Backup
Definition
Making copies of important data in case the original gets lost or damaged. Like keeping photocopies of important documents.
Use Cases
- Netflix: Protecting critical cloud data and configurations to recover from accidental deletion or corruption — Uses AWS as its primary cloud platform and applies multi-region resilience patterns; backups and snapshots are used for data stores and critical assets alongside automation to restore services when needed (Improved ability to recover from incidents and reduce downtime risk by having recoverable copies of important data and system state)
- Adobe: Safeguarding customer content and service data to support business continuity — Runs major workloads on public cloud and uses backup and replication patterns (such as snapshots and cross-region copies) to protect data and enable recovery procedures (Reduced risk of data loss and improved operational resilience through standardized recovery processes)
Provider Equivalents
- AWS: AWS Backup
- Azure: Azure Backup
- GCP: Backup and DR Service
- OCI: OCI Backup (e.g., Block Volume Backups, Database Backups)
Frequently Asked Questions
- What's the difference between backup and disaster recovery (DR)?
- A backup is a copy of data you can restore later (for example, restoring a deleted database). Disaster recovery is the broader plan and tooling to keep the business running after a major outage (for example, failing over to another region). Backups are often one part of a DR strategy, but DR also includes recovery time goals, failover design, and operational runbooks.
- When should I use backups in the cloud?
- Use backups whenever losing data would hurt your business or you need to recover from mistakes. Common triggers include: protecting databases and file storage, meeting compliance requirements, defending against ransomware, enabling point-in-time recovery, and supporting safe changes (take a backup before major migrations or schema updates).
- How much do cloud backups cost?
- Costs usually depend on (1) how much data you store, (2) how often you back up, (3) how long you keep backups (retention), (4) storage tier (hot vs archival), (5) cross-region or cross-account copies, and (6) restore and data transfer charges. Frequent backups with long retention and cross-region copies cost more; using lifecycle policies to move older backups to archival storage can reduce cost.
Category: data
Difficulty: basic
Related Terms
See Also