How to backup in sharepoint

Scenario:
You might have read this before but I am sure you will find something new here. With my previous client we had approx 1000 site collections in the farm and backup was really becoming pain because the DB size was increasing fast.So question is what to do to increase performance and do it right way.

Solution:
Few things to keep in mind.
1. SQL Database backup are the best.
2. If you need site collection level backups , use STSADM backup command ( max size 100 GB ). Make sure you lock the site collection to set them to read-only using STSADM command.
3. Reduce latency by running the backup on local drive ( avoid network drive ).

Article:
MSDN Backup Performance
MSDN STSADM Backup
http://kwright78.blogspot.com/2008/07/backup-farm.html
Backup with existing tools