For businesses, having a data backup strategy is crucial, but it is often overlooked. Including it in post-provisioning tasks can save you time and effort when rebuilding a server. When handing over a server to another team, an installation can go wrong, and having a backup or snapshot can make it easy to restore the server to the last good state, which can be a lifesaver.
To determine backup needs, it is important to firstly understand the business requirements that drive them. Are there long data retention needs, or is quick recovery more important? Are there any regulatory compliance requirements or client service level agreements that dictate restore times or retention periods? For businesses operating in Vietnam, you can refer to Decree 53 on Cybersecurity Law to better understand these requirements.
The choice of backup methods depends entirely on the business needs. Therefore, businesses can start selecting suitable methods by understanding the business requirements and then identifying which option meets those needs.
What Is Cloud Backup?
Cloud backup refers to the process of copying and storing data on remote cloud servers instead of traditional on-premises storage or physical devices. This allows businesses to ensure their data is protected, accessible, and recoverable—even when unexpected incidents occur. Cloud backup services typically run on scalable, distributed cloud infrastructure, enabling organizations to store large amounts of data securely without investing in hardware, maintenance, or physical storage space.
In a cloud backup workflow, data is encrypted, transferred over secure networks, and stored in cloud-based environments operated by cloud providers. These backups can be scheduled automatically, performed continuously, or triggered manually depending on business needs. Compared with traditional backup methods, cloud backup offers higher reliability, easier scalability, and better accessibility, making it a foundational element of modern data protection strategies.
Most importantly, cloud backup ensures that businesses can recover their data rapidly after disruptions such as system failures, cyberattacks, human errors, or natural disasters. With data stored offsite in high-availability cloud environments, organizations can maintain business continuity and resilience even in worst-case scenarios.
Why Backup Strategy Matters in Cloud Storage
A strong backup strategy is essential for protecting business data and maintaining operational continuity. While cloud storage provides flexibility and accessibility, it does not automatically guarantee recovery in the event of data loss — which can occur far more often than many organizations expect. Studies consistently show that human error, ransomware, hardware failures, and misconfigurations are among the most common causes of data loss, making backup a critical safety net.
A well-defined backup strategy ensures that businesses can restore their data quickly and efficiently, minimizing downtime and financial impact. With the right approach, organizations can control recovery time objectives (RTO), recovery point objectives (RPO), and retention policies — all of which determine how fast they can bounce back from incidents.
Cloud backup also supports compliance requirements, especially for industries that must retain data for legal or regulatory purposes. By setting clear policies for versioning, encryption, access control, and data retention, businesses can meet strict standards while protecting sensitive information.
Additionally, an effective backup strategy helps optimize cloud storage costs. With multiple backup types available (full, incremental, snapshot, CDP, etc.), organizations can design a solution that balances performance, protection, and budget. Rather than over-provisioning or retaining unnecessary data, businesses can store the right information in the right format — ensuring both efficiency and financial control.
In short, cloud storage alone is not enough. A thoughtful, well-planned backup strategy is essential for safeguarding data integrity, enhancing resilience, meeting compliance needs, and ensuring that business operations never come to a halt.
6 Types of Backup for Cloud Storage
Choosing the right backup method is just as important as choosing the right cloud platform. Not all backups work the same way, each type offers different levels of speed, protection, storage efficiency, and recovery capability. To build a reliable data protection strategy, it’s essential to understand the key backup types available in cloud storage and when to use each one. Below are the six most important backup methods every business should know.
Snapshot/Redirect-on-write
Using redirect-on-write snapshots is a clever technology that can reduce the performance impact of snapshots compared to copy-on-write and other methods. Essentially, the storage provider maintains a table that lists the location of various blocks, and each location is referenced by a pointer in the table, which points to the location without actually containing the data. When a write operation is performed and the block needs to be modified, the pointer is simply updated to the new location where the data is modified, rather than copying the original block, modifying the copy, and then overwriting it.
One excellent application of this technology is to create a snapshot prior to an upgrade, whether it's an operating system upgrade, a software update, or an application package update. This enables a quick rollback in the event of an issue during or shortly after the upgrade. Snapshots typically revert quickly and take up minimal space, but the longer they exist, the more data they will consume as more changes occur. Some environments are more suitable for long-standing snapshots than others. For instance, some hypervisors advise against keeping a hypervisor snapshot for more than a few days, while cloud providers and many SAN (Storage Area Network) vendors don't have any such performance issues.
Clone
Cloning is a backup method for several use cases, primarily centered around duplicating systems for quick recovery or spinning up new instances. However, this method typically consumes a lot of storage since it creates an identical copy, including metadata, for faster restoration. Essentially, cloning is both a backup and restore operation in one.
