10/04/2022, 12:35 Backup and Recovery Requirements

Backup and Recovery Requirements 

Backup and Recovery Requirements
Failure Points
Data Backup and Recovery Solutions (/docs6012/data-backup-and-recovery-solutions) / Backup and Recovery Strategies for the Recovery Objectives
Delphix Engine (/docs6012/data-backup-and-recovery-solutions/backup-and-recovery-strategies-for-the-delphix-engine) / Backup Related Topics
and Recovery Requirements

This topic describes determining requirements for infrastructure failure modes and recovery.

Before devising a strategy, you must first have a set of requirements to evaluate possible solutions. What failures
are you trying to protect against, and what are your recovery goals in the event of failure?

Failure Points
Before devising a strategy, you must first have a set of requirements by which the resulting solution can be
evaluated. What failures are you trying to protect against, and what are your recovery goals in the event of
failure?

Physical Server Failure

The Delphix Engine runs within the VMware ESX hypervisor, which itself is running on a physical machine.
Failure of that physical machine will affect the Delphix Engine, as well as any other virtual machines running on
that server. The failure is isolated to that particular server and is not the result of a larger, site-wide failure.

Recommendation: ESX Clustering

Storage Failure
The Delphix Engine uses LUNs from a storage array provided through the VMware hypervisor. The storage array
may have redundant disks and/or controllers to protect against single points of failure within the array. However,
the Delphix Engine can still be affected by a failure of the entire array, the SAN path between the Delphix
Engine and the array, or by a failure of the LUNs in the array that are assigned to the Delphix Engine.

Recommendation: Replication

Site Failure
When an entire site or datacenter goes down, all servers, storage, and infrastructure are lost. This will affect not
only the Delphix Engine but any production databases and target servers in the datacenter.

Recommendation: Replication

Administrative Error
If an administrator mistakenly deletes a VDB or takes some other irreversible action, there is no method of
recovery built into the Delphix Engine.

Recommendation: Snapshots

Recovery Objectives
Once infrastructure fails, some amount of work is required to restore the Delphix Engine to an operational state.
Clients won’t have access to the Delphix Engine during this time, and the point to which the system is recovered
is dependent on the mechanism being used. These qualitative aspects of recovery can be captured by the
following metrics. As these metrics are often directly associated with cost, it is important to think not just about
the desired metrics, but also the minimum viable goals.

Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

The RPO is the acceptable amount of data that can be lost in the event of a failure. For example, if backups are
taken once a day, then at most 24 hours of data will be lost if the system fails immediately before a regularly
scheduled backup.

Recovery Time Objective (RTO)

The RTO is the time required to restore the system to an operational state after a failure. For example, recovery
may require restoring data from a backup, followed by some number of manual steps to recreate the
configuration in the new system. RTO is equivalent to the downtime experienced by clients.

Recovery Time Granularity (RTG)

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The granularity of the recovery time is the specificity by which you can select a particular point in time from the
past to restore the system. For example, VM snapshots taken every hour provide no way to restore to a point in
time between those snapshots.

Related Topics
Backup and Recovery Strategies for the Delphix Engine (/docs6012/data-backup-and-recovery-
solutions/backup-and-recovery-strategies-for-the-delphix-engine)

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