Backup / Disaster Recovery
Strategies and measures for backing up data (backup) and for restoring IT operations after failures or disasters (disaster recovery).
Data loss and IT outages can be existential: studies show that 60% of small businesses do not survive a major data loss beyond six months. Backup & Disaster Recovery (BDR) covers all measures to back up data regularly and restore IT operations as quickly as possible after an outage. From simple file backup to geo-redundant replication of entire data centres – a well-designed BDR concept is essential for every company.
What is Backup / Disaster Recovery?
Backup means regularly creating copies of important data and systems so they can be restored if lost. Disaster Recovery (DR) goes further: it is the overall plan for restoring IT operations after a serious outage – whether from hardware failure, cyber attack, natural disaster or human error. Two key metrics define the DR strategy: RPO (Recovery Point Objective) – how much data loss is acceptable? – and RTO (Recovery Time Objective) – how quickly must operations be restored? An RPO of 1 hour means at most the data of the last hour may be lost. An RTO of 4 hours means operations must be back within 4 hours.
How does Backup / Disaster Recovery work?
A typical BDR strategy follows the 3-2-1 rule: three copies of the data, on two different media types, one of them offsite. Automated backup jobs run on defined schedules – daily incremental, weekly differential, monthly full. In a disaster, the DR plan kicks in: systems are restored from backups or switched to standby systems (failover). Regular DR tests (at least every six months) ensure recovery actually works and RTO/RPO targets are met.
Practical Examples
A mid-size company backs up its databases hourly (incremental) to local NAS and replicates backups at night encrypted to the cloud – RPO: 1 hour.
An e-commerce company uses AWS multi-region replication: if one region fails, the second takes over automatically within minutes (hot standby).
A law firm uses a hybrid backup strategy: local snapshots every 15 minutes for fast recovery, plus cloud backup for disaster.
A hospital implements immutable backups that cannot be encrypted even in a ransomware attack.
A SaaS provider runs full DR tests quarterly, restoring the entire infrastructure from backups in a separate environment.
Typical Use Cases
Ransomware protection: Immutable backups as last line of defence against encryption trojans
Compliance: Audit-proof data retention per GDPR, GoBD or industry regulations
Cloud migration: Backup of on-premise systems as fallback during migration
Business continuity: Ensure operations continue during hardware failure, natural disaster or cyber attack
Database recovery: Point-in-time recovery after accidental deletes or errors
Advantages and Disadvantages
Advantages
- Protection against data loss from hardware failure, human error, cyber attacks and natural disasters
- Defined recovery times (RTO) minimize downtime and revenue loss
- Compliance: Meet legal retention and industry requirements
- Ransomware resilience: Immutable backups allow recovery without paying ransom
- Planning certainty: Regular DR tests validate recoverability before a real incident
Disadvantages
- Costs for storage, infrastructure and maintenance rise sharply with stricter RPO/RTO
- Complexity: Geo-redundant, encrypted backup strategies need expertise and ongoing care
- False sense of security: Without regular restore tests, backups may be useless when needed
- Performance impact: Frequent backups can affect system performance, especially with large databases
Frequently Asked Questions about Backup / Disaster Recovery
What is the difference between RPO and RTO?
How often should backups be created?
Is cloud backup alone enough?
Related Terms
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