Posted by: Mike Isaacs
18 August 2025
Automated and incremental backups make disaster recovery faster, cheaper, and more reliable. Instead of duplicating everything every time, incremental backups store the changes made since the last backup, reducing storage usage and speeding up recovery. This guide explains how automation and incrementals work together to keep Umbraco sites safe.
At a glance
- Why automation matters in Umbraco backup management
- Full vs incremental backups – what’s the difference?
- Storage and recovery time benefits
- Integrating automation into disaster recovery plans
- How Growcreate delivers automated incremental backups
- Umbraco hosting services
Table of contents
- Why automate backups?
- Full vs incremental backups in Umbraco
- Cost and performance benefits
- Integrating backups into DR planning
- Real-world scenarios
- How Growcreate implements automated backups
Why automate backups?
Manual backups rely on human action and human memory. Automation eliminates the risk of missed backups, ensures consistency, and integrates with Azure monitoring for early error detection.
Full vs incremental backups in Umbraco
- Full backups - Copy the entire dataset – reliable but storage-heavy.
- Incremental backups - Only copy changes since the last backup – a faster and more efficient approach.
Typical use:
- Weekly full backup + daily incremental for content-heavy sites
- Hourly incrementals for high-transaction platforms
Cost and performance benefits
Incremental backups reduce storage usage by up to 80% for large sites, and recovery times are significantly shorter because fewer data blocks need to be restored.
Integrating backups into DR planning
Automation links backups with disaster recovery workflows. Restores can be triggered instantly, minimising downtime during incidents.
Real-world scenarios
- Media-rich corporate site – Incrementals cut monthly storage bills by 65%.
- SaaS platform – Automated incrementals allowed sub-15-minute recovery from a database issue.
How Growcreate implements automated backups
We configure Azure Backup and Recovery Services Vault to manage schedules, retention, and monitoring. Automated reporting ensures backup integrity, while incremental strategies keep costs in check.
See how automated incremental backups can improve your disaster recovery without adding complexity.
FAQs
Yes. Incremental backups are safe for compliance-heavy industries when they are encrypted, stored in secure regions, and paired with periodic full backups. In sectors such as finance or healthcare, this means that every incremental change is validated against regulatory standards (e.g., GDPR, FCA, HIPAA, PCI-DSS) and stored in geo-redundant Azure regions to meet data sovereignty requirements. Growcreate configures encryption in transit and at rest, along with automated integrity checks, to ensure every backup is usable and audit-ready.
Most enterprise Umbraco platforms benefit from running a weekly full backup alongside daily or hourly incrementals. A weekly full backup creates a complete recovery point, while incremental backups in between keep the dataset up to date without excessive storage usage. High-change or regulated environments may require daily full backups to meet compliance or operational recovery targets. Growcreate tailors this schedule based on RPO/RTO requirements and infrastructure load.
Yes. Automated backups can restore both Umbraco content and code if the hosting configuration includes both the CMS database and application files. In Growcreate’s Azure hosting setup, automated backups capture content, media, configurations, and code repositories, ensuring a full environment restore is possible. This means disaster recovery restores the platform exactly as it was, without relying on separate content and code syncs.