What wrong data backup methods are fatal?
ll IT professionals understand that on the first day of entering the industry, regular backups are extremely important for corporate data. But when implementing backup work, some people still make some fatal mistakes accidentally.
1. Single point of error
Always remember that backup is the safety net of the system. Once a server crashes, your backup file becomes the top priority (and sometimes the only) system state recovery mechanism.
Because backup is so important, we should try our best to avoid the damage caused by the single error. If possible, you can back up your backup file again. Because no one of us wants to pray every night because the system is not backed up because there is no backup system.
3. Failure to consider the consequences of using a backup security mechanism
For most companies, IT security is the primary issue. But sometimes, the safety mechanism also has its side effects. In actual work, the embarrassing case where backup data cannot be restored because no one remembers the password at the time of backup occurs. Due to the use of hardware-level encryption measures, when the tape drive is upgraded, the new tape drive cannot support the previous encryption method (this means that the backup data on the old tape will not be restored) will also exist.
The backup data must be encrypted, which is beyond doubt, but it is equally important to measure the consequences of the security mechanism. If you have to restore the system through a backup file after a major system error, you will find that a strong security measure will block your path to data recovery.
4. Only backup data
Some people say that you only need to back up the data, and the server system and the software on the server do not need to be backed up. Although it may seem reasonable to say so, it actually doesn't work at all.
If a major problem occurs on the enterprise server and full recovery is required, you can first reinstall the operating system, then reinstall all necessary software, and then perform data recovery based on the backup file. But in disaster recovery, time is often an important factor. The time it takes to restore the entire system directly is far less than the time it takes to restore data after reinstalling the operating system and software. More importantly, it is difficult to manually configure a server, which is completely consistent with the previous server configuration parameters. While backing up the entire system, you don't have to consider these difficult problems.
5. Rely solely on disk-to-disk backup solutions
Compared with traditional tape backup, the disk-to-disk backup solution has many additional functions and advantages. Nonetheless, companies cannot use disk-to-disk backup solutions as the only backup solution, because backup servers also face the same risks as the servers they back up. A hurricane, a lightning, fire or earthquake can wipe out all the backup data. Therefore, it is necessary to regularly back up the backup data on the disk to tape.
6. Use a tape rotation plan that is too short
Some companies have adopted a two-week tape rotation plan. It seems that the plan is not bad, but then found that the two-week period is a bit short. Once, the enterprise's Exchange server crashed due to the destruction of information data. When I tried to restore the backup file, I found that the backed up data was also damaged. Data corruption has been occurring for a while and getting worse, and eventually the Exchange server crashed. The data stored on each tape we backed up is corrupted data content, so that the server cannot be recovered smoothly.
This also validates how important it is to verify the backup system mentioned earlier. In addition, this case also tells us that if a tape rotation plan is adopted, there must be a long enough rotation cycle.
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