{"id":5980,"date":"2014-08-28T19:19:49","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T18:19:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/?p=5980"},"modified":"2021-06-14T15:07:02","modified_gmt":"2021-06-14T14:07:02","slug":"image-vs-file-based-backups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.n-able.com\/de\/blog\/image-vs-file-based-backups","title":{"rendered":"The great debate: Image vs. file-based backups"},"content":{"rendered":"

As an advocate for your customers, it\u2019s critically important to you that the solutions you implement have your customer\u2019s best interest at heart. After all, the moment you stop putting them first, they\u2019ll stop depending on you, right?<\/p>\n

So, when it comes to backups, the most important point in time is when you select the solution you\u2019ll use. That inflection point is going to determine whether you are going to be successful at recovering that Excel spreadsheet, the SQL database, or the entire business. And it\u2019s important to remember that when each of those \u201cdisasters\u201d (admittedly, some less \u201cdisastrous\u201d than others\u2026) occur, you need to be able to address them with equal levels of speed, intensity and deliverability.<\/p>\n

\"file-recovery\"Usually service providers (and customers) are concerned about where their data is backed up to. There are a number of places to choose from, such as the cloud, local disk, and a combination therein. The more important issue to address (that will impact the success or failure of you providing services to your customer) is the what gets backed up. And by that I mean the battle of backing up images or files.<\/p>\n

File-based backups have been a staple since the dawn of the modern network. Files makeup the foundation for every piece of data, every application and every system to be recovered. But in recent years, some backup providers have sought to differentiate themselves by backing up an entire image of a server (or workstation). It\u2019s an interesting concept and, I must admit \u2013 it even caught my eye.<\/p>\n

But are image-based backups a good choice for the Service Provider?<\/p>\n

The answer lies in what your customer wants to recover.<\/p>\n

What do you want to recover?<\/h2>\n

Get to the root of it all \u2013 what exactly does your customer need backed up? The simple answer is something like \u201cWhatever it takes to get them back up and running.\u201d Completely fair. So, to dig a bit deeper, the what at the point of backup really depends on what kind of recovery you think you\u2019ll need to perform.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s where we need to focus our energy for this topic.<\/p>\n

Image-based backups are just that \u2013 a backup of an entire system<\/a>. Now, they do perform incremental backups of changes so you\u2019re not backing up an entire image every time. But the focus is to get the whole system backed up.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to recovery time, the question needs to be raised, how often do you need to recover an entire system? More than likely, you need to recover a folder worth of files, or a database, or a specific mailbox far more often than you do an entire server. To be fair, image-based backup solutions do allow you to recover individual files from an image \u2013 it\u2019s just that they lack the intelligence for you to request recovering, say, an SQL Server database (and log files) as a single checkbox. Instead, you\u2019d need to mount a backup image, select each file (db, logs, whatever) and recover them individually. And that\u2019s going to take awhile.<\/p>\n

So what\u2019s the best kind of backup?<\/h2>\n

What today\u2019s smart service providers are using are solutions that are concerned with the applications that need to be recovered \u2013 Active Directory, Exchange, etc. Extending my previous example, you (and your customer) want you to be able to backup (and recover) an SQL Server database with a single checkbox. It needs to be that simple or you\u2019ll be taking too long while your customer is unhappy. File-based backups provide more flexibility in choosing what needs to be recovered by including application-level intelligence to ensure every needed file is part of a backup and, therefore, a recovery.<\/p>\n

Image-based backups could be a truly viable solution if they supported the easy recovery of application-specific subsets of an image. Without that ability, they resolve themselves to only being able to easily recover entire systems. When a customer\u2019s business demands the ability to have instant recovery of an entire server, image-based backups have their place.<\/p>\n

But for most of your customers, the complete disaster scenario is improbable, and you are more concerned with smaller \u201cdisasters\u201d that only file-level backups can readily address quickly.<\/p>\n

Choosing what\u2019s right for your customer<\/h2>\n

Both image and file backups do backup your customer\u2019s data and systems. Ultimately, when you are choosing a\u00a0backup solution<\/a>\u00a0for a given customer, start with what data sets they need recovered, and at what level they want to recover \u2013 system, application, or file \u2013 to choose the best solution for them.<\/p>\n

Thoughts and ideas are always welcome! Feel free to leave a comment below!<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As an advocate for your customers, it\u2019s critically important to you that the solutions you implement have your customer\u2019s best interest at heart. After all, the moment you stop putting…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","topic-msp-business"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe great debate: Image vs. file-based backups - N-able<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Image vs. file-based backups - which is best for your customers? 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