Database Backup & Disaster Planning

Abstract

Database Backup and restoration of a database in information technology are essential to ensuring business continuity in the event of a failure. Disaster planning in an organization ensures that a business survives in the event of a catastrophe as well as enjoys other different benefits. This research paper discusses extensively database backup and disaster planning in enterprises. The paper also covers the importance of the integration of both backups and disaster planning and the impact if both do not get executed effectively.

Database backup

Database Backup in Information Technology (IT) entails of the copying of data so that it can get used to restore a database in case of information systems failure. The restoration of a database is essential for ensuring business continuity in the event of a failure. The database administrator in an organization undertakes the functions of preparing for possible system failures as well as recovery of the database during a disaster. The database administrator must ensure that the data is available to users in the shortest time possible and at the same time ensure that no data gets lost. Several checklists get considered when setting up database backup and recovery procedures.

It is essential to develop a comprehensive backup plan that includes all the types of Oracle relational database management system with the business. It should cover the data that requires getting backed up either through an online backup or an offline cold backup. In the event of a hardware failure, the entire system will get required to get restored completely. It hence requires backing up of the database server operating system initially. The superuser passwords should get backed up since they may get needed during recovery.

When setting up database backup procedures and practices, it is also necessary to consider the available backup types. Oracle database backup types include logical backups, physical offline or cold backups, and physical online or hot backups. Logical backups get executed through Oracle utilities “exp”. It backs up the entire database, individual schemas, tables or tablespaces. The restore gets performed using “imp” or Data Pump. Physical offline or cold backups entail the shutting down of the database and making a copy of all useful data files as well as other components of the database. Hot backups, on the other hand, back up the database while it is still up and running. SQL Server databases comprise of logical backups and physical backups. For logical backups in SQL Server, individual schema objects get backed up to flat files in any supported files and restoration takes place using bcp utility, the Import and Export Wizard, or the SQL Server Integration Services tools. For physical backups, all user databases get set up for full recovery model and both database and transaction logs get backed up to restore the database.

All databases backup procedures should also ensure they develop a strategy for handling very large database backups. In Oracle, database administrators can minimize the backup window for this type of backups by allocating multiple channels and fine-tuning backups. The administrator can also save disk space by utilizing compressed backups. The administrator can block tracking with incremental backup techniques with the latest versions. It is also vital to establish a suitable backup schedule and window. The location or store for backups should get considered adequately. It is a good database backup practice to backup data to disk, transfer to tape and later store tapes offsite for disaster recovery. The database administrator should also develop a backup retention policy.

Disaster Planning

For organizations, a disaster refers to any natural or manmade event in the organization that results in the disruption of the normal operations of a company or adverse impacts. These events include hurricanes, fire, storms, earthquakes, hardware failure, software bugs, etc. Disaster recovery planning is the measures put in place by an organization to prepare for and for response in the event of a catastrophe. The core objective of disaster recovery planning is to ensure the survival of the business.

When developing a disaster plan, it is essential to set the objectives that the particular technology must achieve. It is vital that the technology is simple so that recovery gets achieved easily and in a simple manner. Simplicity in a technology gets achieved by requiring automation, comprehensive fit, availability and reliability, and simple restoration of complex applications, in the recovery plan. An automated recovery process eliminates and reduces manual intervention.

When compiling a disaster plan several crucial elements should get considered as described below;

a)      Singular and community-wide disasters

It is essential that a disaster plan takes into consideration the needs when responding to either a singular or a community-based disaster. The planning process of the disaster recovery must incorporate the needs and resources in both circumstances.

b)     Notification procedures

When planning for disaster recovery, it is essential to list the persons to get notified and those to notify them in the event of a disaster, identify the notification channels, determine how regularly the list should get modified, and where to keep the list.

c)      Delayed Access

The plans made for disaster recovery, and business continuity should take into consideration the actions to get implemented in case of an extended recovery time frames including delayed access to the operation building.

d)     Relocation

The business continuity plan should take into consideration at what time frame, and state is it necessary to undertake temporary or permanent relocation (Moore, 1995).

e)      Emergency authorization procedures

The disaster recovery plans should also consist of the emergency supply and acquisition requirements.

f)       Insurance

The disaster recovery plan should incorporate an appropriate insurance plan that takes into consideration all the potential disaster events (Moore, 1995).

g)      Public relations

The plans made for disaster recovery, and business continuity should address both internal and external public relations so as to ensure that workers and the community have adequate and correct information regarding the recovery process (Moore, 1995).

