Backup Strategy

(to avoid any confusion i didn’t have my blog set up so posted on Simas’s profile)

Today in info systems we learned about Backup strategies
Companies with a significant amount of data stored should have a robust backup system, to keep data loss impact to a minimum.

Things to consider when choosing a strategy are:

• What storage media will be used for the backups
• Which data is to be backed up
• When backups should take place
• Where data should be stored

The grandfather father son methodology

If we consider a system where backups are taken each Friday on magnetic tape, then daily incremental backups (where only new information is backed up) take place from Monday until Thursday. On a Friday however, all files will be backed up regardless of whether they have changed or not. In this case, the backup runs automatically at 10pm. On the last working day of each month there is a full back up on to a first monthly tap. This schedule can be used quarterly throughout the year before monthly tapes are re-used.

The daily backups, containing the least amount of data and the newest data, are known as the son files.
The weekly backups contain a greater volume of data. These are the father files.
The monthly backups contain the oldest data so are known as the grandfather files.

Recovering data

To recover data using this strategy would require using the most recent weekly tape and each of the daily tapes from when the data failure took place.

For example: If there was a complete data failure on Thursday in week 3, we would require the files from Monday to Wednesday in week 3

Rotating data

In the event of a disaster such as a fire or theft, extra media could be used and stored off-site. A fire safe should be used to safely store the tapes that are kept on-site.

To be honest I didn’t expect anyone to read down this far, but if you have, well done, you have read my first attempt at the blog.

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