10 tips in 10 minutes on backup and restore technologies

Historically, tape has been used as a medium for backing up data. Initially tape was a much cheaper medium than disk. Subsequently it was argued that optical media would become the media of choice, but for various reasons this vision never came to fruition. Although the medium of choice (for backup) remains predominantly tape, regular disk drives are increasingly becoming the medium of choice for an initial backup and system mirror. This trend is due mainly to the falling prices of disk storage, which reduces the cost advantage of tape over disk storage. Another reason for the increasing use of disk-based backup is the higher speed, which ensures minimal downtime for server-based applications.

Note that both disk and tape as media for backup have their advantages and disadvantages, and both will continue to be used. Tape-based backup/restore offers a very high-density medium that can easily be transported for off-site archive or disaster recovery purposes. When an initial copy of data is made to disk, very often a secondary backup operation to traditional tape media is made from that disk-based copy.

This chapter explains the technical challenges that need to be solved in order to back up and restore data in a timely way. The chapter also explains the various ways in which backup/restore techniques can be classified. Also included are discussions of new developments in Windows Server 2003 for accomplishing snapshots (volume shadow copy service) and of the Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) and how it fits into the Microsoft vision of storage management.