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Choose the right backup type
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Compress and deduplicate your data
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Use incremental-forever backups
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Optimize your backup window
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5
Use backup software and hardware
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Here’s what else to consider
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Backups are essential for any system administrator, but they can also be slow, bulky, and costly. How can you optimize your backup process to save time, space, and money? Here are some tips and tricks to help you make your backups faster and use less space.
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- Altin Petre Information Technology And Services Consultant
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1 Choose the right backup type
There are different types of backups, such as full, incremental, and differential. Full backups copy all the data from the source to the destination, but they take the longest time and the most space. Incremental backups copy only the data that has changed since the last backup, but they require a full backup to restore. Differential backups copy the data that has changed since the last full backup, but they take more space than incremental backups. Depending on your backup frequency, retention policy, and recovery objectives, you should choose the backup type that best suits your needs.
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- Altin Petre Information Technology And Services Consultant
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Based on my experience I would add:1.Set your RPO based on the type of data you are backing up. For eg. an application server that receives very rarely config changes a weekly or monthly backup might be enough.2. Combine application backup with system backup. For eg. you can combine a backup runing every few minutes for the database but run the backup of the OS that hosts the DB once in 24 hours
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2 Compress and deduplicate your data
One way to reduce the size of your backups is to compress and deduplicate your data. Compression reduces the amount of bits needed to store the data, while deduplication eliminates the duplicate blocks of data. Both techniques can save you space and bandwidth, but they also add some overhead to the backup process. You should test different compression and deduplication levels and algorithms to find the optimal balance between speed and space.
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- Altin Petre Information Technology And Services Consultant
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Dedupe and compression are great but be careful to have the right HW for backups as they put a lot of extra loadAlso look carefully for bugs and fixes impacting dedupe as they can corrupt way too much data
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3 Use incremental-forever backups
Another way to make your backups faster and use less space is to use incremental-forever backups. This is a backup strategy that combines full and incremental backups, but eliminates the need for periodic full backups. Instead, you take one full backup at the beginning, and then only incremental backups afterwards. The incremental backups are then synthesized into synthetic full backups on the destination, which can be used for restore. This way, you can avoid the performance impact and storage consumption of full backups, while still having the benefits of fast and easy recovery.
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- Altin Petre Information Technology And Services Consultant
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While you should always test your backup data put extra focus in testing if you use an incremental forever backup as data corruption can creep in anytime and with this method can stay there forever
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4 Optimize your backup window
Your backup window is the time frame in which you can perform your backups without affecting the performance and availability of your system. You should optimize your backup window to minimize the impact of backups on your system and your users. You can do this by scheduling your backups during off-peak hours, prioritizing your critical data, using multiple backup streams, and throttling your backup speed. You should also monitor your backup window and adjust it as needed to accommodate changes in your data and system.
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5 Use backup software and hardware
Finally, you can make your backups faster and use less space by using backup software and hardware that are designed for this purpose. Backup software can help you automate, manage, and monitor your backup process, as well as provide features such as encryption, verification, and reporting. Backup hardware can help you improve your backup performance, reliability, and scalability, as well as provide features such as caching, deduplication, and replication. You should choose backup software and hardware that are compatible with your system and your backup goals.
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- Altin Petre Information Technology And Services Consultant
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Budget permiting use always dedicated SW and HW for backups. To lower HW requirents and meet retention and other policies use Cloud Strorage.Use 'immutability' feature of cloud storage as an insurance against Ransomware.
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6 Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?
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