The subject of computer backups is rife with jargon and highly specialized terminology. This page is a glossary of backup terms that aims to clarify the meaning of such jargon and terminology.
3-2-1 Rule (or 3-2-1 Backup Strategy)
Backup policy
Backup window
Copy backup
Daily backup
Disk cloning
Full backup
Media spanning
Multiplexing
Multistreaming
Normal backup
Near store
Open file backup
Remote store
Restore time
Retention time
Site-to-site backup
Synthetic backup
Virtual Tape Library (VTL)
In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", whereas the noun and adjective form is "backup". Backups can be used to recover data after its loss from data deletion or corruption, or to recover data from an earlier time. Backups provide a simple form of IT disaster recovery; however not all backup systems are able to reconstitute a computer system or other complex configuration such as a computer cluster, active directory server, or database server.
In computing, a file system or filesystem governs file organization and access. A local file system is a capability of an operating system that services the applications running on the same computer. A distributed file system is a protocol that provides file access between networked computers.
Data loss is an error condition in information systems in which information is destroyed by failures or neglect in storage, transmission, or processing. Information systems implement backup and disaster recovery equipment and processes to prevent data loss or restore lost data. Data loss can also occur if the physical medium containing the data is lost or stolen.
A remote, online, or managed backup service, sometimes marketed as cloud backup or backup-as-a-service, is a service that provides users with a system for the backup, storage, and recovery of computer files. Online backup providers are companies that provide this type of service to end users. Such backup services are considered a form of cloud computing.
Extensible Storage Engine (ESE), also known as JET Blue, is an ISAM data storage technology from Microsoft. ESE is the core of Microsoft Exchange Server, Active Directory, and Windows Search. It is also used by a number of Windows components including Windows Update client and Help and Support Center. Its purpose is to allow applications to store and retrieve data via indexed and sequential access.
In computing, data recovery is a process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or files, when the data stored in them cannot be accessed in a usual way. The data is most often salvaged from storage media such as internal or external hard disk drives (HDDs), solid-state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, magnetic tapes, CDs, DVDs, RAID subsystems, and other electronic devices. Recovery may be required due to physical damage to the storage devices or logical damage to the file system that prevents it from being mounted by the host operating system (OS).
Continuous data protection (CDP), also called continuous backup or real-time backup, refers to backup of computer data by automatically saving a copy of every change made to that data, essentially capturing every version of the data that the user saves. In its true form it allows the user or administrator to restore data to any point in time. The technique was patented by British entrepreneur Pete Malcolm in 1989 as "a backup system in which a copy [editor's emphasis] of every change made to a storage medium is recorded as the change occurs [editor's emphasis]."
A virtual tape library (VTL) is a data storage virtualization technology used typically for backup and recovery purposes. A VTL presents a storage component as tape libraries or tape drives for use with existing backup software.
IBM Storage Protect is a data protection platform that gives enterprises a single point of control and administration for backup and recovery. It is the flagship product in the IBM Spectrum Protect family.
Veritas Backup Exec is a data protection software product designed for customers with mixed physical and virtual environments, and who are moving to public cloud services. Supported platforms include VMware and Hyper-V virtualization, Windows and Linux operating systems, Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Storage, among others. All management and configuration operations are performed with a single user interface. Backup Exec also provides integrated deduplication, replication, and disaster recovery capabilities and helps to manage multiple backup servers or multi-drive tape loaders.
In computer science, storage virtualization is "the process of presenting a logical view of the physical storage resources to" a host computer system, "treating all storage media in the enterprise as a single pool of storage."
An incremental backup is one in which successive copies of the data contain only the portion that has changed since the preceding backup copy was made. When a full recovery is needed, the restoration process would need the last full backup plus all the incremental backups until the point of restoration. Incremental backups are often desirable as they reduce storage space usage, and are quicker to perform than differential backups.
Time Machine is the backup mechanism of macOS, the desktop operating system developed by Apple. The software is designed to work with both local storage devices and network-attached disks, and is commonly used with external disk drives connected using either USB or Thunderbolt. It was first introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, which was released in October 2007 and incrementally refined in subsequent releases of macOS. Time Machine was revamped in macOS 11 Big Sur to support APFS, thereby enabling "faster, more compact, and more reliable backups" than were possible previously.
Hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers as complete hardware platforms, certain logical abstractions of their componentry, or only the functionality required to run various operating systems. Virtualization emulates the hardware environment of its host architecture, allowing multiple OSes to run unmodified and in isolation. At its origins, the software that controlled virtualization was called a "control program", but the terms "hypervisor" or "virtual machine monitor" became preferred over time.
NTBackup is the first built-in backup utility of the Windows NT family. It was introduced with Windows NT 3.51. NTBackup comprises a GUI (wizard-style) and a command-line utility to create, customize, and manage backups. It takes advantage of Shadow Copy and Task Scheduler. NTBackup stores backups in the BKF file format on external sources, e.g., floppy disks, hard drives, tape drives, and Zip drives. When used with tape drives, NTBackup uses the Microsoft Tape Format (MTF), which is also used by BackupAssist, Backup Exec, and Veeam Backup & Replication and is compatible with BKF.
Backup and Restore is the primary backup component of Windows Vista and Windows 7. It can create file and folder backups, as well as system images backups, to be used for recovery in the event of data corruption, hard disk drive failure, or malware infection. It replaces NTBackup, which has been part of Windows since Windows NT 3.51. Unlike its predecessor, it supports CDs, DVDs, and Blu-rays discs as backup media.
Catalogic DPX is an enterprise-level data protection tool that backs up and restores data and applications for a variety of operating systems. It has data protection, disaster recovery and business continuity planning capabilities. Catalogic DPX protects physical servers or virtual machines on VMWare vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors, supports many database applications, including Oracle, SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange, and SAP HANA. DPX supports agent-based or agent-less backups. Users can map to and use a backed up version of the database if something goes wrong with the primary version. DPX is managed from a single console and catalog. This allows for centralized control of both tape-based and disk-based data protection jobs across heterogeneous operating systems. DPX can protect data centers, remote sites and supports recovery from DR. DPX can protect data to disk, tape or cloud. It is used for various recovery use cases including file, application, BMR, VM or DR. DPX can spin up VMs from backup images, recover physical servers, bring up applications online from snapshot based backups, it can be used to recover from Ransomware.
NetVault is a set of data protection software developed and supported by Quest Software. NetVault Backup is a backup and recovery software product. It can be used to protect data and software applications in physical and virtual environments from one central management interface. It supports many servers, application platforms, and protocols such as UNIX, Linux, Microsoft Windows, VMware, Microsoft Hyper-V, Oracle, Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server, NDMP, Oracle ACSLS, IBM DAS/ACI, Microsoft Exchange Server, DB2, and Teradata.
Disk-based backup refers to technology that allows one to back up large amounts of data to a disk storage unit. It is often supplemented by tape drives for data archival or replication to another facility for disaster recovery. Backup-to-disk is a popular in enterprise use for both technical and business reasons. Storage devices have gotten faster access time and higher storage capacity. There are different forms of disks used for back up, standard mechanical disks and solid state disks.
Veeam Backup & Replication is a proprietary backup app developed by Veeam for virtual environments built on VMware vSphere, Nutanix AHV, and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors. The software provides backup, restore and replication functionality for virtual machines, physical servers and workstations as well as cloud-based workload.