Backup and disaster recovery, sometimes shortened to BDR, covers how your business protects its data and keeps operating if something goes wrong: a hardware failure, a cyber attack, accidental deletion, or anything else that puts your systems or data at risk.
The terminology in this space gets thrown around a lot, often inconsistently. This page explains what the key terms actually mean, so that when you’re discussing backup and disaster recovery with us, or with anyone else, you know what’s actually being talked about.
Backup vs disaster recovery: not the same thing
These two terms are often used interchangeably, but they describe different things.
Backup means creating a copy of your data and storing it somewhere separate from the original. If a file is deleted or corrupted, you restore it from the backup. Backup protects your data.
Disaster recovery is broader: a plan and a set of tools for restoring your business’s ability to operate after a serious incident — a server failure, a cyber attack, a fire, a flood. Disaster recovery protects your business’s ability to function, not just the data itself.
A business can have backups without a disaster recovery plan — copies of files exist, but there’s no clear plan for getting the business itself back up and running quickly. A proper disaster recovery plan includes backup as one component, alongside a clear process for restoring operations.
Key terms worth knowing
Business continuity
The broader goal: keeping your business operating, or getting it back to operating as quickly as possible, with minimal disruption, regardless of what has gone wrong.
Recovery Time Objective (RTO)
How long your business can afford to be without a particular system before the impact becomes serious. A lower RTO means you need systems that can be restored faster, which usually means a more sophisticated (and typically more costly) recovery solution.
Recovery Point Objective (RPO)
How much data your business can afford to lose, measured in time. If your backups run every 24 hours and a failure happens 23 hours after the last backup, you lose nearly a full day of data. A lower RPO means more frequent backups.
Backup window
The scheduled period during which backups run. For businesses with continuous activity, this needs to be managed carefully so backups don’t impact performance during busy periods.
Failover and failback
Failover is the process of switching operations to a backup system when the primary system fails — for example, virtualising a failed server so work can continue. Failback is switching back to the primary system once it has been repaired or restored.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)
A managed service where disaster recovery capability — backup, failover, and recovery — is provided and managed by a third party, rather than built and maintained in-house. This is the model we provide for our clients.
Backup types: full, differential, and incremental
Backups aren’t all the same. Beyond where a backup is stored, there’s also the question of how much data is copied each time it runs, and this affects both how long a backup takes and how quickly you can recover from one.
Full backup
A complete copy of all your data, taken in one go. It’s the simplest to restore from, since everything is in one place, but it takes the longest to run and uses the most storage, which is why full backups aren’t usually run every single day.
Differential backup
Copies everything that has changed since the last full backup. Faster than a full backup, but the longer it’s been since the last full backup, the more data has typically changed, so differential backups can grow larger over time until the next full backup resets the count.
Incremental backup
Copies only what has changed since the previous backup, whether that was a full backup or another incremental one. This is the fastest and most storage-efficient option, and it’s why most modern backup schedules rely heavily on incremental backups, often running far more frequently than a full backup could.
Most properly designed backup strategies use a combination: periodic full backups as a solid baseline, with frequent incremental backups in between to capture changes with minimal overhead. This is the approach we use as standard — you don’t need to choose or manage this yourself, it’s handled as part of how we configure your backup schedule.
On-premise vs cloud backup
Businesses generally choose between on-premise backup infrastructure, cloud-based backup, or a combination of both.
On-premise backup keeps a local copy of your data on hardware you control. Restoring from a local backup is typically fast. The trade-off is that a local-only backup can be vulnerable to the same physical event that affects your original data — a fire, flood, or theft at your premises.
Cloud backup stores your data offsite, independent of anything that might happen at your physical location. It scales easily as your business grows, but recovery speed depends on your internet connection.
Most businesses benefit from a combination: a local copy for fast recovery from routine issues, and an offsite or cloud copy for protection against anything that affects your premises directly.
Why this matters for your business
A business without a tested backup and disaster recovery plan is taking on risk it likely hasn’t fully considered. Data loss can mean lost revenue while systems are down, potential legal and compliance exposure if personal data is affected, and lasting reputational damage with clients and partners.
The starting point for any business is understanding its own RTO and RPO — how much downtime and data loss would actually be tolerable — since this determines what kind of backup and disaster recovery solution genuinely makes sense, rather than over-paying for a level of protection you don’t need, or under-protecting against a risk that would be seriously damaging.
Where to find our specific services
This page explains the concepts. For the specific backup and disaster recovery services Network Fish provides:
- Server backup and disaster recovery, covering on-premise servers, business continuity, and the three-tier protection model — see our Server Backups page.
- Microsoft 365 backup, covering Exchange, SharePoint, OneDrive, and Teams — see our Microsoft 365 Disaster Recovery page.
Part of your managed support contract
We carry out an initial audit of your current backup and disaster recovery arrangements, identify your actual RTO and RPO requirements, and design a solution that matches your business, rather than a generic one-size-fits-all package.
One monthly fee. One number to call.
The day-to-day risk of your business not being able to recover from a serious incident becomes our job, not yours.
