Enjoy added data security by adopting a 3-2-1+ backup strategy, which amplifies your ability to access an intact and fully recoverable copy of your data when disaster strikes. Altaro VM Backup simplifies this by supporting multiple backup media types, multiple offsite backups over LAN, WAN to offsite servers, and direct offsite copies to MS Azure, Amazon S3 and Wasabi cloud storage.

The benefits of a 3-2-1 backup strategy

The idea behind a 3-2-1+ backup strategy is to benefit from added data security by having three copies of your data plus an extra one – because you can’t be too careful about your data security ! – 2 local copies of the data that are stored on two different media or devices, and 2 backup copies offsite.

This strategy proposes that you have the following as a minimum:

One local copy is the data itself – the primary production data

A second copy also stored locally but on a different medium or device

A third backup copy stored at a remote offsite location or cloud storage provider

In addition to this, for added security, we propose a fourth copy stored on another remote offsite location or cloud storage provider. Hence, 3-2-1+!

How it works

It is important to always have an onsite copy of your primary data on another medium or device as if there is a failure on one of the devices, then the other is easily accessible with all the data intact.

Use different storage types for both data sets – for example, store one on an internal hard disk drive and another on a different storage device or server, such as an external hard disk or flash drive, NAS device, file server network share and so on.

However, what if something goes wrong that affects both production data and primary backup data copies of your onsite data such as fire, flooding or even theft?

That’s where the third, offsite copy comes in: As long as this offsite copy is synced regularly – and therefore contains up-to-date copies of your data – your risks of data loss are greatly reduced should anything at all happen to all your onsite copies. You can choose to store your offsite copies using drive-swapping, or directly on Cloud Storage, or alternatively to an Altaro Offsite Server on a secondary site.

This is where most others stop, but safe is never safe enough, and we take this very seriously: This is why Altaro VM Backup adds that plus.

You can configure multiple offsite copies and store a fourth copy of your data on yet another site or cloud storage benefitting from direct integration to MS Azure, Amazon S3 and Wasabi cloud storage.