CompTIA Cloud+ certification requires a thorough understanding of the various exam objectives. This post will focus on Objective 3.3: 6 types of backups for cloud storage. Although a backup strategy may seem like an afterthought, it is essential to include them in any post-provisioning tasks. It can save you time and effort when rebuilding a server. If you hand over a server to another team, the install can go wrong. However, if you have a backup, or a snapshot, it can be simple to restore to the last known good. They can save your life.
Understanding the business requirements that drive backup needs is essential to understand them. Are you looking for long-term data retention or just quick recovery? Are there any legal compliance requirements or client service agreements that dictate the retention or restore times?
The business needs will determine which option to choose. Therefore, we must start with these requirements when choosing an option. Once we have established the business requirements, we need to understand which option best suits those needs.
1. Snapshot/Redirect-on-write
Snapshots that use redirect on-write are a neat technology that can reduce the performance impact of snapshots when compared to other technologies like copy-on. The storage provider maintains a table that lists the locations of various blocks. A pointer in a table refers to each location. It simply points to the location, but does not contain any data. If the block is to be modified, the pointer will be updated to the new location. This is in contrast to a copy on-write where more information is required. First, the original block is scanned (read operation). Next, a copy of the original block is made (write operations), and then it is overwritten.
Learn how to become a security expert with SPOTO’s Cybersecurity Training
Start trainingThis is a great use case. This could be an operating system upgrade or any number of software and/or application packages. This will allow you to quickly rollback any issues that may arise during or shortly after the upgrade. Snapshots are usually quick to revert and take up very little space. As more changes occur, the longer the snapshot is kept, the more data it will consume. Some environments are more comfortable with longer-lasting snapshots than others. These snapshots can have performance implications, so it is important to be aware of them. For example, some hypervisors do not recommend having a hypervisor snapshot around longer than a few days while Cloud providers and many SAN vendors have no such performance recommendation/issue.
2. Clone
Cloning can be used in a few situations. Many of them revolve around duplicating systems that can spin up new ones or provide quick recovery options. This function is the most common and takes up the most storage. This is because it is an exact copy of the original, and is usually in the original format. The data is copied and the metadata about it is also copied. This is done to speed up the process. This is a fast way to backup an existing instance and create a new one. It’s a copy and restore all in one.
This is most commonly used to create a virtual machine to spin-up multiple instances. Sometimes it can be used to restore the source if there is an issue. This is a great way to test an upgrade by cloning a production server to a sandbox. The common saying is “there is no production system like it”. While lower-level DEV, UAT, and QA systems can complete certain upgrades just fine, certain quirks tend only to exist in production. This use case can help you test scenarios that may only be found in production.
3. Full
One of the most common types is a full backup. It is similar to a clone but the contents of the backup are identical. How it is stored
