SysAdmin day basics - Veeam backup essentials

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It is July, The month we celebrate with SysAdminDay on the last Friday.

Usually, We share our thoughts and experiences celebrating this day and also the perfect opportunity to pay tribute to the heroic men and women who, come rain or shine, prevent disasters, keep IT secure and put out tech fires left and right.

This time, I will get back to basic with one of the main tasks every sysadmin performs on a daily basis: Backup. And will talk about one of the top solutions that provide this service: Veeam.

Why exactly do we need backup? Explore it from here.

So, What is Veeam anyway?

Veeam Software is an information technology company that develops backup, disaster recovery, and modern data protection software for virtual, cloud-native, SaaS, Kubernetes, and physical workloads.

Veeam’s flagship product is Veeam Backup & Replication, which is a software product used to back up, restore and replicate data on virtual machines (VMs). Veeam Backup & Replication can be used to backup VMs to a variety of destinations, including local storage, remote storage, and the cloud. Veeam also offers a number of other products, including Veeam ONE (I like this product so much), which provides monitoring and analytics for Veeam Backup & Replication, and Veeam Backup for Microsoft 365, which provides backup and recovery for Microsoft 365 data.

Veeam’s products are used by a wide range of organizations, including small businesses, enterprises, and government agencies. Veeam’s products are designed to be easy to use, scalable, and reliable.

Here are some of the things that Veeam software can do:

Back up and restore virtual machines, physical servers, and cloud-based workloads.
Replicate data to protect against disaster.
Monitor and analyze data backups to ensure that they are healthy and available.
Recover data quickly and easily in the event of a disaster.
Integrate with other applications and services to provide a comprehensive data protection solution.

You can read my first impression with Veeam from here.

So, when it comes to backup, you need to be aware of some terminologies as below:

1. File vs. Block:

File level storage is what it sounds like. Files (regardless of what they are), folders, archives and so on are wholly stored. However, block level storage takes a different approach. Rather than store an entire file, only an individual block of data. Block level storage can be used to backup whole virtual machines and treats each “block” of data like an entire volume.

2. Snapshot:

A snapshot means takes a whole “picture” or “Point in Time” of an environment, a file, or an application. It copies it in its entirety, not just bits of changed data.

Snapshot is vital for backup process, but it is not a backup itself. Here is why.

3. Recovery Point Objective:

Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the largest period during which data might be lost and would stop production due to a major incident. It is the age of the files that must be recovered for business to continue as well.

4. Recovery Time Objective:

Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the agreed-upon time target during which services must be restored to maintain work consistency within an organization. It is like a mutually agreed-upon service level agreement during which an information systems group says they will meet the requirement to get an organization’s data restored.

How Many Types of Backup are There?

There are mainly three types of backup: full, differential, and incremental.

Full Backup

A full backup is the most complete type of backup where you clone all the selected data. This includes files, folders, SaaS applications, hard drives and more. The highlight of a full backup is the minimal time it requires to restore data. However, since as everything is backed up in one go, it takes longer to backup compared to other types of backup.

The other common issue with running full backups is that it overloads storage space. That’s why most businesses tend to run a full backup and occasionally follow it up with differential or incremental backup. This reduces the burden on the storage space, increasing backup speed.

Differential Backup

A differential backup straddles the line between a full and an incremental backup. This type of backup involves backing up data that was created or changed since the last full backup. To put it simply, a full backup is done initially, and then subsequent backups are run to include all the changes made to the files and folders.

It lets you restore data faster than full backup since it requires only two backup components: an initial full backup and the latest differential backup.

This is how a differential backup works:

Day 1 – Schedule a full backup

Day 2 – Schedule a differential backup. It will cover all the changes that took place between Day 1 and Day 2

Day 3 – Schedule a differential backup. It will make a copy of all the data that has changed from Day 2 (this includes the full backup on Day 1 + differential backup) and Day 3.

Incremental Backup

The first backup in an incremental backup is a full backup. The succeeding backups will only store changes that were made to the previous backup. Businesses have more flexibility in spinning these types of backups as often as they want, with only the most recent changes stored.

Incremental backup requires space to store only the changes (increments), which allows for lightning-fast backups.

Difference Between Full, Differential and Incremental Backups

The Right Backup Strategy With the Right Type of Backup

The most important things is that the company has a solid backup strategy.

You can find very often the 3-2-1 rule. Which is commonly known as: the golden rule.

3 : Maintain at least 3 copies of your data

If using VEEAM as a backup-product, a backup-job and a backup-copy job is a perfect solution.

2 : Store the backups on 2 different media

1 : Store at least 1 of the copies at an offsite location

Read more about plan your backup strategy from here.

Finally, Veeam is offering a robust solution that covers all areas. it is not only backup and replication solution, it is a complete data protection for any company size.

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