Good Backup for a Good Recovery
A Backup Article Contributed by M. Larose
Good Backup for a Good Recovery
What data backup makes a good data recovery? Well the answer to that is a clean, secure backup that is placed for recovery. And what makes a clean, secure backup? That all depends on the backup and recovery plan you have developed. There is no real secret to a good backup and recovery plan except the time, effort, and commitment needed to create one. Backup and recovery plans should not get hatched just from the need to have one.
No, they need to be designed from an overall evaluation of the business, its functions, its goals and priorities, its processes, procedures, its customer needs and the interaction of all and the data that results. Data is now considered a business asset and as such should be well protected. The loss of the data and slow recovery of that data can cause a business to fail.
Backup and Recovery Rules
The rules of backup and recovery are the data requirements decided upon through the investigation and evaluation of company data. Identifying critical data and processes will show you the map you need to have the recovery process follow. Data requirements lay the groundwork for the backup and recovery plans and what they are to accomplish.
The tell you what order to backup in, how the backup data needs to be stored, the accessibility of each type of data (the databases may need to go up first and be more accessible than the administrative staff's personal files), and the time frame it all needs to happen within.
Backup and Recovery Testing
Most backup happens routinely without a thought as to whether it is able to go through a recovery process. Testing the data and the recovery plan are important to returning data to its original state. Creating a testing environment is a good way to run your processes through checkpoints. Create the testing environment as a miniature version of your existing systems and locating it away from the original network is the place to begin.
Check your backup regularly and not just part of the backup but all areas of the backup. Automate it if you must, it will save some manpower time and money, and have the reports dropped into your email every morning for you to look through. It is common sense that corruption on a drive or disk makes that drive or disk suspect and it should be pulled and destroyed. Find out why this occurred or you will not be able to make use of the recovery plan. Recovery requires good data.
Backup and Recovery Security
Security is part of protecting data. Secure data backup will result in secure data recovery. It may surprise you to find out that many backup plans involve copying data to tape or disk without encryption of that data. Your data may be well secured on the network but wide open for theft in the backup. Using encryption to secure the data before the backup takes place can add protection that is required for s secure and safe recovery.
