Monday, March 31, 2008

Why do you backup data?

When I'm asked about best practices for backup (DR) I turn the tables and ask this question. The responses vary greatly, but most are along the lines of "to be able to recover from a disaster." This usually implies 'the big one' low probability disaster and being able to recover under such circumstances is a good thing. However how about being able to recover from the personal disaster of deleting or losing a file for the report to the CEO due later in the day? I personally would like to be able to get that back very quickly instead of having to call an administrator to schedule an off-site tape pickup, schedule the restore and hopefully have the file back in a couple of days. I don't think the CEO would be very impressed. My answer to the question is 'to be able to restore data' efficiently and quickly regardless of the type of data loss.

The basis for appropriate backup/DR planning and implementation is to focus on data management vs. storage management.

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