Backup & Recovery

Chapter 2. Backing It All Up

Now that the philosophy lessons of Chapter 1 are over, it’s time to look at some of the important concepts behind backup and recovery, such as what to include, when to back it up, and more.

Don’t Skip This Chapter!

The casual reader might assume that this chapter is an introduction to basic backup concepts. While that is, in fact, the purpose of this chapter, it is also true that many seasoned administrators are unfamiliar with the ideas presented here. One reason for this is that administrators find themselves constantly being pulled away from “mundane” activities like backups for things that are thought to be more “important,” such as installing new servers and figuring out why systems are running slowly. Also, administrators may go several years without ever needing to perform a restore. The need to use your backups on a regular basis would undoubtedly change your ideas about their importance.

I wrote this book because backup and recovery has been my primary area of emphasis for several years, and I would like to share the lessons I’ve learned from this focused activity. This chapter provides an overview of how your backups should work. It also explains many basic yet extremely important concepts upon which any good backup plan should be based, and upon which all implementations discussed in this book are based.

The Impossible Job That No One Wants

Would anyone reading this book say that losing data is OK? I don’t believe so. Then why do we treat backups ...