Backup vs. Replication: Understanding the Differences
Like leaving your car unlocked in a high-theft area, the risk of an intrusion is real if you don’t secure your data. According to IBM reports, the average data breach cost $4.88 million in 2024. When you also consider that 94% of SMBs have experienced at least one cyberattack in 2024, it’s a dangerous digital landscape.
Our data is walking a digital tightrope. But rather than dwelling on the looming threat, let’s explore how data backup and replication can help protect your digital assets.
What is Data Backup?
Data backup is essential for any data protection plan. It creates copies of critical data in the event of hardware/software failure, cyberattack, natural disaster, human error, or other common causes of data loss.
Data backup is there for you before you dive into important tasks like computerized data entry, ensuring you have a secure copy of the information. After disaster strikes, it helps you recover systems and get back on track.
You can choose a:
- Full backup: A complete copy of all data.
- Differential backup: Copies data that has been added, updated, or altered since the last full backup,
Incremental backup: Copies changes made since the last backup of any kind.
How to Restore Data from a Backup
- Decide whether to conduct a full, differential, or incremental backup.
- Choose the storage type, such as cloud storage, external drives, or immutable storage, for added security.
- Devise a backup schedule depending on how often your data changes.
- Execute the backup process, ensuring it is completed without errors.
- Check the restored data to ensure its integrity and confirm that everything has been restored.
Businesses typically schedule backups at night or on the weekends, reducing the impact on production systems. Particularly suitable for storing large sets of static data, backup remains the go-to solution for many industries.
Benefits of Data Backup
Data backup will:
- Ensure data is safeguarded against loss.
- Provide flexible, cost-effective options for managing large datasets.
- Help organizations meet regulatory requirements for data retention and protection.
What is Data Replication?
Data replication is the process of creating exact copies of your organization’s data in real time. Like having a shadow that never leaves your side, it ensures you have an identical data set that can be distributed among a company’s sites if disaster strikes.
There are two distinct types of replication.
Synchronous Replication
Synchronous replication provides instant failover to a secondary site when a primary site is unavailable or goes down. The immediate backup minimizes downtime and ensures business continuity.
For industries like finance, where real-time trading data is crucial, and healthcare, where an outage could prevent essential treatment, replication ensures no interruptions in service.
The downside is that it’s a demanding environment, requiring a high-speed, low-latency network connection between primary and secondary locations. It can also be complex to set up, making it expensive and not feasible for all workloads.
Asynchronous Replication
While synchronous replication is constant, asynchronous replication is scheduled, taking place at planned intervals. It is usually the case that replication is scheduled around low network utilization, ensuring more bandwidth.
This is a cheaper alternative to synchronous replication because it does not require the high maintenance costs associated with real-time synchronization.
The key flaw with this approach is the risk of data loss. With replication occurring at intervals, any data created between those intervals will be unrecoverable in an outage.
How to Restore from a Data Replication
- Identify the issue at the primary site that requires restoration.
- Initiate the failover process, switching operations to the secondary system.
- Ensure the secondary site has seamless access to up-to-date replicated data.
- Confirm all data and applications are functioning as expected.
- To maintain future replication, synchronize the primary site once the issue is resolved.
Benefits of Data Replication
Data replication will ensure the following:
- Operational performance 24/7/365.
- Improved accessibility for organizations with multiple locations.
- Enhanced network performance by lightening the load on the primary server.
Key Differences Between Backup and Replication
These two strategies are often confused, thought to be interchangeable, or seen as a choice between data replication and backup. Understanding the key differences between backup vs replication is vital to achieving the data protection and recovery that we crave.
