Businesses and organizations need to store, back up, and protect data. The data and information generated must be backed up and protected from loss and cyber threats. Hence, every organization strives to find the best method for protecting and backing up data.
Over the years, organizations have employed several conventional methods to back up data. One common issue they pose is the backup window–the time frame in which a backup is scheduled. Since these methods preschedule backups, there could be a significant data loss if a data-loss incident occurs between two back-ups.
The best way to reduce data loss is through continuous data protection. Continuous data protection (CDP) backs up data in real-time, ensuring that there is little to no loss of information in the face of a failure or disaster. This post delves into continuous data protection, how it works, its advantages and disadvantages, including how it differs from other backup methods.
What is Continuous Data Protection?
Continuous data protection, also known as continuous backup, is a backup method that stores data in real-time. It immediately saves every change to the original backup, reducing the backup window.
As a result, you won’t lose your data if there is a failure or natural disaster. You can restore your data to where it was before the failure occurred. Hence, there is little to no loss of information.
How Does Continuous Data Protection Work?
Continuous data protection, patented by British entrepreneur Pete Malcolm, provided a solution to the problem of shrinking backup windows in previous backup methods.
Former backup software only allowed users to store data in a strict backup window. Thus, backing up large data amounts was challenging, even with the available ways of speeding up tape backup. There was a limit to how much data you could back up within a specified period.
CDP sought to correct this problem by backing up data in real time. After it backs up the initial, the server runs in the background. Once there are changes to the information, it immediately backs it up, syncing it to the original backup file. It keeps monitoring changes made and new data created and backs them up.
This method reduces the amount of data backed up at a time as storage occurs almost every minute. At the same time, traditional methods do backups once a day. Thus, once there is a failure or disaster, like powering off your computer, you will lose the day’s data. However, CDP preserves every data backed before the failure gets saved.
The server also captures the various changes made, recording every version of the saved data. These records are saved in separate storage, so you only need to roll back the data to the specific date and time whenever you want to review previous data.
True Continuous vs. Near Continuous Data Protection
True continuous and near-continuous data protection are similar backup methods. However, near-continuous data protection does not capture data in real time. Instead, it works by scheduling a backup time. At the specified time, the server backs up data changes. The scheduled time could be an hour or as short as 20 minutes.
True-continuous data protection offers real-time data backup, ensuring no information gets lost due to backup windows. On the other hand, when using near-continuous protection, you will lose data changes between the last and the next scheduled time if a failure occurs. But it still reduces the potential data loss you will experience using traditional backup methods.
Near-continuous data protection can provide sufficient protection for businesses with less complex needs. However, establishments processing large amounts of data every minute may need a better solution. Hence, they should go for true-continuous backup.
Advantages of Continuous Data Protection
CDP offers many benefits for data backup and cybersecurity, which is why it’s one of the most popular data backup methods. Here are some perks to note:
- Significantly Reduces Backup Window
Continuous data protection closes the backup gap, ensuring there is little data backup window. CDP saves data almost every minute, bridging the time gap and shortening the recovery point objective (RPO), which is the maximum acceptable amount of data lost after recovery from a data loss incident. With this backup method, you can store data every minute instead of the daily backup that traditional methods offer.
You can rest assured there will be little data loss thanks to the continuous backup process. Typically, the data lost will only be a few minutes worth of backed data, preventing massive data loss that may occur when data is backed up less frequently.
CDP supports minimal use of disk space. The full backup only happens once. After that, the server adds new information to the already backed-up data. CDP also provides a history log that captures the changes made instead of using snapshots. This saves disk space.
- Records Multiple Versions of Data
A separate storage captures data changes in real-time, providing multiple versions of the modifications made over time. Thus, you can always roll back to recover information from any date and time of backup. This facility is most helpful when multiple users assess the records because it ensures they can all find past information without impacting the other user’s activities.
Continuous backup enables constant syncing of data. Hence, it reduces the potential data loss by syncing data streams as they are backed up.
- Doesn’t Slow Down the Server
When using the CDP method, your system doesn’t have to go through all backed-up data every time. Instead, it only reads the current changes made. Hence, the backup process won’t hugely impact your server’s performance, ensuring a speedy process.
- Supports Faster Disaster Recovery Time
You can always roll back to recover data, so if a cybersecurity attack takes place, leading to data loss, you can always recover them. Also, you can duplicate the CDP storage to an offsite storage facility to protect the data. Doing so enables you to recover quickly from crashes, data corruption, infrastructure failure, and other causes of data loss.
Disadvantages of Continuous Data Protection
Despite the benefits, CDP has some drawbacks. They include:
CDP uses physical disk storage, so any organization looking to employ this method must invest in disk drives. These disks must be efficient and fast enough to keep up with the high-performance rate. Thus, they usually require heavy investment, leading to increased operational costs.
- CDP Servers Could be Your Single Point of Failure (SPOF)
Although continuous backup reduces the risk of data loss, it is still fragile. Your CPD server can be your single point of failure because damage to the server will mean a total data loss. Thus, your organization must have a secondary means of data-protecting backups to prevent loss. One way to do so is to have a secondary CDP server.
- Compatibility and cloud issues
Incompatibility is also a challenge. If your application and operating system are incompatible with CDP, it won’t work. Hence, you must consider compatibility when deciding on which backup method to adopt.
CDP backs up data in real-time, doubling your throughput. The rapid increase in data volume can cause performance issues for data resources.
Comparing Continuous Data Protection with Other Data Backup Methods
Besides CDP, there are other methods used to back up data. This section will explore how each of them differs from continuous backup:
Continuous Data Protection vs. Traditional Backup
Traditional backup methods are the earliest ways to store data. They specify a data backup timeframe, usually by the end of the day. So, unlike the continuous backup technique, they schedule backup time. The true CDP eliminates the need for scheduling by writing the data to a disk and also writes it to a second location.
With traditional backup methods, you cannot restore data from any point in time. You can only restore data up to the last backup schedule. Hence, there is a higher risk of data loss, and recovery also takes longer when there is a data loss or corruption.
Continuous Data Protection vs. Snapshot-based Technologies
Snapshot-based technologies work with schedules, while CDP doesn’t. When using this system, you must schedule a backup time. Before the scheduled time, the system takes snapshots and saves them to the original network.
These snapshots take up much storage space, making this method less efficient than continuous backups. Snapshot-based backups use about two times that of CDP. The continuous backup technique also reduces data loss to seconds instead of minutes, making it a better option for data protection.
Continuous Data Protection vs. Mirror Backup
Mirror backup is a fast backup method that mirrors data from your computer system to a separate disk. It creates an exact copy of the backup data. Mirror backup only saves the most recent version of the stored data.
Hence, you cannot recover data from any point in time. Conversely, continuous data protection is a better backup method because it captures data changes, allowing you to recover the data fully.
To Sum it Up
Continuous data protection (CDP) is a technique that backs data up in real time. It saves every data change as it occurs, eliminating the backup window. CDP also saves disk space, syncs data, provides multiple versions of the data, and supports fast recovery. It offers optimum protection against data loss due to natural failures or cyber-attacks.
CDP provides the highest advantage when compared with other available backup methods. However, businesses and organizations with less complex needs can use near-continuous data protection methods. Those with simple needs may choose more straightforward techniques, like traditional backup solutions.