Commonly, cloning is used to duplicate virtual machines for creating multiple instances. In some cases, it serves as a temporary backup for quick restoration in case of any issues with the source. One practical application of cloning is to replicate a production server in a sandbox environment to test upgrades. Lower-level DEV, QA, and UAT systems can successfully complete a specific upgrade. However, peculiarities may only exist in production, and this use case can aid in testing scenarios that are unique in production.
Full Backup
Full backup is the traditional and widely-used full backup that involves creating an identical copy of the data, similar to a clone. However, the storage and location of the backup can vary. For example, a clone may be stored alongside the original in the same location and format, whereas a backup is typically stored in the backup software's native format to enable compression and deduplication. Additionally, it's usually saved on a different medium, such as local servers, hard drives, flash drives, and CDs.
System administrators often feel relieved after performing a full backup because it provides a last known good restore point in case of any issues.
Differential Backup
A differential backup is a type of backup that captures and stores changes made since the last full backup. It is faster than a full backup since it only saves the changes, but during a restore, the full backup must be restored first, followed by the differential backup. The main difference between a differential backup and an incremental backup is that the former only checks for changes made since the last full backup, and not since any other backup type.
Differential backups are often used throughout the week to reduce the number of restores required to reach the latest data. More information on this will be discussed in the incremental backup section.
Incremental Backup
Incremental backups differ from differential backups in that they track changes since the last backup, whether it is a full, differential, or incremental backup. For instance, if a full backup is done on Sunday, and incremental backups are done until the next Sunday, a restore would require the full backup and every incremental backup to the point of the restore.
This method provides a faster backup, but restoring can take longer. The choice between Incremental and Differential backups depends on the priority: decreased server load during backups and shorter backup windows or quicker restores. When considering databases, a backup schedule with more differentials may be useful for achieving restore time service level agreements (SLAs), while incrementals may be more helpful for reducing backup loads if the SLA for restoring data is relaxed.
Change Block/Delta Tracking
Change block or delta tracking is a widely used technique that facilitates incremental or differential backups by supporting to identify what has changed. Instead, the backup software can simply access the list of modified items and start backing them up. Without this feature, the software would have to scan the data to determine whether it has already been backed up.
This is not a distinct type of backup, but rather a backup feature that can enhance the performance of incremental or differential backups. Many backup types can benefit from this feature, as it can significantly reduce backup times. However, the underlying storage provider must support change block or delta tracking in order for this feature to be available.
How GreenNode Helps You Protect Your Cloud Data
Protecting mission-critical data requires more than basic storage, it demands a secure, resilient, and intelligently engineered cloud foundation. GreenNode (formerly VNG Cloud) is built with this priority at its core. Our cloud infrastructure combines high-performance hardware, multi-layered security, and automated data protection features to ensure your data remains safe, accessible, and recoverable at all times.
With enterprise-grade redundancy, GreenNode stores your data across highly durable architectures, minimizing the risks of hardware failure or data corruption. Built-in encryption safeguards information both at rest and in transit, while access control policies and audit logging provide full visibility into how your data is used and who can access it.
GreenNode also supports a wide range of backup and snapshot options, allowing businesses to implement full, incremental, or scheduled backups with ease. Automated snapshots ensure that your databases, virtual machines, and applications can be restored quickly — even in the event of accidental deletion, ransomware attacks, or unexpected outages.
Whether you’re running AI workloads, storing large datasets, or powering customer-facing applications, GreenNode empowers you with the tools to maintain strong data resilience and continuity. With scalable cloud storage, multi-region replication, and 24/7 infrastructure monitoring, GreenNode makes enterprise-level data protection simple, reliable, and cost-efficient.
FAQs About Cloud Backup
1. What is cloud backup?
Cloud backup is the process of copying your data to remote cloud servers so it can be stored securely and recovered when needed. Instead of relying on physical devices, your data is encrypted, transferred over the internet, and kept in highly available cloud infrastructure.
2. Why is cloud backup important for businesses?
Cloud backup protects your organization from data loss caused by system failures, cyberattacks, accidental deletion, and natural disasters. It ensures business continuity, compliance, and fast recovery, all without the cost of maintaining on-premises hardware.
3. How often should backups be performed?
Backup frequency depends on your recovery objectives. Many businesses run daily incremental backups, weekly full backups, or use automated snapshots for high-change workloads. Mission-critical systems may require continuous data protection (CDP) for near real-time backup.
4. Is cloud backup secure?
Yes — when using reputable cloud providers. Cloud backup typically includes encryption at rest and in transit, multi-region redundancy, access controls, and built-in monitoring. With the right settings, it is often more secure than on-premises storage.
5. What is the difference between cloud backup and cloud storage?
Cloud storage is used to store and access files in the cloud, while cloud backup specifically focuses on creating protected copies of data for recovery. Cloud storage improves accessibility, while cloud backup protects against data loss.
6. Does cloud backup protect against ransomware?
Yes. Cloud backup helps restore clean versions of your data even if your system is compromised by ransomware. Versioning, snapshots, and immutable backups allow you to recover without paying attackers.