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The verb form is back up in two words, whereas the noun is backup (often used like an adjective in compound nouns). Backups have two distinct purposes. The primary purpose is to recover data as a reaction to data loss, be it by data deletion or corrupted data. Data loss is a very common experience of computer users. 67% of internet users have suffered serious data loss. In Information Technology, a backup or the process of backing up refers to making copies of data so that these additional copies may be used to restore the original after a data loss event.
Not all backup systems and/or backup applications are able to reconstitute a computer system, or in turn other complex configurations such as a computer cluster, active directory servers, or a database server, by restoring only data from a backup. The secondary purpose of backups is to recover data from a historical period of time within the constraints of a user-defined data retention policy, typically configured within a backup application for how long copies of data are required. Though backups popularly represent a simple form of disaster recovery, and should be part of a disaster recovery plan, by themselves, backups should not alone be considered disaster recovery.
Since a backup system contains at least one copy of all data worth saving, the data storage requirements are considerable. Organizing this storage space and managing the backup process is a complicated undertaking. A data repository model can be used to provide structure to the storage. In the modern era of computing there are many different types of data storage devices that are useful for making backups. There are also many different ways in which these devices can be arranged to provide geographic redundancy, data security, and portability.
These include optimizations for dealing with open files and live data sources as well as compression, encryption, and de-duplication, among others. Many organizations and individuals try to have confidence that the process is working as expected and work to define measurements and validation techniques. It is also important to recognize the limitations and human factors involved in any backup scheme. Before data is sent to its storage location, it is selected, extracted, and manipulated. Many different techniques have been developed to optimize the backup procedure.
This is closely related to choosing a backup rotation scheme. Any backup strategy starts with a concept of a data repository. The backup data needs to be stored somehow and probably should be organized to a degree. It can be as simple as a sheet of paper with a list of all backup tapes and the dates they were written or a more sophisticated setup with a computerized index, catalog, or relational database. Different repository models have different advantages.
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