When considering a backup solution, an important area to consider is how often you should perform a backup. There are two approaches to backup frequency. The first is to schedule and manage backup sets, including full and incremental backups. The second approach is continuous backup, sometimes called CDP for continuous data protection. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches.
The importance of data dictates how often it should be protected. Critical data, defined as essential to the day-to-day activities of your business, should be backed up and archived more frequently than other less important data. With scheduled backups, you determine what data needs to be backed up and how often. The risk in scheduled backups is the duration between backups when data may have changed.
With continuous backup (CDP), every change to data is backed up as it happens. This sounds ideal until you realize that all data is treated equally, requiring larger backup storage capacities. The impact on desktop and server performance, as well as network bandwidth, can be significant. CDP requires more processing power and bandwidth than scheduled backups. CDP is not a good choice for organizations unless they have high bandwidth availability and newer, faster processors in their servers and clients.
Scheduled backup, which can be automated to your requirements and convenience, offers better performance at a lower investment.
