In this blog post, we will give an overview of the block-level backup feature and show you how to use it to speed up your backup process, save storage space and machine resources.
Block-level backup is a feature that allows uploading only the changed parts of files instead of whole files. In order to do that, it uses snapshot technology.
Block-level backup software reads data in the same sized blocks as the file system, or the parameter is chosen by software developers. Files ranging from 1 MB to 512 GB are split into 128 KB blocks; files ranging from 512 GB to 1024 GB are split into 256 KB blocks, and files ranging from 1024 GB to 1 TB are split into 512 KB blocks. For image-based, exchange and backup of virtual machines, the block is always 1 MB in size.
This is true for MSP360 Block-Level Backup.
Files smaller than 1 MB are skipped by block-level backup.
New blocks are differentiated from the old ones via hashes. Block-level backup software calculates these hashes separately for each block and then compares them to their previous value. If there’s a mismatch, the block is uploaded to the backup repository. Hashes, in turn, are backed up and stored in the local repository. Therefore, newly added files will demand more storage space and CPU resources for hash calculations.
Hash is a data-function represented by a 16-bit value. If something in the file is changed - hash is also changed.
Let’s compare block-level backup to the file-level approach. Both have pros and cons. The file-level approach is simple and widely used, but has a few flaws in comparison with file-level backup:
Here are the benefits of performing block-level backups:
Upload operations require less time. Since block-level backup has fewer changes to upload to the storage, it takes a lot less time to perform.
It takes less storage space compared to a file-level backup.
As a result of the aforementioned benefits, you can run backups more frequently. Because you don’t need to worry about causing performance issues, you can run block-level backups as frequently as you want.
Although block-level backup has significant benefits, there are facts you should know before switching to that backup feature:
To address both flaws, we recommend you perform a full backup from time to time. That will start a new backup sequence, thus making backups quicker to perform and easier to recover.
In MSP360 Backup, we have developed our own mechanism for block-level backup. You can run incremental block-level backups for various datasets including:
Next, we will overview how you can set up the block-level backup in MSP360 Backup.
To enable the block-level backup feature in MSP360 Backup, follow these steps:
3. On the first run of the backup, all files from the selected data set will be backed up. Next time you start a backup plan, only modified parts of the previously uploaded files will be moved to storage.
If you choose to use block-level backup, you will see the Full Backup Options screen where you can specify conditions of scheduling full backup. Full Backup is only related to block-level backup and is a part of it. Full Backup affects only individual files, not the whole backup set.
Alternatively, you can enable block-level backup via the command-line interface if you prefer it to GUI:
Further reading MSP360 Backup Command Line Interface
With MSP360 Backup you can set an expiration period for each version of the file and specify the number of versions to be kept on storage. See the settings on the screen below.
You can automatically remove all versions older than a certain time after the backup or modification date, set the number of versions, delay the purge, and even remove files that have been deleted locally from your storage after a certain time.
Here is an example of the block-level backup retention policy.
Further reading Backup Policy Best Practices
As we mentioned before, it is strongly recommended to run full backups from time to time. On this backup step, you can specify the rule for automatic start of the new full backup.
Block-level backup is a great way to save your storage space, and save time and computing resources. However, in order to keep your data reliable, you should remember to perform full backups at times. Together these two backup types form an effective backup strategy.
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