Okay for a real backup solution you should use a backup software like Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager or Symantec Backup Exec. But maybe you have customer which needs a backup of his Sharepoint Site Collection. You also could use the Backup Tool in the Sharepoint Central Administration, but if you need to automate that, you will need Powershell.
Backup a Site Collection:
Backup-SPSite -Identity "http://sharepoint.company.com" -Path "C:\Temp\backup1.bak" -Force
Restore a Site Collection:
Restore-SPSite "http://sharepoint.company.com" -Path C:\backup1.bak -HostHeaderWebApplication "http://WebAppname" -Force -Confirm:$False
