The term “data protection” has become broad and often refers to everything from antivirus software to backups, replication, and personal data security. However, at its core, data protection is all about safeguarding critical data from corruption, compromise, and loss—ensuring it can be restored in the event of disasters or incidents.
In this article, we’ll focus on two key data protection strategies: backup and replication. These terms are often confused, but while they can (and should) be used together for stronger data protection, they are not the same.
What is Data Backup?
Let’s start with data backup, or simply “backup.” Backup is the process of creating a copy (or copies) of selected data at a specific point in time. The primary purpose of a backup is to ensure you can restore your data in the event of disasters like system failures, user errors, or malware attacks.
Backups allow you to roll back your data to a specific point in time. For example, if you performed a backup a month ago, you can restore your data to that exact state. To keep the backup process continuous and efficient, you can configure incremental backups. These run on a schedule and consist of a full backup (the main image of your data) followed by increments (changes made since the full backup). When restoring, you can choose to revert to a specific date or use the most recent backup available.
Given the constant threats to IT infrastructure, backups are an essential part of modern data protection strategies. However, relying on a single location for your backups is risky — it’s like putting all your eggs in one basket. If your backup system is compromised and you don’t have additional copies, you’re in trouble. That’s why the industry follows the “3-2-1” backup rule, which we covered in detail here.
To further safeguard your backups from malicious actors, it’s a good idea to make them immutable (also called “WORM”: Write Once, Read Many). With today’s technologies, you can ensure that backups cannot be altered or deleted.
While backup is a straightforward concept – copying data, the security and availability of that data depend heavily on implementing best practices recommended by backup vendors and industry experts.
What is Data Replication?
Data replication or Replication, for short, is more focused on business continuity, allowing you to configure your system either in redundant and highly available (HA) cluster or simply to minimize downtime to minutes.
Replication can be either Synchronous (“Active-Active” or bidirectional) or Asynchronous (“Active-Standby” or one-way replication).
Synchronous replication operates in an active-active manner and synchronizes data immediately between nodes. Meaning that any change on one of the nodes is reflected on other nodes. This allows you to configure High Availability of your data, ensuring minimal downtime in the case of disasters happening to one of the nodes. Since all the writes are synchronized, the replication speed and overall performance will be limited by the slowest component in this system. This type of replication is ideal for building HA clusters within a single location or stretched (metro) clusters with a powerful cross-location link.
Asynchronous replication operates in an active-standby manner and synchronizes data by the schedule configured during the setup. Unlike active-active replication, Asynchronous replication is designed to be used in low-bandwidth networks and is ideal for Disaster Recovery scenarios where data is replicated to distant location.
Both replication approaches allow you to lower the downtime of your production data in the case of disasters. In most cases, replication allows you to have an automatic failover, meaning that your VMs or data automatically switch to a replicated site w/o data loss or with minimal data loss, depending on the replication schedule.
Key Differences Between Backup and Replication
Let’s now compare both of these mechanisms.
| Backup | Replication | |
|---|---|---|
| Objective | Provide the ability to backup and restore the data from point in time that can go back in years. | Restore data and business operations as soon as possible. |
| Purpose | Focus on additional copies of data, including long-term archival. | Focus on business continuity and allows to decrease downtime. |
| Usage | Used for everything. Critical and non-critical business data and even desktops | Used for mission-critical applications. |
| Recovery from disaster | Mostly manual | Automatic/semi-automatic depends on the type of replication and engine used. |
| Impact on performance | Minimal to none. It is recommended to schedule backups at night to not impact the main production system. | Moderate. Depends on the engine, type of replication and networking. |
Backup and Replication: Which One Should You Use?
Backups must always be used! Especially if you are working with business data. Additionally, backups are essential if your goal is long-term data retention.
Replication, on the other hand, is a very powerful tool that is available for everyone. Obviously, if you want to achieve business continuity or High Availability (HA), you should consider having replication configured. The general rule of thumb for businesses is that if you can afford downtime during data recovery from backups or fixing the hardware issue, then you don’t really need replication. Still, if all your operations are stopped and this impacts your business, you most certainly do need replication.
As you can see above, neither data protection mechanism is mutually exclusive. By combining both, you can improve your data protection dramatically and not only ensure you have backup copies of the most critical information, but also have multiple layers of protection from any form of disaster.
What StarWind has to offer?
Data protection is StarWind’s bread and butter, with primary focus on high availability and synchronous data replication. StarWind products help ensure the redundancy of the critical data, eliminate production downtimes, and achieve a near-zero RPO and RTO.
Data replication is the lifeblood of StarWind products. For instance, StarWind Virtual SAN (VSAN), our core software product, utilizes synchronous data replication to ensure data integrity and high availability. StarWind cuts down virtualization cost and complexity by eliminating the need for a physical shared storage (SAN, NAS, and DAS).
If you’re looking to enhance your backup infrastructure, we offer two key products: StarWind Backup Appliance and StarWind Virtual Tape Library (VTL).
StarWind Backup Appliance is an immutable backup target, equipped with NVMe drives to eliminate bottlenecks in backup jobs. It also ensures seamless integration with Veeam Backup and Replication.
StarWind VTL is a software-based replacement for traditional tape libraries. It combines spinning disks, flash storage, and public cloud to create a virtual tape library that integrates easily with your current backup setup. This gives you a powerful, air-gapped, ransomware-proof backup solution that’s both immutable and highly secure.
Conclusion
While backups serve as a safety net, allowing you to restore your data to a previous state, replication is your frontline defense, ensuring that your business operations can continue with minimal interruption in the face of disasters.
By leveraging both strategies, businesses can create a comprehensive data protection plan that not only safeguards against data loss but also ensures swift recovery from disasters.
StarWind provides you with the tools needed to implement effective backup and replication strategies tailored to your unique requirements. Our solutions are designed to empower your business, enabling you to focus on growth and innovation without the constant worry of data loss.
