Backup Recommendations

Warning

Fujitsu is not responsible for any customer data loss. The database backup techniques highlighted in this document are standard best practices used by the industry.

Here are some general recommendations and guidelines when doing database backup.

Never Back Up Databases to Local Disk

If the database server crashes, especially due to a hardware problem or a severe OS problem, the local drives may not be available. In the event of a hardware disaster, if the archives and current copy is on the shared filesystem allowing someone to quickly build a new server and start doing restores while resuscitating the server.

Back up Databases to a Fileshare, then Back the Share to Tape

Tape drives these days are fast enough that the vendors like to say DBAs should go straight to tape, and they are technically right: tape backup & restore speed is not a bottleneck. However, there is a limited number of drives available. This, however, gives you an extra layer of backup protection in case something goes wrong with the shared filesystem.

Back Up to a Different NAS/SAN

This is not possible for everyone, however, in extremely rare occasions where the production NAS/SAN does go down then at least the backup array was not affected as it is on a different NAS/SAN than the production system.

Consider Raid 10 SATA

Depending on the backup windows, multiple database servers may be writing backups to that same share simultaneously. Raid 10 gives better write performance than raid 5, (using fiber channel backup drives is even better but cost-prohibitive). Raid 10 on SATA gets a good balance of cost versus backup throughput.