Disaster Planning

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.1

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

Database Backup and Recovery

A disaster recovery plan is like insuranceyou're glad you have it, but you hope you never need it.

Disaster recovery planning, also called contingency planning, is the process of preparing your organization's assets and operations in case of a disaster

Disaster: any unplanned, extended loss of critical business applications due to lack of computer processing capabilities for more than a 48-hour period

Just because your organization has not yet experienced a disaster, or is not in a high-risk area, does not absolve you from the need for contingency planning especially for your databases

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.2

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

Database Backup and Recovery

Database disaster recovery must be an integral component of your overall business recovery plan .

It must handle business issues such as alternate locations for conducting business, communication methods to inform employees of new locations and procedures, and publicity measures to inform customers how to transact business with the company post disaster.

It must restore the IT infrastructure.

Finally, and most important to our discussion, a component of that plan must be for the recovery of database and DBMS operations.

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.3

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

Risk and Recovery

The goal of a disaster recovery plan is to minimize the costs resulting from losses of, or damages to, the resources or capabilities of your IT facilities.

The success of any database disaster recovery plan depends a great deal on being able to determine the risks associated with data loss. What is the impact to your business if the data is lost?

As with local database recovery, the DBA must perform an evaluation of each database object for disaster recovery

It is a good idea to rank your applications into the following groups to determine which applications have the biggest impact

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.4

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

Risk and Recovery

Very critical applications. The most-critical applications in your organization will require current data upon recovery Business-critical applications. Business-critical applications are important to your organization and should be the next group to recover after the very critical applications. Critical applications. A critical application differentiates itself from a business critical application by its immediacy or data currency needs Required Applications. Required applications are not critical but must be backed up such that they can be recovered at the remote site if needed. Noncritical applications. Noncritical applications need not be supported in the event of a disaster. As a DBA, you must create the disaster recovery plans with application criticality in mind. In this way, the most critical data can be recovered and made available immediately in the event your company experiences a disaster

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.5

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

During a disaster recovery, your goals are to minimize downtime and loss of data. Planning for disaster recovery is an enterprisewide task. Remember that DBMS and database recovery is just one component of an overall disaster recovery plan. The Remote Site.When a disaster strikes, you will need an off-site location where you can set up your company's operations. The site must be located far enough away from your primary site so that a natural disaster will not disrupt both sites. Storage of backup materials is another issue. Ideally, they would be stored for safekeeping at the recovery site, but if this is not possible, another off-site storage location should be designated

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.6

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

The Written Plan A written plan is the foundation of any good disaster recovery plan. The plan should be distributed to all key personnel in the disaster recovery scenario. Each participant should keep a copy of the plan at home as well as at the office. A copy of the disaster plan should be kept at the recovery site, as well. The disaster recovery plan is a living document that will change as your systems, requirements, and usage change. Whenever the plan changes, be sure to destroy all of the outdated copies of the plan and replace them with the new plan

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.7

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Writing out the specific procedures and policies to follow for an off-site disaster recovery has several benefits. It causes you to formulate the explicit actions to be taken in the event of a disaster. It makes you order these actions into specific sequential steps. It forces you to be specific about the tools to be used and the exact backup information required. It documents the location where all the required information is stored and how it is to be made available at the recovery site. It provides a blueprint for others to follow, in case those who are most familiar with the plan are not available.

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.8

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Writing out the specific procedures and policies to follow for an off-site disaster recovery has several benefits. It causes you to formulate the explicit actions to be taken in the event of a disaster. It makes you order these actions into specific sequential steps. It forces you to be specific about the tools to be used and the exact backup information required. It documents the location where all the required information is stored and how it is to be made available at the recovery site. It provides a blueprint for others to follow, in case those who are most familiar with the plan are not available.

Database Administration: The Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures System Concepts 15.9

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Your disaster recovery plan should include the following sections: Off-site location. List the address of the remote location(s), along with the phone number, fax number, and address of the contact at each remote site. Additional useful details could include a list of nearby hotels, options for travel to the recovery site, details of how expenses will be handled, and other pertinent information. Personnel. List the name and contact information for each member of the recovery team. Be sure to include the work, home, and mobile phone numbers for each team member. Authorizations. List the security authorizations necessary for the recovery operations and the personnel to whom they've been granted.

