1. What is local backup space

Local backup storage is when you have an additional drive plugged into your server, this drive is not part of your operating system and can be used for backups. The drive will sit either inside your server or as an external drive. This is a major single point of failure, because if the drive fails, you lose all your backups.

Advantage:

• Fast local backups
• Cheap

Disadvantage:

• If your server completely fails you run the risk of data loss
• If your server is hacked, the hacker can delete the local data
• Single point of failure if the drive fails (no backups of the backups)

2. What is FTP backups

FTP backup space is space that is not on the local server but rather a remote server, FTP space is space that Servers Australia provides to customers to store data such as backups or copies of configuration files external to their server. FTP backups can be used for backing up cPanel using the auto backup configuration system also (not recommended at all).

FTP backups are great for non critical data, the way FTP works is it simply sends data FROM your server to the FTP server, this means that your server makes a connection to the Servers Australia FTP server than then transfers the files from your server to the FTP server, once the transfer has finished the connection is closed. The FTP service does not do a checksum check of the files or check of the size of the file transferred is all there and is in fact correct.

One major downfall of this is that you could be getting reports from your server advising that your backups are being performed, but if they are corrupt when they make the transfer then you will never know because FTP does not do any form of error checking or checksum checking, the only real way to check and see if your data is in fact all in-tact is to do a restore of your data, this is not only costly but can also cause issues for you.

Advantages:

• FTP backup is versatile and easy to setup

Disadvantages:

• FTP backups are unreliable
  
• If your server is hacked the hacker can login and detel backups
• No data checking or check sum is performed after a transfer

3. What is Idera backups

Idera is a commercial third party software vendor that specialises in Continuous Data Protection (CDP), this means that a backup agent is installed on your server and controlled by a remote server. The agent and server talk to ensure that all data that the agent has provided the server is in fact in-tact when it gets to the server, the Idera system will also report on any failed files and folders to nominated e-mails.

Main Idera benefits include having the shortest server backup windows possible as well as cross platform compatibility.

• All CentOS
• All Debian
• All Red Hat
• All Ubuntu

Windows Server Environments

Idera has the ability to perform continuous data protection, ensuring that your data is stored off-site continuously in the event of data loss. With multiple retention points you can rest assured any level of redundancy can be built into your data replication plan with CDP being set as low as every few minutes. Idera is different to many other backup applications, as the main backup server logs into your server to retrieve the data, the biggest advantage here is security, if your server is hacked the attacked cannot gain access to your Idera backups.

Advantages:

• Checks your data integrity and makes sure the backup has worked
• Cannot be accessed if your server is hacked

Disadvantages:

• Can cost a bit more than FTP or Local
• Requires an agent to be installed in the server (Servers Australia can do this FREE of charge)

To find out more about the Idera software, please download the white paper.