When searching for the right backup solutions for your business, you first need to understand the three core types of protection that’s seen in backup solutions today:

• A “full” backup will copy entire blocks of all your selected data and will be the most time- and storage-consuming backup.
• An “incremental backup” will copy only the data that’s changed since the last INCREMENTAL backup and will be the least time- and storage-consuming backup. Post full backup recovery, each incremental restore since the last will need to be performed in succession to recover to the latest point in time.
• A “differential” backup resembles an incremental backup in operation but differs in that it copies all changes since the last FULL backup, resulting in a backup that is smaller than the FULL backup but larger than the INCREMENTAL backup. After the full backup recovery, you only need to restore from the latest differential to recover to the latest point in time.

In modern data backup solutions, you will have the flexibility you need to choose the backup strategy that will allow you to maximize your storage and network while minimizing the time that it takes to recover data when needed.

Core to any backup strategy you must consider:

1. What is being protected?
2. What is the backup frequency needed to enable my recovery objectives?
3. How do you ensure things are ready for recovery?

Nearly everyone considers items one and two when choosing backup solutions for business but often we forget the most important item — can it be restored when needed? When choosing data backup solutions, always make sure that your backup solution has an automated way to test and secure backup data for recoverability before it goes into storage.

Security is especially important when choosing backup solutions for businesses, as the data that’s stored in your backups is a goldmine to your business as well as any malicious attackers. To keep safe and secure, your backup solution should offer the methodology to:

• Limit access to data backups and data backup solutions
• Prioritize sending and storing data in a secure and encrypted manner
• Provide the tools to test the security of the backup data post backup and pre-recovery
• Facilitate automated regular testing of backups

There are far too many backup technologies and choosing the best fit can be daunting. When choosing a modern backup solution, a small business user or IT professional should be looking at resolving three fundamental areas.

1. The data protection capabilities must be stable, reliable and easy to use.
2. Tangible (hardware, software and storage) and intangible (downtime and data loss) costs are clearly laid out and in control.
3. One solution that protects all workloads – physical, virtual and cloud – from one simple and accessible platform.