Backup practices

Folks,
I was just wondering – but when it comes to server backups is it best to have individual jobs for each server or one large backup job, which backups up all the servers.

This is a just a general question, so I am not looking for OS specific or application specific practices. I am just looking at best practices or practices that lend to flexibility.

Thanks.

Find more posts tagged with

SAVE $250 on Your Boot Camp — Use Code "EXAM26"

Exclusively for TechExams members for Infosec Boot Camps starting before April 30, 2026

View Boot Camps

Comments

higherho

e24ohm wrote: »

Folks,
I was just wondering – but when it comes to server backups is it best to have individual jobs for each server or one large backup job, which backups up all the servers.

This is a just a general question, so I am not looking for OS specific or application specific practices. I am just looking at best practices or practices that lend to flexibility.

Thanks.

In the general scheme of things I think individual backups are the best way and will most likely give you the best results. Now if I backed up everything at once like you mentioned I think my network would chug because thats a ton of data to run/ backup all at once. But I guess it depends on how you set it up.

I perform individual server encrypted image backups of the servers C and D drive. Which get stored on an external HDD. Now for our File share I simply just run a batch script that copies everything from the file share to an external HDD. I do both of these backups weekly (over the course of the weekend). By doing this it allows me the flexibility to run the individual backups at certain times and I do not run into any data corruption or timeout errors, etc.

Everyone

Individual server. It gets a little more complicated if clusters are involved.

e24ohm

Thanks folks for the replies - I have been toying with the idea for sometime, but didn't know if I was reinventing the wheel sort of speak and if the energy was worth it.

thanks again.

undomiel

Another vote for individual servers here. It makes for more (perceived) flexibility when you're reworking your backup plans.

cyberguypr

In a smaller environment you may see no practical difference. However, when factoring multiple hosts I also vote for individual server backups. Let's say you have 100 hosts and one policy. Backup operation fails in the middle of it. Now you have to figure out what worked and what didn't so you can rerun the job just for those server that failed.

Same scenario with many policies is way different. You can easily identify policies that failed and just rerun those. In addition, if a particular email or file server keeps growing like crazy you can tweak that particular policy without affecting everything else.

Take a look at this article. Even though NetBackup oriented it applies to most enterprise backup products: NetBackup: One policy per client (UPdated) | Mr. Backup Blog

the_Grinch

Another vote for individual jobs for each server. With one job per server, if one fails it doesn't effect all the others. Would suck to have your whole job (for all the servers) fail because one acted up for one of the 100000 reasons backups fail.