What is Importance of Data Backup?
Data Backup is
an important process in the life of any IT structure. One of the experts of IT Companies in Birmingham depicted it as a parachute to rescue in case of an
unforeseen catastrophe. At the same time, data backup is used to create a kind
of historical archive of the company's business activities during a certain
period of its life. Working without a backup is the same as living in the open
air - the weather can deteriorate at any moment, and there is no place to hide.
But, how to organize it correctly in order not to lose important data and not
spend fantastic amounts on it?
Backup Targets
and Tasks
In the process
of organizing a backup, there are two main tasks- the restoration of
infrastructure in case of failures (Disaster Recovery) and the maintenance of
an archive of data in order to subsequently provide access to information for
previous periods.
There are
several factors that distinguish a backup for fast recovery from an archive:
Period of data
storage: IT Support Derby research team pointed out that in archive copies, it
is quite long. In some cases, it is regulated not only by business requirements
but also by law. Copies for disaster recovery are relatively small. Usually,
one or two (with increased reliability requirements) backup copies for Disaster
Recovery are created with a maximum interval of two days, after which they are
overwritten with fresh ones. In particularly critical cases, it is possible to
update the backup more frequently for disaster recovery, for example, every few
hours.
Fast access to
data: The speed of access to the long-term archive is in most cases not
critical. Usually the need to “raise the data for the period” occurs at the time
of checking documents, returning to the previous version, etc., that is, not in
emergency mode. Another thing is disaster recovery when the necessary data and
serviceability of services should be returned as soon as possible. In this
case, the speed of access to the backup is an extremely important indicator.
The
composition of the copied information:
An archive copy usually contains only user and business data for a
specified period. The copy for disaster recovery, in addition to this data,
contains either system images or copies of operating system and application
software settings, as well as other information necessary for recovery.
Sometimes it
is possible to combine these tasks. For example, the annual set of monthly full
"snapshots" of the file server, plus changes made during the week.
True Image will be suitable as a tool for creating such a backup- IT Support
Managed infrastructure services expert.
The most
important thing is to clearly understand why reservations are made. Let me give
an example- a critical SQL server failed due to a failure of a disk array.
There is suitable hardware in stock, so the only solution was to recover
software and data. The management of the company addresses with a clear
question: “When will it work?” - And it is unpleasantly surprised to learn that
it will take as long as four hours to recover. The fact is that throughout the
entire service life of the server, only databases were regularly backed up
without taking into account the need to restore the server itself with all the
settings, including the software of the DBMS itself. Simply put, our heroes
kept only the database, and forgot about the system.
What follows
from this: you need to use both types of backup: for disaster recovery, and for
archival storage. At the same time, it is necessary to determine the list of
resources to be copied, the time of task execution, and also where, how and how
long backup copies will be stored.
With small
amounts of data and not very complex IT infrastructure, you can try to combine
both of these tasks in one, for example, to do a daily full copy of all disk
partitions and databases. But it is still better to distinguish between the two
goals and select the right means for each of them. It is clear that determining
the goals and objectives of the backup, as well as solutions for
implementation, it is necessary to proceed from the requirements of the
business.
When
implementing the task of disaster recovery, you can use different strategies.
Published By: IT Solutions
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