When making a backup and replication comparison, backup is focused on reducing Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) and preventing data loss, while data replication is built to reduce Recovery Time Objectives (RTOs), ensure business continuity, and minimize downtime.
| Data Backup | Data Replication | |
|---|---|---|
| Objectives | To ensure that data is not lost or compromised as a result of a security incident such as a ransomware attack. | Maintaining up-to-date data across multiple locations instantly in case the primary site becomes unavailable. |
| Technologies | Hardware on-premises or within the cloud, depending on an organization's requirements in terms of accessibility, scalability, and security. | Data is stored in two separate locations, either on-site or at two different geographic locations using cloud services. |
| Recovery Processes | Restoring the most recent, uncorrupted backup from on-premises hardware or cloud storage. This process should take no longer than a few hours. | Data is instantly accessible from the replicated secondary location. The backup location takes over seamlessly meaning, minimal disruption to services. |
| Operational Requirements | Requires a tape library and secure data storage for archived tapes, ensuring compliance with data retention policies and accessibility. | Requires investment in additional infrastructure such as a secondary data storage or cloud-based service. |
| Performance Impacts | While regular backup operations may hinder system performance due to the additional workload, scheduling backups during off-peak times or using incremental backups will minimize this impact | High volumes of data can strain network bandwidth and system resources. Impact on performance can be minimized through efficient data transfer techniques and high-capacity infrastructure. |
| Cost | A relatively cheap way to avoid complete data loss. Backup involves providing a storage device, a location for the storage media (on-site server or cloud storage), and a backup program. | Requires investment in other infrastructure. Essentially, it doubles your expenses in this area. It’s an approach that entails substantial hardware costs. |
Backup and Replication: Which One Should You Use?
When it comes to retrieving specific points in time, data backup is your go-to safety net and part of a long-term plan.
On the other hand, data replication steps up to the plate for real-time data availability, delivering a backup ready to take over instantly if something goes wrong.
When to Use Data Backup:
- Long-term data retention: When you need to keep records for compliance.
- Point-in-time recovery: When you need to restore a system.
- Cost-effective protection: For data that doesn’t need to be accessed in real-time.
System migrations and upgrades: To preserve critical data in case of issues during transition.
When to Use Data Replication:
- Real-time data availability: For applications where downtime is unacceptable.
- Disaster recovery and failover: When systems need to stay operational during an unexpected failure.
- High-demand applications: When databases or systems need constant updating.
- Geo-redundancy: For organizations needing synchronized data across multiple locations.
However, it’s best not to think about them singularly and in a replication vs backup scenario. Think about how they create a powerful one-two punch for data protection. They are both essential for a comprehensive data protection strategy.
Make Your Backups Immutable
While both data backup and replication serve crucial roles, relying solely on a basic backup and replicated copy is no longer enough. It's because of an increasing demand for an extra layer of protection through immutable backup storage based on Zero Trust principles.
An immutable backup means that once data is stored, it cannot be altered, deleted, or tampered with, even by malicious actors or internal threats. This means that in the event of a disaster, your data remains intact and recoverable, no matter what happens.
Fortify your Data Backups with Object First
Ootbi (Out-of-the-Box Immutability) by Object First delivers secure, simple, and powerful backup storage for Veeam customers.
Built on the latest Zero Trust Data Resilience principles, Ootbi provides S3 native immutable object storage designed and optimized for unbeatable Veeam backup and recovery performance.
FAQ
Are Backup and Replication Interchangeable?
No. While there is a distinct overlap between the two approaches, backup is about long-term data retention, and replication is an essential component of a disaster recovery plan, ensuring maximal uptime.
How Often Should Data Be Backed Up or Replicated?
Backup frequency is dependent on business needs, SLAs, and the achievable performance with the backup infrastructure. In general, most enterprises backup daily, usually late at night, to avoid disrupting production during working hours.
What Is the Best Strategy for Data Protection?
A multi-faceted strategy is encouraged, encompassing both immutable backups and replication, ensuring data protection and reliable recovery.
How to Protect Data Backup From Ransomware?
Data backups defend against ransomware by using immutable backups, which cannot be modified or encrypted by malicious actors. This guarantees that your backup data remains safe and intact.