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.10 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Recovery procedures and scripts for all system software, applications, and data. Be sure to provide the complete step-by-step procedures for the recovery of each piece of system software, every application, and every database object, and the order in which they should be restored. Part of this section should be a listing of all the installation tapes for system software as well as the tapes for all maintenance that has been applied. Options for database recovery procedures will be covered later in this chapter. Reports. List the reports you will need at the recovery site to ensure a complete recovery. The reports should list each backup tape, its contents, when it was produced, when it was sent from the primary location, and when it arrived at the remote site. As an additional component, include a description of the naming conventions for the remote site backup files.

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.11 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Recovery procedures and scripts for all system software, applications, and data. Be sure to provide the complete step-by-step procedures for the recovery of each piece of system software, every application, and every database object, and the order in which they should be restored. Part of this section should be a listing of all the installation tapes for system software as well as the tapes for all maintenance that has been applied. Options for database recovery procedures will be covered later in this chapter. Reports. List the reports you will need at the recovery site to ensure a complete recovery. The reports should list each backup tape, its contents, when it was produced, when it was sent from the primary location, and when it arrived at the remote site. As an additional component, include a description of the naming conventions for the remote site backup files.

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.12 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Testing Your Disaster Plans It is a good practice to test your disaster recovery plan at the remote recovery site at least once a year. You should also consider testing the plan after the following events: Significant change in daily operations Change in system hardware configuration Upgrade of the DBMS (or related system software) Loss (or hire) of personnel responsible for the recovery Move of primary data center to a new location

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.13 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Testing Your Disaster Plans Change in daily backup procedures Addition of major new applications or significant upgrades of existing critical applications Major increase in the amount of data or the number of daily transactions Another consideration for scheduling regular disaster recovery tests is to assure the readiness of your personnel. Actually, a scheduled test of the disaster recovery plan is probably a poor idea. A disaster recovery test should work more like a pop quiz that doesn't give you the opportunity to prepare. One day your boss should come to work and announce that the building was just destroyed. Who should be called? Is everyone available? How can you get the right people to the remote site for recovery? Can you get your hands on the disaster recovery plan?

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.14 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Testing Your Disaster Plans Change in daily backup procedures Addition of major new applications or significant upgrades of existing critical applications Major increase in the amount of data or the number of daily transactions Another consideration for scheduling regular disaster recovery tests is to assure the readiness of your personnel. Actually, a scheduled test of the disaster recovery plan is probably a poor idea. A disaster recovery test should work more like a pop quiz that doesn't give you the opportunity to prepare. One day your boss should come to work and announce that the building was just destroyed. Who should be called? Is everyone available? How can you get the right people to the remote site for recovery? Can you get your hands on the disaster recovery plan?

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.15 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

General Disaster Recovery Guidelines

Testing Your Disaster Plans The disaster recovery test should include all of the components of the written plan. This will include setting up the operating systems, installing the DBMS, recovering applications and data, and testing the recovered environment for success or failure. Personnel Choosing the right team to design and carry out your disaster recovery plan is essential to the success of that plan. From the perspective of the DBMS, the disaster recovery team must be capable of installing and configuring the DBMS system software, assuring the integration of the DBMS with other system software components, recovering individual databases, testing the integrity of the databases, recovering related data that may not be stored in a database, and so on

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.16 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

Backing Up the Database for Disaster Recovery

Your disaster recovery procedures will be determined in large part by the method you use to back up your data. Tape Backups You can use the same techniques deployed to create local backup files. For disaster recovery purposes, you usually don't need to back up indexes. They can always be recreated from the data after it is recovered at the disaster recovery site. Be sure to produce a daily report of all the backup files that were sent to the remote site.

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.17 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

Backing Up the Database for Disaster Recovery

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.18 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

Backing Up the Database for Disaster Recovery

Use storage management software to make point-in-time copies of entire disk packs. A WAN can be used to deliver backups to the remote site. Some data may not be fully recoverable. Remember Other Vital Data DDL libraries for database objects, recovery, and test scripts Application program source and executable files Stored procedure program source and executable files User-defined function source and executable files Libraries and passwords for critical third-party DBA tools Related data files used by the application
Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.19 Administration: The Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

Disaster and Contingency Planning Web Sites

http://www.survive.com http://www.thebci.org http://www.globalcontinuity.com http://www.sungard.com http://www.gedisasterrecovery.com

Database System Concepts Complete Guide to Practices and Procedures 15.20 Administration: The

Silberschatz, KorthCraig S. Mullins and Sudarshan

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