The idea behind a 3-2-1-1 backup strategy is to benefit from added data security by having three copies of your data plus an extra one – because you can't be too careful about your data security! – 2 local copies of the data that are stored on two different media or devices, and 2 backup copies offsite, with 1 being immutable.
This strategy proposes that you have the following as a minimum:
One local copy is the data itself – the primary production data
A second copy also stored locally but on a different medium or device
A third backup copy stored at a remote offsite location or cloud storage provider
In addition to this, for added security, we propose a fourth copy stored on immutable cloud storage. This adds an extra layer of security. Hence, 3-2-1-1!
It is important to always have an onsite copy of your primary data on another medium or device as if there is a failure on one of the devices, then the other is easily accessible with all the data intact.
Use different storage types for both data sets – for example, store one on an internal hard disk drive and another on a different storage device or server, such as an external hard disk or flash drive, NAS device, file server network share and so on.
However, what if something goes wrong that affects both production data and primary backup data copies of your onsite data such as fire, flooding or even theft?
That's where the third, offsite copy comes in: As long as this offsite copy is synced regularly – and therefore contains up-to-date copies of your data – your risks of data loss are greatly reduced should anything at all happen to all your onsite copies. You can choose to store your offsite copies using drive-swapping, or directly on Cloud Storage, or alternatively to an Offsite Backup Server on a secondary site.
This is where most others stop, but safe is never safe enough, and we take this very seriously: This is why VM Backup adds that plus.
You can configure multiple offsite copies and store a fourth copy of your data on yet another site or cloud storage benefitting from direct integration to MS Azure, Amazon S3 and Wasabi cloud storage. We, however, propose to storing a fourth immutable copy leveraging cloud storage locations to protect your data from ransomware attacks and rogue admins.
VM Backup facilitates standard 3-2-1 backup – and adds to it (hence: 3-2-1-1) – by supporting multiple backup media types, and by supporting offsite backups over WAN, Internet, LAN and a local connection. VM Backup also provides direct offsite backups to Azure by supporting Microsoft Azure Cloud Storage, and direct integration with Amazon S3 and Wasabi cloud storage.
Supported media types include:
VM Backup also provides:
Download a full trial of VM Backup for 30 days and see how easily you can securely back up and replicate your virtual machines. Includes 24/7 support.
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