{"id":1418,"date":"2011-08-14T00:17:56","date_gmt":"2011-08-13T16:17:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alfredivy.per.sg\/blogger\/?p=1418"},"modified":"2015-11-15T13:28:23","modified_gmt":"2015-11-15T05:28:23","slug":"backup-your-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/2011\/08\/backup-your-data\/","title":{"rendered":"Backup your data"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the most basic and important operational task.\u00a0 All data should be backed up as frequently as possible.\u00a0 This is to protect against logical data corruption or data loss.\u00a0 The server\u2019s hard disk is protected by RAID 5, but it is possible for Joe from Accounting to accidentally delete last month\u2019s statement of accounts.<\/p>\n

The most common form of backup media is tapes, DDS, DLT IV or LTO 4.\u00a0 If the size of your data on the server\/s is small, this can be easily done during off hours, eg night time.<\/p>\n

Choose one backup software and tape format.\u00a0 Stick with it.\u00a0 Do not fall into the trap having individual server backing up its own data. You will then have to monitor the backup jobs on all the servers when you can only monitor one.<\/p>\n

If there is any data corruption on the server, you can quickly restore it from last night\u2019s tape and resume normal operations.\u00a0 In a worse case scenario, if the Admin\u2019s folder is corrupted at the end of the business day, you can only restore from yesterday\u2019s tape.\u00a0 The Admin folks will lose one day of data.<\/p>\n

There are technologies to help you with this:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Volume Shadow Copy.\u00a0 This is a feature in Windows 2003 and later.\u00a0 It can regularly snapshot the changes in the folders.\u00a0 I usually set it to three times a day on a file server with 300 users.\u00a0 There was little if any impact.\u00a0 You cannot rely on shadow copy as a backup service as it is possible for the changes in the data to overflow the shadow copy store.\u00a0 The users can recover their old data with minimal IT skills.<\/li>\n
  2. SAN Snapshot. If your data is on a SAN, some SAN solutions offer a wide variety of snapshot functions.\u00a0 Check with your vendor for more information.\u00a0 You can snap 2 or 3 times a day as an interim backup during operational hours.\u00a0 At the end of business, backup the actual data to tape.\u00a0 Note if you need access the data in the snapshot, it will require some IT skills.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    At the end of the day, you can use one tape to backup all the data, day in day out or you can use a system with more depth.\u00a0 For example 2 sets of rotating weekly tapes (10), coupled with archival monthly (12) and yearly tapes.\u00a0 Yearly archival of data is a legal requirement in most places. All these tape rotation requires some investment. You will need at least 3 boxes of 10 to start with.<\/p>\n

    What to do with these tapes?\u00a0 If you can afford a professional tape storage service, that would be excellent.\u00a0 Alternatively, if you have multiple offices that are spread out, you can keep the tapes in another office. Work with the regular internal courier service to move the tapes and someone at the other office store it for you.\u00a0 Use a locked box or professional case when the tapes are in transit. If you have a small single site office, consider bringing the tapes home, in a locked box of course!<\/p>\n

    The most important thing to remember is to check for backup alert messages and don\u2019t forget to change the tapes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This is the most basic and important operational task.\u00a0 All data should be backed up as frequently as possible.\u00a0 This is to protect against logical data corruption or data loss.\u00a0 The server\u2019s hard disk is protected by RAID 5, but… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-it","category-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1418"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3530,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1418\/revisions\/3530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alfredivy.sg\/blogger\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}