How Do You Use Your Data?

After you develop your recovery plan, create a backup plan. How you use the data also determines how you plan your backup schedule, as follows:

• Data usage

  How do users use the data?

  • Critical dbspaces (root dbspace and dbspaces that contain the physical log and at least one logical-log file)
  • Critical business application data
  • Long-term data storage for legal or record-keeping reasons
  • Data sharing among groups
  • Test data
• Transaction Time

  How much transaction time can be lost? Also, how long might it take to re-enter lost transactions manually? For example, can you afford to re-enter all transactions that occurred over the past three hours?

• Quantity and Distribution

  How much data can you afford to lose? For example, you lost one fourth of your customer profiles, or you lost the Midwest regional sales figures but the West Coast figures are intact.

Ask the following questions to assist in deciding how often and when you want to back up the data:

• Does your business have down time where the system can be restored?
• If your system is 24x7 (no down time), is there a nonpeak time where a restore could occur?
• If a restore must occur during a peak period, how critical is the time?
• Which data can you restore with the database server online (warm restore)? Which data must be restored offline (cold restore)?
• How many storage devices are available to back up and restore the data?