The Principles of Continuous Backup Software

Real-time backup data processing is also called continuous backup and it is one of the most effective data backup technologies. If a system is set to this backup mode, each data change will be caught by a backup program and its copy will be saved in a backup storage. So a system administrator or a common user is able to restore the backed up information to any point of time. Continuous backup software is widely popular in software development companies, as well as some enterprises with heavy electronic document processing system.

Such programs simply catch any change in data assigned to backup copying and store these changes backed up in a specific storage. Different realtime backup software uses different technologies of capturing the changes in files or system configuration, but the principle is the same.

There is a difference between traditional and continuous backup systems. Using real-time backup software there is no need to set specific points of time when the backup copy update should be done. When some changes are written to a computer memory, they will be automatically reflected in the backup data repository. This is more resource-consuming technology, but it provides more efficient recovery facilities. You can always rollback the system right to the point you need.

Sometimes continuous backup software requires less memory space than the traditional one. That is why its backup storage mostly contains the byte differences between the current and the previous update versions, while the traditional storages record file-level differences.

The major shortcoming of realtime backup software use is heavy load of network traffic that may negatively influence network performance. Special solutions for prioritizing network traffic can improve the situation, enabling to use network bandwidth in a more efficient way.