Why Image-Based Backup is Your Best Data Backup Option

Your business’s data backup solution is an absolutely integral part of your day-to-day operations, and as such, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you’re regularly taking backups of your data. By far, the most efficient way of doing so is through the utilization of image-based backup. Image-based backup works like how we use cameras and smartphones to capture moments in time, effectively making a record of your data at any given moment.

How Do Image-Based Backups Work?
Perhaps the most important part of using image-based backup is that it offers a flexibility that traditional backup methods, like tape, can’t. For example, if your business needs to rapidly recover from a data loss disaster, like a fire or hardware failure, you can quickly deploy the recovery from the cloud. Another great example of this flexibility is that image-based backup solutions are capable of tracking changes made to a file over a period of time, and then restoring them to their former glory if they are lost. Not all backup and disaster recoveries work the same, so it’s important that you discuss the details of your backup with a trusted IT technician before committing to a solution.

What Are the Benefits?
One of the biggest pain points of any business backup and disaster recovery solution is that it needs to be able to take multiple backups a day, and quickly restore these backups should the need arise. This is what image-based backup can accomplish. It’s significantly less resource-intensive than tape backup, simply due to the fact that you’re not taking complete backups of all files on the network. Rather, you’re scanning for files that have been altered recently and need to be backed up. Furthermore, taking multiple tape backups can lead to significant downtime, and any files that are being affected by the backup can’t be accessed until it’s completed. Tape backups are usually manual, which means that there’s a chance that someone will forget to initiate it.

Here’s another way to look at it; traditional backup solutions scan your files, and every time the backup is run, it copies your files and stores them on the backup device (typically another hard drive or a tape). Image-based backups don’t look at only your files; instead, it draws from the actual physical hard drive, copying over the 1s and 0s. This process is faster because the backup device can efficiently determine what information is new and focus only on backing up these differences.

You will also see better performance when you restore the data using image-based backups. When restoring data using traditional backup devices, you’ll end up restoring everything at once. This is a slow transfer process where every file is written onto the drive. Image-based backups provide a much faster deployment, which can be the difference of several hours when compared to traditional data restoration. As a bonus, image-based backup gives your organization the option to virtualize your backup solution, in the event that your main server goes down; this is a great way to reduce downtime. Where the rubber hits the road with these differences in data restoration methods is when it comes time to actually restore your data in a downed-server scenario--it could be the difference between a few minutes vs. several hours.

Compared to tape backup, image-based backup is particularly helpful for ensuring that all of your files are as up-to-date as possible. By only focusing on files that have been changed since the last backup was taken, your backups will always have the most recent copies of your data, and will be compact enough to take and deploy in a moment’s notice. Unlike tape backups, which put so much strain on the network that it’s generally performed after-hours, image-based backups can happen multiple times a day, thanks to how streamlined the process is. Image-based backups are automatically performed, eliminating the possibility for user error that comes with tape.

A Backup and Disaster Recovery (BDR) Solution
By now, it’s clear that small businesses benefit most from the dynamic nature of image-based backup. Rather than struggle with tape, it’s more economic and time-efficient to take advantage of an image-based backup solution. Your backup should also be “backed up” by a fast recovery solution that’s able to quickly and efficiently deploy your backups.

Enter Computerware, with a comprehensive data backup and disaster recovery solution. Our BDR device is capable of performing the image-based backups your business needs, and it can send your backups to a secure off-site data center, and to the cloud for easy access. In the event of a data loss disaster, the BDR recovers your data, restoring it in minutes so you can get back to work with minimal downtime. In fact, the BDR can even temporarily replace your server in the event of a hardware failure, giving you ample time to find a suitable replacement without hampering operations.

For more information about our BDR solution, give Computerware a call at (703) 821-8200.