By Ben Puzzuoli, Director Sales & Marketing at DataDepositBox
November 23, 2015

Data Deposit Box Cloud Backup Expert Tips: Backing Up Data Automatically in Idle Mode in the Background

In the past, data backup was a resource intensive activity that required the identification of large backup windows. This is no longer true. Backup technology has so improved that businesses are not brought to a standstill, while mission-critical data is being fed to the backup engine. Most businesses today continue with their daily routines while backup happens unobtrusively and almost continuously in the background. Backup windows are no longer searched for or even thought of by enterprises that have mastered the technology of backing up while the wheels of business whirr undeterred. Continuous data backup is almost the norm today.

How does this happen? You may have noticed that online backup technology seems to optimize on idle time and idle bandwidth available to the client machine and the backup starts as soon as the machine is idle or the resource usage is low. This is exactly what it does. It exploits the peaks and troughs in enterprise/user activity. The ever vigilant backup agent software (that is downloaded during signup to the online account) kicks into action maximizing on resource usage during troughs in activity and throttles down on usage during the peaks. During activity peaks, the backup agent identifies files and folders that have changed and need to be backed up. It queues them in readiness for transmitting to the online backup server. If business activity is resumed in the middle of the backup, the backup process waits for a break in activity to resume its operations.

Continuous backup settings do not preclude the possibility of scheduling different backup schedules for different backup sets categorized in order of criticality and importance. Users can set up backup schedules that start when the system is started; when the CPU utilization is defined as idle or on a specific data and time. Schedules can also be activated in response to specific kinds of alerts that have been predefined or manually started by the user when mission critical information needs to be backed up immediately. As a result, scheduled backups will start inconspicuously in the background even when other business activities are being performed by the client machine. The machine will wait for the troughs and idle time for the actual transmission of the files and folders that need to be protected.

Scheduled automatic backups will have to be manually stopped if the end user wants to ensure that idle time system resources are not consumed by the backup process, disadvantaging the business. Normally, all system resources during activity troughs will be harnessed by the backup process and backup alerts will override all other activities on the system. If the backup process is set to be triggered off by critical levels of data accumulation, the backup process will override all other processes and use up all available resources to ensure that the backup happens undeterred.

Any kind of backup process can be scheduled for idle times via the backup agent interface. Mirror backups can transmit uncompressed files across the network to the mirror server, continuously or whenever changes occur to the files. Full backups can compress; zip and queue files for backup when a backup window is detected. Synchronized backup can happen, using inactive system resources during troughs in activity.

At Data Deposit Box, we have designed the service considering every possible nuance of a business customer’s need; the result is a backup technology that is robust, secure, automatic, unobtrusive and infinitely customizable. We believe that you deserve to protect your digital assets efficiently and painlessly and we help you to follow best practices that reduce your data storage risks and keep your business ticking.

About the Author: Ben Puzzuoli is Director of Sales & Marketing at DataDepositBox, a Toronto based cloud data backup service provider, which is listed at both the Toronto and Frankfurt Stock Exchanges. DataDepositBox technologies and solutions are currently used daily by over 200,000 customers, 1,000 resellers, 25 MSPs and private label partners for online backup and recovery, archiving, disaster readiness, secure file sharing and remote access. Visit DDB website here: www.DataDepositBox.com

 

 

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