Incremental Backup
Shorten backup windows and save storage space
What Is an Incremental Backup?
Since the amount of data being produced, processed, and stored continues to grow exponentially, businesses of all sizes are forced to look for solutions that can provide reliable and efficient means for data protection. While backup is considered a core data protection technique, not all backup methods are created equal. Among the different methods of backup available such as full, differential, mirror, reverse incremental, continuous, and others, incremental backups hold a highly prominent place, as they can introduce numerous benefits to companies with a growing infrastructure.
An incremental backup allows you to perform backup in increments by only copying data that has changed since the last backup job, with no need to copy each block of the entire machine. This makes it the fastest backup type which, at the same time, allows for significant storage space savings.
Incremental Backup in NAKIVO Backup & Replication
NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports incremental backup
for VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, AWS EC2, and physical servers.
Incremental Backup with CBT
CBT or Changed Block Tracking is a kind of native VMware incremental backup technology. As a modern data protection solution that supports VMware backup, NAKIVO Backup & Replication utilizes the technology to perform incremental backups of VMware virtual machines. In case you deploy VMware in your infrastructure, this allows you to save time and money, and reduce the amount of backup data being stored.
Incremental Backup with CRT
To perform incremental backups of Nutanix AHV VMs, Nutanix has introduced CRT or Changed Regions Tracking technology. NAKIVO Backup & Replication offers support for Nutanix AHV backup with the possibility of tracking the changed meta-data regions of the virtual disks with CRT. If you are opting for Nutanix AHV, NAKIVO Backup & Replication can deliver better backup performance and other benefits of incremental backup.
Incremental Backup with RCT
RCT stands for Resilient Changed Tracking and is an incremental backup technology used by Microsoft Hyper-V. The purpose of this technology is to facilitate the backup processes in Hyper-V environments by tracking and backing up only the changed blocks of the virtual machine disks. NAKIVO Backup & Replication supports RCT, enabling you to take full advantage of incremental backup in your Hyper-V infrastructure.
Incremental Backup with Custom CBT
NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides its own proprietary change block tracking technology. It is the default incremental backup technology used during AWS EC2 and physical server backup jobs. The NAKIVO Backup & Replication custom CBT helps you make sure that the backups of your AWS EC2 instances or physical servers can be completed within the shortest time frame possible and does not consume too much storage space.
What Does an Incremental Backup Do?
The prerequisite for running an incremental backup is creating one full backup first, and then only those blocks of data that have changed since the previous backup job are backed up in increments. The frequency of repeating a full backup in the cycle depends on the needs of each particular organization.
To illustrate the incremental backup process, let’s consider the following example. An initial full backup was performed on Monday, with each following backup performed during the week being incremental. Therefore, the Tuesday backup includes only data that has changed since the full backup. The Wednesday backup includes the data that has changed since the Tuesday backup and so on. Incremental backups can be performed as often as needed. Each time an incremental backup runs, NAKIVO Backup & Replication backs up and stores only changed blocks of data, economically utilizing space in the repository.
Incremental backup in NAKIVO Backup & Replication introduces multiple benefits, including remarkable storage space savings, less load on the network, faster backup processes, and so much more.