How Online Data Backup Services Work

An online business backup service works by transmitting data from one location, usually a business premises or office, to a storage facility offsite. Some services go one step further, in that all data is stored offsite to begin with a cloud service, and then periodically the data in the cloud service is also transferred to other storage facilities to provide even more data protection.
Scale of Servicer
There are many different forms of data backup service ranging from uploading your telephone contacts from a smart phone, to individual PC backup, all the way up to backing up all the servers of a large multi-national corporation. Some companies need to back up their data every few seconds. eBay, for example needs to track changes constantly because the data from sellers and buyers is constantly being updated. Other companies with more static websites may only need to back up their data when a change is made, for example, when contact details are changed. Not all companies store their information online in the first place and will benefit from periodically transferring their information to online servers. Information such as company accounts, medical records etc. although not publicly available online for obvious reasons, will need some kind of data backup service in the event that their own in-house IT systems break down and the data is no longer accessible. For sensitive information, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) can be used to enhance data security when backing up to a remote server.
Advanced Commercial Data Backupr
Big players in e-commerce software, such as Magento (owned by eBay Inc), offer what is known as Backup and Rollback. This allows merchants to not only back up live data, but make a fully functional backup of their entire system, and then use that to test new features and enhancements, without any risk to the live operation. Developers can test new modules or other customizations to their sites, and avoid the risk of crashing their live service.
Costs of Backupr
One of the original costs of online data backup was the ever increasing expense of storage, due to hardware that needed to be purchased. Hosted data backup and storage services, such as the one recently offered by MegaPath, enable easy integration with existing IT infrastructures and industry standard software such as Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint. Data on servers and PCs can be remotely backed up and IT staff can schedule the entire process. In the past, the most common way for a data backup service to store information was on tape. Tape has been around for decades and was a very reliable format. However, as technology demanded quicker data transfer, tape could not keep up with the pace. But tape could now be making a comeback. Some business information archives can be huge, containing multiple petabytes of data, especially if they rely heavily on video and audio. With archives this big, disk storage is usually prohibitively expensive because it would mean doubling the existing server needs in some cases. Because of this, archive backups using tape are starting to play a big role again, as it is a less expensive medium than disk. The Linear Tape File System (LTFS) has massive storage capacity and only costs a few cents per gigabyte. However, this type of application is best suited to long term retention needs, rather than instant disaster recovery.
Future Trendsr
Cloud backup looks like it is taking over. Recently Google entered the market with Google Drive, and Microsoft updated its SkyDrive service. Mac users have free instant access to the iCloud service.
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http://www.marketwatch.com/story/architectural-firm-pca-reduces-netapp-filer-offsite-backup-costs-by-half-with-zettanet-cloud-backup-and-disaster-recovery-2013-07-17