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Planning for backup and recovery: the key elements for a successful backup and recovery strategy

Computer Technology Review, March, 2004 by James Dow

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A Viable Solution

With the completion of the BIA, TIA, technical architecture and associated financial analysis, a viable solution may include a variety of technologies similar to the Table--all of which should be viewed as components of the backup and recovery strategy.

As seen in the Table, the enterprise solution is comprised of a variety of technical implementations that meet the business-defined performance requirements. These solutions must be rigorously tested during initial implementation. Additionally, due to the sporadic nature of their usage, system administrators must devise and implement testing regimens to ensure continued proper functioning of the systems through data validity checking, media checking, log management, and other standard system administration management techniques.

Conclusion

In sum, the key elements for successful development of a backup and recovery strategy are to ensure that the business requirements have been properly captured and properly valued. The analysis of these business requirements yields the technical requirements. Armed with the business requirements, technical requirements, capabilities of the technology set, and the desired economic performance characteristics, the system administrator is well positioned to develop a successful and valid backup and recovery strategy.

System     RTO         RPO       MPO

Mainframe  60 minutes  0 min.    8 hrs/week

Database   5 minutes   0 min.    3 hrs/night
Systems

Web        1 minute    24 hours  1 hr/week
Systems

File       30 minutes  24 hours  3 hrs/night
Servers

System     Solution Set

Mainframe  Mass storage array with
           synchronous replication, weekly
           tape backup

Database   High availability cluster server
Systems    on mass storage array with
           synchronous replication

Web        Multiple distributed nodes with
Systems    tape backup

File       Mass storage array with
Servers    asynchronous replication, weekly
           tape backup

James Dow is director of the Technical Architecture Group at CS Technology (New York, NY)

www.cstechnology.com

Technology Industry

Planning for backup and recovery: the key elements for a successful backup and recovery strategy

Computer Technology Review, March, 2004 by James Dow

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