Disasters occur of varying magnitudes and result in various detrimental adverse impacts to buildings, IT systems, and equipment. The following are the common adverse effects of a hazard. First, catastrophes result in direct destruction to buildings, equipment and IT systems hence rendering equipment no operational and buildings uninhabitable. Disasters also affect people directly as they lead to loss of life, cause injuries and also leads to displacement. These impacts lead to loss of productive staff in a business as well as high medical expense. Second, disasters render buildings inaccessible due to their unsafe nature after catastrophes. Third, hazards result in utility outage such as interruption of water, natural gas and electric power hence rendering systems unusable and buildings uninhabitable.  Fourth, catastrophes cause major transportation disruption by interrupting movement by roads, water, rail and air. These transportation disruptions have significant negative effect to economy as workers cannot report to work, receipt of supplies gets prevented and leads to the halting of shipment of products. Fifth, catastrophes result in communication outages as the direct damage of communication infrastructure prevents data and voice communication that is crucial for daily operational needs. Six, many of the hazards necessitate for evacuations to safe grounds Lastly, disasters result in increased level of employee absenteeism due to disruption of transport infrastructure, disruption of power and utility outages (Gregory, 2011).

Effective disaster management entails of various phases namely; preparedness, mitigation, recovery, and response. Preparedness phase entails of the activities that take place ways before the occurrence of a disaster. The core elements include resource assessment and acquisition, threat assessment, drills and exercises, plan documentation, and inter and intra-jurisdictional cooperation. Response phase entails of the execution of the plans and allocation of resources determined in the preparedness stage. The core elements are medical assistance and first aid, shelter and evacuation, search and rescue, secondary damage reduction and activation of emergency protocol. The recovery step entails of establishing, coordinating and undertaking service and site restoration plans for both immediate and strategic perspectives. Mitigation involves the efforts applied to minimize the impacts of subsequent disaster incidences. The core elements are legislative planning and enhanced reconstruction.

Importance of the integration of both backups and disaster planning and the impact if both do not get executed effectively

The integration of disaster recovery planning in an organization is useful since it brings numerous benefits. The business is adequately prepared for any occurrence of a disaster as well as has robust strategies to respond to the disaster; hence, ensuring business continuity in the event of a hazard. The organization also enjoys enhanced business processes as the processes undergo analysis and scrutiny, thus assisting system analysts to identify weak areas. The organization often gets involved in improving of IT systems, hence, ensure improved technology. The organization also encounters fewer disruptions due to improved technology, stable IT systems and system architecture changes that meet recovery objectives for previous outages hence preventing there repeated occurrence. Improved processes and technology in an organization leads to higher quality services thus enhanced customer satisfaction. The organization also acquires a higher competitive advantage in the market as its services are easily available and reliable. 

When a disaster occurs in an organization that does not have a proper disaster plan, there are several adverse events that are likely to take place in the organization. For instance, the occurrence of disasters that lead to infrastructure damage and system outages such as earthquakes, hurricanes and severe weather, may lead into total loss of a business or the extended recovery time. Sabotage, severe crash and data corruption in an organization may result in several days outage to rebuild data from backup media or even total loss of essential company information.

References

Gregory, P. H. (2011). IT disaster recovery planning for dummies. John Wiley & Sons.

Moore, P. (1995). Critical elements of a disaster recovery and business/service continuity plan. Facilities, 13(9/10), 22-27.

Sherry Roberts is the author of this paper. A senior editor at MeldaResearch.Com in research paper services if you need a similar paper you can place your order for professional research proposal writing services.