Best Practices

No industry today can afford to leave its corporate data unprotected. Because data is the life blood of any enterprise, protecting it becomes an inevitable task. All it needs for corporate data to be safe and secure is a sound and wise investment in a backup and restore strategy and its implementation. If an organization considers data important, then it must focus on data protection and adhere to the common best practices described here.

The best way to ensure that backups are done in a consistent and timely manner is to establish a backup schedule. When creating a backup schedule, the goal is the ability to restore the entire system, or systems, in a reasonable amount of time. However, disaster recovery is not the only consideration.

Daily convenience also needs to be considered. A good backup scheme should incorporate an easy way to restore individual files that may inadvertently get deleted. Other considerations include the amount of time needed to do backups and how much that interferes with the daily use of the system.

Documentation is one of the key components to having a successful disaster recovery process. Without documentation it is very difficult to perform a planned recovery. What happens in most instances is that the recovery process is handled in fire-fighting mode. Several actions are taken to fix the problem at hand, without knowing what fixed the problem, or possibly creating subsequent problems.

Automate all possible jobs and maintenance plans on the server for things such as database backups, integrity checks, transaction log backups, etc. Automation ensures that the tasks are done consistently and quickly, making it less likely that tasks are skipped or ignored.

It is always best to create a backup log for each backup and print the files for reference. Keep a book of logs to make it easier to locate specific files. The backup log is helpful when restoring data; you can print it or read it from any text editor. If the tape containing the backup set catalog is corrupted, the printed log can help you locate a file.

It is recommended that you keep at least three copies of the backup media. Keep at least one copy off- site in a properly controlled environment.

You do not want to discover the flaws in your backup and recovery procedure when you are trying to restore data. Perform a trial restoration periodically to verify that your files were properly backed up. A trial restoration can uncover hardware problems that do not show up when you verify software.