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 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.
Shadow Copy is a technology included in Microsoft Windows that can create backup copies or snapshots of computer files or volumes, even when they are in use. It is implemented as a Windows service called the Volume Shadow Copy service. A software VSS provider service is also included as part of Windows to be used by Windows applications. Shadow Copy technology requires either the Windows NTFS or ReFS filesystems in order to create and store shadow copies. Shadow Copies can be created on local and external volumes by any Windows component that uses this technology, such as when creating a scheduled Windows Backup or automatic System Restore point.
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 Spectrum 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.
EMC NetWorker is an enterprise-level data protection software product that unifies and automates backup to tape, disk-based, and flash-based storage media across physical and virtual environments for granular and disaster recovery. Cross-platform support is provided for Linux, Windows, macOS, NetWare, OpenVMS and Unix environments. Deduplication of backup data is provided by integration with Dell EMC Data Domain storage solutions.
Veritas Backup Exec is a data protection software product designed for customers who have 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.
Windows Home Server is a home server operating system from Microsoft. It was announced on 7 January 2007 at the Consumer Electronics Show by Bill Gates, released to manufacturing on 16 July 2007 and officially released on 4 November 2007.
NTBackup is the built-in backup application introduced in Windows NT 3.51 and included in Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. NTBackup comprises a command-line utility and a set of wizard interfaces that provide multiple options to create, customize, and manage backups, and it is integrated with Shadow Copy and Task Scheduler. NTBackup creates backups in a proprietary BKF file format to external sources including floppy disks, hard drives, tape drives, and ZIP drives.
Backup and Restore is a backup component of Windows Vista and later versions of Microsoft Windows that allows users to create or restore backups of files and create and restore system images to repair data in the event of data corruption, hard disk drive failure, or malware infection. It is integrated with the Shadow Copy feature first observed in Windows Server 2003 and it is the replacement for NTBackup included since Windows NT 3.51.
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 or virtual servers including VMWare, supports many database applications, including Oracle, SQL, SharePoint, and Exchange. 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.
VHD and its successor VHDx are file formats representing a virtual hard disk drive (HDD). They may contain what is found on a physical HDD, such as disk partitions and a file system, which in turn can contain files and folders. They are typically used as the hard disk of a virtual machine, are built into modern versions of Windows, and are the native file format for Microsoft's hypervisor, Hyper-V.
InMage was a computer software company based in the US and India. It marketed a product line called Scout that used continuous data protection (CDP) for backup and replication. Scout consisted of two product lines: the host-offload line, which uses a software agent on the protected servers, and the fabric line, which uses an agent on the Fibre Channel switch fabric. The software protects at the volume or block level, tracking all write changes. It allows for local or remote protection policies. The first version of the product was released in 2002.
Data Protector software is automated backup and recovery software for single-server to enterprise environments, supporting disk storage or tape storage targets. It provides cross-platform, online backup of data for Microsoft Windows, Unix, and Linux operating systems.
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.
RecoverPoint is a continuous data protection product offered by Dell EMC which supports asynchronous and synchronous data replication of block-based storage. RecoverPoint was originally created by a company called Kashya, which was bought by EMC in 2006.
Resilient File System (ReFS), codenamed "Protogon", is a Microsoft proprietary file system introduced with Windows Server 2012 with the intent of becoming the "next generation" file system after NTFS.
Windows Server 2012 is the fifth version of the Windows Server operating system by Microsoft, as part of the Windows NT family of operating systems. It is the server version of Windows based on Windows 8 and succeeds Windows Server 2008 R2, which is derived from the Windows 7 codebase, released nearly three years earlier. Two pre-release versions, a developer preview and a beta version, were released during development. The software was generally available to customers starting on September 4, 2012, by Microsoft. A successor was released on October 18, 2013, entitled Windows Server 2012 R2. Microsoft ended mainstream support for Windows Server 2012 on October 9, 2018, and extended support will end on October 10, 2023.
Iperius Backup is a backup software for Windows PCs and Servers, databases and virtual machines. It allows to make automatic backups of files and folders on many devices: external USB hard drives, RDX drives, NAS, LTO tape drives, networked computers, Cloud storage, Amazon S3, Google Drive and FTP servers. Iperius Backup includes drive imaging capabilities, backup of SQL Server, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle databases, backup of Microsoft Exchange servers, backup and replication of VMware ESXi, vCenter, ESXi Free and Hyper-V virtual machines.
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.
