Overview

This knowledgebase article explains the difference between site-to-site backup and site-to-site replication.

Backup versus Replication

In many cases, an end-user or partner wants to store valuable data to a network location, either on the local network or to the partner’s data center. In some cases, the desire is to store the data in its original format at the destination site so that it is available to be used as quickly as possible. That process of efficiently getting a copy of data from site A to site B is called replication. 

In other cases, the desire is to perform regular backups complete with encryption and data verification:

• A partner building their own private storage cloud for their end-users’ data rather than sending data to Axcient's cloud.

• An end-user that wants to send their data to their own private cloud or to another server operating within the same networking environment.

Site-to-site replication differs from site-to-site backup because with site-to-site backup the data is stored in a proprietary format on the destination and has to be restored before the data can be used. With site-to-site replication, the data is stored in its original format, and can be used directly on the destination site. This is appropriate for situations where rapid use of the data is more important than storing the data encrypted and compressed on the destination site.