Data protection for your workloads helps ensure that you can recover from any data loss at any time. Learn about the types of data protection before you select the features you'll use.

A snapshot creates a read-only, point-in-time image of a volume within the source volume as a snapshot copy. You can use the snapshot copy to recover individual files, or to restore the entire contents of a volume. Snapshots are the basis of all the backup methods. The snapshot copy that is created on your volume is used to keep the replicated volume and backup file synchronized with changes made to the source volume.

You can create backups of your data to the cloud for protection and for long-term retention purposes. If necessary, you can restore a volume, folder, or individual files from the backup to the same, or different, working file system.

Replication creates a secondary copy of your data on another FSx for ONTAP file system and continually updates the secondary data. Your data is kept current and remains available whenever you need it, such as for disaster recovery.

You can choose to create both replicated volumes on another FSx for ONTAP file system and backup files in the cloud. Or you can choose just to create replicated volumes or backup files - it's your choice.

The following diagram shows a visual representation of data protection for FSx for ONTAP storage using snapshots, replication across regions, and backup to object storage.

FSx for ONTAP offers multiple data protection options which can be combined to achieve your selected recovery point and time objectives. For the best possible protection, we recommend that you use both volume snapshots and volume backups.

A recovery point objective (RPO) describes how recent the latest copy of your data is guaranteed to be, which depends on how frequently the copies are made. A recovery time objective (RTO) defines how long it takes to restore your data.

Snapshots are virtual point-in-time versions of a volume that are taken on a scheduled basis. You can access snapshots using standard file system commands. Snapshots provide an RPO of as little as one hour. RTO depends on the amount of data to restore and is primarily limited by the volume throughput limit. Snapshots also allow users to restore specific files and directories, which decreases RTO even further. Snapshots only consume additional volume space for changes made to the volume.

Volume backups provide independent point-in-time copies of your volume. They can be used to store old backups and provide the necessary second copy of your data. Daily, weekly, and monthly backup schedules allow for RPOs starting at one day. Volume backups can only be restored as a whole. Creating a volume from a backup (RTO) can take hours to many days, depending on the size of the backup.

Volume replication creates a copy of the latest data of a volume including all its snapshots in a different region. If you cannot afford multi-hour RTOs of a full volume restore operation from a volume backup, consider performing a volume replication. While volume replication makes sure recent data is available in a different region for you to use, you need to adjust your clients to use the volume in the other region.

Consider the following recommendations for protecting your workload data.