Database backups have transformed from an afterthought to a strategic priority, with BaaS provider selection now at the forefront of IT infrastructure planning. With 328.77 million terabytes of data created daily and 299 million records compromised in cyberattacks, a strong data backup plan can’t be skipped. As data volumes surge, choosing the right database backup solution helps you safeguard sensitive information, ensure rapid recovery, and keep your operations running smoothly.

For example, a faulty software update—like the one that affected 8.5 million Windows devices in July 2024—can bring critical systems to a halt, disrupting organizations. Customers may lose access to essential data, and incident response can be delayed, hampering business continuity. Without a reliable backup system, recovery from a disruption could take days or weeks. Read on to learn about database backup, its benefits, important factors to consider, types of backup you can implement, and steps to strategize your database backup.

Summary

1. A database backup is a process for safeguarding your data against loss, corruption, or system failure by regularly creating copies of your database.

2. Backups protect your business from accidental data loss, ensure rapid recovery from disruptions, and safeguard against cyber threats, helping maintain business continuity.

3. DigitalOcean’s backup solutions, including Droplet backups, volume snapshots, and Managed Database backups, provide flexible and scalable protection for your cloud infrastructure.

What is a database backup?

A database backup is the process of creating a copy of data from a database to ensure its availability in case of data loss, corruption, or system failure. This backup can be used to restore the database to its previous state, safeguarding critical information from unexpected issues. Backups can be performed regularly and stored on-premises or in cloud environments, providing a reliable safeguard for valuable business data.

Benefits of database backup

Database backups offer protection for your business data, helping ensure that your information is secure and recoverable in case of unexpected incidents. By regularly backing up your database, you minimize the risk of data loss and help maintain business continuity.

Protect your data from accidental loss

Backups help ensure that you can recover data even if it’s accidentally deleted or altered. By restoring your database to its previous state, you reduce the impact of human error, maintain data accuracy, and improve cloud ROI by preventing costly data recovery efforts and downtime.

Ensure business continuity

With a reliable backup in place, you can typically restore operations and minimize downtime in case of system failures. This helps keep your business running smoothly, even during unexpected outages or disruptions.

Safeguard against cyber threats

Backups are reliable, safe spots that can allow you to restore clean database versions after a cyberattack. This reduces the risk of data breaches and helps you recover quickly without compromising sensitive information.

Simplify disaster recovery

Backups enable faster recovery from disasters, reducing the impact on your business and minimizing operational disruptions. Whether it’s a natural disaster or a hardware failure, having a backup helps ensure that you can resume normal operations efficiently.

Factors to consider when choosing a database backup solution

Selecting the right database backup solution helps to ensure data security and reliability. By carefully evaluating key factors, you can make informed decisions that protect your organization from potential data loss and streamline recovery processes. Here are the key factors to consider while choosing a database backup solution:

• Retention policies: Establish how long you want to keep each backup. You’ll also need to define whether different data types have varying retention requirements and how to handle outdated backups.

• Data encryption and security: Consider whether you need encryption for data in transit, at rest, or both. Security standards, authentication methods, and compliance with regulatory requirements should also be considered.

• Understand RTO and RPO: Recovery time objective (RTO) is how quickly you need to restore your database after a failure. In contrast, the recovery point objective (RPO) defines how much data loss you can tolerate. Depending on your business needs, you’ll need to determine both—shorter RTOs and RPOs mean faster recovery but can increase costs and complexity in your backup plan.

• Scalability and cloud costs: Consider how efficiently your cloud infrastructure can scale as your database expands. Assess the costs associated with cloud storage, network bandwidth, and the flexibility to scale your backup systems without compromising your overall cloud ROI.

Types of database backup

Database backups come in several types, each with its own strengths and use cases. Understanding these options helps you select the right approach for your specific needs. The following chart outlines five common backup types, their key features, and when they’re most effective:

How do you create your database backup plan?

Whether you face hardware failures, cyberattacks, or accidental deletions, a well-defined backup plan is your safety net. It’s about protecting your data proactively, minimizing recovery time, and ensuring that your systems bounce back with minimal disruption. Here are a few steps for creating a database backup plan that safeguards your business:

1. Assess your data

After taking stock of all the data you need to back up, identify the databases you use, including critical databases, and categorize your data by its importance. Some data may need more frequent backups than others. This initial assessment helps prioritize your efforts and determine how comprehensive your backups should be.

2. Determine the backup frequency

The frequency of your backups depends on how often your data changes. For example, a rapidly evolving e-commerce database might require daily or even hourly backups, while a less frequently updated system may only need weekly backups. Your goal here is to strike a balance between ensuring up-to-date backups and managing storage costs and time.

3. Select a storage solution

You must decide where to store your backups—on-premises storage, public or private cloud, or a hybrid of both. Cloud storage options are more scalable and provide redundancy, while local storage can give you faster backup access. Ensure you have multiple copies in different locations to avoid a single point of failure.

4. Automate your backups

Manually managing backups is risky because it increases the chances of human error, such as missed schedules or incomplete backups. Automating your backups ensures they are performed consistently and reduces the chances of human error. Decide if you need real-time alerts, error reporting, and automatic verification to ensure successful backups. Most modern database management systems have built-in tools to schedule regular backups, so take advantage of these features to maintain a reliable process.

6. Test your backups regularly

Backups are only as good as your ability to restore them. Regularly test your recovery process by restoring backup data to verify integrity and speed. This step ensures that your backups will perform as expected when disaster strikes.

7. Establish a retention policy

Keeping backups indefinitely can take up a lot of space and complicate management. Define a retention policy that aligns with regulatory requirements and business needs. For example, you might retain daily backups for a month, weekly backups for a year, and monthly backups for several years.

Safeguard your data with DigitalOcean’s backup solutions

DigitalOcean provides a range of backup options designed to protect your data and ensure business continuity:

• Droplet Backups: These are automatically generated disk images of your Droplets (scalable Linux virtual machines), offering reliable protection without manual intervention.

Flexible pricing: DigitalOcean’s backup pricing enables you to customize your backup strategy according to your data protection needs and budget, ensuring affordability without sacrificing security:

• Volume snapshots: Create on-demand backups of your Volumes, ensuring advanced data protection. These snapshots allow you to quickly generate new volumes that can be shared across multiple Droplets.

• Managed Database Backups: DigitalOcean’s Managed Databases come with free daily backups, automatically securing your critical data. You can restore your database to any point within the last seven days.

Experience up to 6.5x faster backups* using our new incremental backup infrastructure, which saves time by only backing up changed data! Here’s the customer feedback on DigitalOcean backups:

SnapShooter is a comprehensive cloud backup solution that protects data across all your cloud workloads—Droplets, volumes, files, apps, and databases. SnapShooter integrates effortlessly with DigitalOcean workflow, supporting a range of custom backup options for containers, file systems, S3-compatible object stores, and more.

Sign up today to experience the simplicity of DigitalOcean’s backup solutions for data protection for your cloud applications and infrastructure.

*Actual backup speed gains and performance may vary depending on a variety of factors such as system configuration, I/O load, operating environment, and type of workloads.