Orientation on Technology

The backup software will keep some form of database of where and when each piece of data was backed up. The backup recovery manager must have a good usable front end to that database. If it does not, it will be a nightmare trying to find anything to perform a recovery. It is not advisable to get into a situation where you have to trawl through hundreds of tapes trying to find various bits of a file. This would be a very uncomfortable position, particularly if users and management were breathing down your neck.

It is useful for the backup software and the backup recovery manager to be database aware. Being database aware means that the software can be addressed in database terms, and will not perform backups that would not be viable. For example, in an Oracle database objects reside in tablespaces. It is no use backing up a single tablespace on its own unless you have roll-forward journal archiving enabled. If roll-forward journal archiving is not enabled, restoring tablespaces from different times will mean that they are out of sync and could corrupt your database. If the tool is database aware it can prevent mistakes like. this happening. The exception to this rule is a read-only tablespace, which can be backed up and restored separately from the rest of the database. Again, a database-aware tool will know this.

As most backup packages have their own tools for managing backup and recovery, the requirement for a backup recovery manager will probably be met by the backup software itself. Nonetheless, it is worth outlining here the abilities that a tool should have.

There are three main features required for the management of backups:
scheduling
backup data tracking
database awareness

It must be easy for operations and management staff to control backup schedules via the tool. The backup recovery manager will need to integrate with whatever schedule manager software is being used. You should check how easy it is to schedule a one off backup of part of the data warehouse. At the end of the day, backups are taken for one reason and one reason only: protection against data loss. Backups are useless if they cannot be used when they are required. There are a number of questions that you need to be able to answer with confidence.

For any given database data file or any file external to the database, do you:
know when it was last backed up?
know where the tape, or other medium, it was backed up to is located?
know where any related files, such as journal files, are located?