Backup Strategy Blueprint
Design and implement a reliable 3-2-1 backup strategy for personal or business use — covering files, databases, cloud data, and VMs.
Difficulty
Intermediate
Estimated time
2–4 hours
Tags
What this helps with
- ✓Defining what needs to be backed up and how often
- ✓Choosing tools for local and offsite backups
- ✓Setting up automated backup jobs
- ✓Testing restores (the most important part)
- ✓Documenting the backup runbook
Step-by-step plan
- 1
Inventory what needs backing up
List all data sources: local files, cloud accounts, databases, VM snapshots, email, photo libraries. Assign RPO (Recovery Point Objective) per source.
- 2
Apply the 3-2-1 rule
3 copies of data, on 2 different media types, with 1 copy offsite. Example: local NAS + external drive + cloud (Backblaze B2 or Wasabi).
- 3
Set up local backups
Use Veeam, Proxmox Backup Server, or Duplicati. Schedule daily incrementals, weekly fulls. Store on a separate device or NAS with different credentials.
- 4
Set up offsite / cloud backups
Configure Restic or Duplicati to push encrypted backups to cloud storage. Use a dedicated backup account with minimal permissions. Enable versioning.
- 5
Test your restores
Schedule a monthly restore test. Pick a random file or VM, restore it, verify it works. Document the restore time. Fix what doesn't work.
Download this blueprint
Backup Strategy Worksheet (PDF)