Recover The “Needle In The Haystack” With Granular Recovery

Think back to the day when accidentally you or a rogue employ intentionally deleted a very important file and you had to run the whole day, fetching out methods to recover the deleted files but unfortunately were unable to do so and ultimately had to bear the loss. Don’t want to recall the very incident ever again in your life? How about if we say that we could help you actually recover your lost data? Well, we could actually do that with Granular Recovery. Before we discuss the benefits and uses of granular recovery let’s understand the basics of this concept.

What is a Granular recovery?

An advanced technology that majorly helps IT organizations perform data recovery at both file and image level. Until now, major backup systems required multiple backups to restore any file or the entire system. In contrast, granular recovery can backup specific files at a much faster speed. Often there are times when the customer is looking for the backup of some subset of a larger dataset. For instance, he wants to recover an individual message from the exchange mailbox Database. It would be completely irrelevant to perform mailbox-level backups that takes much time and storage.

Where is granular recovery used?

Microsoft Exchange, SharePoint and Microsoft Server are the most reliable mail servers on which the whole of the business relies. Granular recovery is being chiefly used over those systems that do not support traditional backup approaches. The frequency of this support is also an important consideration that needs to be taken into consideration for both virtual and physical environments. A major use of this recovery technology is made in the IT industries where administrators require to recover both data and systems including emails, folders, and messages.

Traditional recovery Vs Granular Recovery

The stereotypical way of recovery required multiple agents and backups. Briefly, it involved a full database backup to enable a full recovery of the exchange server. Next followed the “brick-level” that involved the running of the backup and took a longer time. Lastly, the incremental backups of the database and mailbox were a must run.

Contrary to the traditional methods came the granular recovery enables mounting the backup instead of a backup of exchange. You could then extract the required data directly from the recovery console. Sounds easy right? Well, it equally simple!

Benefits of Granular Recovery

• Add another service offering to your business as granular recovery does not only operate for Exchange or SharePoint but takes the process of levelling to an altogether different level with easy
• Since the goal is to provide best and efficient services to your customers, granular recovery offers much more than this putting in the least efforts.
• Granular recovery saves you from coverage of the extra costs of storage space that you have to bear while running the traditional recovery methods.

If you are considering the idea of providing your customers with a granular recovery option, go ahead, it does deserve at least a try. It has the potential to make your employees more efficient and adds incredible value to the services you offer to your customers.

What do you need to know about System Images and Backup?

System images are complete system backup of each and every partition in your PC hard disk. It is a type of snapshot of your entire file system. Most of the popular operating systems such as Mac OS, Linux and Windows have provided different ways to create a system image backup. There are various reasons why a system image option is available to choose but it should not be your regular backup strategy.

What is a system image?

A System image is like a copy of all the files in your hard disk. With the help of the system image, one can easily copy a snapshot of system files and restore it during a point in time recovery. It is a type of snapshot of your HD. It is of the same size as the used space in your Hard disk drive. However, there are compression mechanisms available by which system image size can be reduced but it doesn’t work on saving space. Different programs are available to create a system image according to the compatibility and restoration option.

System image is not like the normal backup

System image should not be considered as a normal backup of your system. The size of the system image is comparatively higher than a backup and it can range from GB to even TB in high end systems. Most of the system image backups capture those files which can be easily reinstalled and redownloaded and it doesn’t give a control over what is backed and what’s not. It also takes a lot of time to create a system image since the size is quite high. Even the system image is quite difficult to export and import to other system. Windows and Mac OS provide a built-in mechanism to create system image and advises you to use it for restoration of system files on same Hardware only because if you restore it to another system then it may fail due to incompatibility. Typical backups allow you to customize and choose which files are critical to be backed up while system image is only concerned about system files and programs.

When should you create a system image

When you plan to upgrade your system hardware to high speed SSD drives or planning to upgrade your OS then it is best option to create a system image on your specific safe partition so that your system can be restored up to the point easily without any failure. Taking a complete windows image backup is a good option to choose. Even system image is quite widely used by system admins to roll out a server critical software restoration up to a specific point.

Conclusion

According to the recommendations of famous OS companies such as Apple or Microsoft, PC users must not be distracted with the system image backup as an available backup solution but should use this utility only during specific requirements. One should consider choosing a reliable backup solution such as Backup Assist for backing and restoring system data safely without any problems. The choice of a backup software depends on your requirement.