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Backup

1. Testing backup policies and restoration procedures is essential after any change, however small, to the backup environment. This includes software updates, patches, and configuration changes. 2. Few organizations budget adequately for regular testing of backups and restoration from different points in time. Testing helps evaluate the reliability of backup software and any external support. 3. To properly test backups, acquire extra hardware and test restoration of actual production systems, not just desktops, on weekends. This provides greater confidence in procedures and the ability to restore operational environments.

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Christopher Krawciw
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67 views2 pages

Backup

1. Testing backup policies and restoration procedures is essential after any change, however small, to the backup environment. This includes software updates, patches, and configuration changes. 2. Few organizations budget adequately for regular testing of backups and restoration from different points in time. Testing helps evaluate the reliability of backup software and any external support. 3. To properly test backups, acquire extra hardware and test restoration of actual production systems, not just desktops, on weekends. This provides greater confidence in procedures and the ability to restore operational environments.

Uploaded by

Christopher Krawciw
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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I already knew the following:

 Backups are only as good are your restoration.


 Restores are only as good as the media they are written to.
 You should architect backup from the perspective of restoration of the data, not architect
backup — we discussed this last week in Getting Backup Right. Restoration is the requirement.
What I learned was:
1. Testing backup policy needs to be done after every single change to the backup/restore
environment. This means that even changes that seem meaningless need to be tested.
2. Very few organizations build in to the cost of a backup/restore environment the cost of testing
that environment regularly, with or without changes. This is especially true for smaller
organizations because the base cost of developing a backup/restore environment is an expensive
process.
3. Some of the companies that develop backup/restore software and provide off-site support for
small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs) have a good sales story and good demos, but how good
is the support? Find out as best you can before you need to know — regular testing will help. In
our case, the company we dealt with was involved in configuring the software used to backup my
system, yet they were not able to figure out the problem for more than two weeks.
Recommendations
While it would be nice to blame vendors for everything, we have to take some responsibility ourselves. So
here is a checklist of items to consider for backup/restore environments and why they should be
considered:

1. Like Environments: In most cases, I have found that people tested a few desktops and a laptop
or two, but they do not test any operational systems because these systems are generally in use
and testing is disruptive. Wrong answer. Go out and buy an extra disk drive or two and test real
running systems over a weekend. This will give you a far greater level of confidence in the
company and your procedures.
2. Testing Changes: If you follow the previous point, you will be able to test like environments and
have a level of confidence that the systems work in an operational environment. So if any change
is made to that environment from the status quo — and I mean any change at all — it should be
re-tested. And this is in addition to regular testing. This means any software updates from the
backup/restore vendor, MS patches, Linux patches, virus, firewall — any and every patch. This
might lead to a change in site patch policy, but getting your data back is important enough to
warrant it.
3. Vendor Restoration: A number of SMB packages support off-site backup methods. This is
often done via the Internet, but regardless of which of the following methods you use, each
method should be tested at least at some point in the year. These are the common SMB
methods:
o Block-based and kept on site so you can restore a whole system block by block;
o File-based and kept on site so you can restore your important data;
o Block-based and kept off site so you can restore via the Internet or by contacting
the vendor and getting your data on media overnight; and
o File-based and kept off site so you can restore your important data via the Internet
or media.
 Full backup: full copy of the entire data set.
 Incremental backups: backup only the data that has changed since the last backup (run as often
as desired)
 Differential backups: it will copy all data changed from the previous backup. However, each time
it is run afterwards, it will continue to copy all changed since the previous full backup. It will
store more data than an incremental on subsequent operations. It required more space and
time.
 Table 1: A comparison of different backup operations

Type/Backup number Full Incremental Differential


Backup 1 All data -- --
Backup 2 All data Changes from backup 1 Changes from backup 1
Backup 3 All data Changes from backup 2 Changes from backup 1
Backup 4 All data Changes from backup 3 Changes from backup 1

When to backup?

 Full backup weekly + Incremental Daily


 Full backup bi-weekly + Incremental Daily

What’re the requirements?

Backup Scenarios Media Space Required Media Required for Estimated time
for 1 month Recovery &Cost?
Full backup weekly +
Incremental Daily
Full backup bi-weekly +
Incremental Daily
o Quality Assurance:
 Signoff sheet for Full backup
 Signoff sheet for daily incremental backup (how about if it’s automate backup?)

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