What are the different ways to restore data?

Otava continues its business continuity series of videos on data backup and replication by explaining the various ways that you can restore your data.

Steven: When you think about restoring data, there’s kind of a couple of different options that you may have. You may want to restore the entire server, or you may want to just restore files on the server. So most likely, you will want to just restore files on the server. Again, going back to that example, Bob deleted the finance Excel spreadsheet. That can generally be done very quickly and unobtrusively.

If you have a scenario where, let’s say, your server’s been hacked or compromised, and you want to to roll that entire system back, let’s say, to the previous day or the day before, because you know you were breached, then you also want to make sure that your backup software can restore the entire system as a complete system. And these are two very different, but very important things to look at in a backup software. You know, “Can we restore individual files with granularity?” And, “Can we restore the entire system to a clean, consistent state?”