Our previous blog discussed the details of “Cloud Backup – Backs Up Data Only.”

Information About Backup and Disaster Recovery – Part 2

In this blog, we discuss “Cloud Backup that Backs Up Data AND System Data.”

[responsive][/responsive]

Cloud Backup that Backs Up Data AND System Data

Cloud backup services via the Internet are excellent and low overhead solutions that are typically very well priced.

Pricing is usually based upon the amount of data that you need to backup.

One big consideration is your Internet bandwidth.

If, for example, you are backing up 2TB over a 20Mbs Internet line, it will take you about 224 hours to successfully backup your data. This is approximately 9 days!

To compensate for this, the vendor will provide a “compression factor”. If the vendor provides 50% compression, the amount of time to backup you data would drop down to 112 hours — or about 41/2 days. A bigger compression factor will result in a faster backup (and restore).

In this case, you must understand that much more data is being backed up. In the previous case, only your program data was being backed up (i.e. Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, ACT data, Quickbooks data, etc.). In this case, ALL data is being backed up (Windows files, programs, and program settings, as well as the program data). This means that you will be better protected, but the backup time could take longer.

As before, the usual plan in this case is to do one FULL backup first. Then after that you can do incremental backups. This means that it only backs up data that has changed. After the first large big backup, the incremental backups are usually much smaller and take much less time.

The next consideration is restoring your data. If you restore your data from the cloud, you will be governed by the same issues – Internet bandwidth and the compression factor. It is the same math, but instead of sending data out, you are accepting incoming data.

The danger lies in how often you perform your incremental backups. If you backup only every two days, and if your office suffers a disaster, then when you restore, your data may be up to two days old. Some businesses perform incremental backs two or four times every day.

Unlike the previous method, this method backs up your COMPLETE computer. This means that you only have to create a bare bones computer and the restore will do the rest.

Brought to you by:

George M. Baldonado

President & CEO, Oasis Technology, Inc.