Backups and recovery
Data is the most important asset to any organizations. Everything else can be replaced. If systems are destroyed, we can replace hardware in a day, but we cannot bring our network back up and running if we don't have proper data backups. It is essential to back up the data on servers and other data systems throughout your network. There are several ways of backups, including copying data to magnetic tape or optical disks, or by copying or replicating information to other systems. Some backup terminologies are as follows:
  • An online storage device is a high- performance magnetic disk that stores information users access most often. Nearline and offline storage devices are slower, secondary storage devices that provide backup services or archiving services.
  • Hierarchical file systems move little-used files or large image files from online storage to nearline storage systems such as optical disk, where they remain available to users.
  • Tape backup systems are the traditional backup medium while optical disk systems provide archiving and nearline storage requirements.
  • Real-time backups take place at any time and must have a procedure for handling files that are open during backup. In most cases, the backup system tracks open files and returns to back them up later.
  • Disk mirroring is a real-time strategy that writes data to two or more disks at the same time. If one disk fails, the other continues to operate and provide access for users. Server mirroring provides the same functionality, except that an entire server is duplicated. This strategy allows users to continue accessing data if one of the servers fails.
  • Replication copies information to alternate servers on distributed networks to make that information more readily available to people in other locations. While replication is not necessarily a backup technique, replicated data on remote servers can be made available to local users should the server close to them go down.
  • Remote vaulting is an automatic backup technique that transmits data to alternate sites. The alternate sites can be more than just warehouses for backups. They may be entire data centers that can be brought online when the primary data center goes offline in the event of a major disaster.
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