk - immediately after the backup which is taken off site at the end of each day Servers can be up and running in less than 30 minutes after any hardware failure.
This can also be fine-tuned, to get essential 'live' data on one server drive and old 'archived' data onto another, this means that if the server fails you can prioritize: 1 - Server System first 2 - Live Data: current documents/folders, SQL Server Databases and Exchange Mail Servers 3 - Archived data can be restored once the server is up and running and everyone is back to work Although image based software is excellent for recovering severs rapidly file based backups are not obsolete:most organizations run archiving to tape, which is done using file based software, retention of copies of data to protect against accidental deletion etc.
During working hours could you do without your server for 1 hour, 2 hours, 5 hours, 1 day, even longer? Typical backup software will backup servers on a file by file basis, this is time consuming to backup but more importantly time consuming to restore.
Image based backup software will backup servers on a drive basis this is by far a quicker means of backing up, and when it comes down to restoring it can take minutes to recover the server even to a totally different server.
An example includes: Run a full Image Based Backup overnight of a server with 200gb of data to network storage - this takes approximately 1 hour.
Every 10 minutes of the working day an incremental backup is performed - this taking approximately 15 seconds each time All backups are automatically copied to a portable hard disk - immediately after the backup which is taken off site at the end of each day Servers can be up and running in less than 30 minutes after any hardware failure.
This can also be fine-tuned, to get essential 'live' data on one server drive and old 'archived' data onto another, this means that if the server fails you can prioritize: 1 - Server System first 2 - Live Data: current documents/folders, SQL Server Databases and Exchange Mail Servers 3 - Archived data can be restored once the server is up and running and everyone is back to work Although image based software is excellent for recovering severs rapidly file based backups are not obsolete:most organizations run archiving to tape, which is done using file based software, retention of copies of data to protect against accidental deletion etc.
