As companies increase their use of technology, they also increase their dependence. As companies increase their dependence of technology, the value of their data increases. In many cases, the entire survival of an organization balances on the availability, reliability, and accuracy of information. Your company may not be the extreme case, but chances are, the value of your data is incalculable.
In order to ensure availability, reliability, and accuracy, the system must be physically and electronically secure, protected from virus infection, and have a “complete” disaster recovery plan in place. The most crucial aspect of disaster recovery is a consistent, dependable backup solution. And believe it or not, tape is still the most common solution.
For GoldMine 5.x users the solution to backup dBase is simple but less powerful than SQL. A complete, unattended daily backup with a 1-2 week (5-10 day) rotation is a must. Yes, many companies opt for a complete backup one day and incremental through the rest of week, but if you find yourself quickly trying to get back up and running the day before the full backup, that’s 5 tapes you have to restore from. Along with a 1-2 week rotation, we also recommend about 6 month-end tapes. Sounds like a large number of tapes (11-16) but you can bet it pales in comparison to the value of your data. Make sure you do a test restore at least once a month and clean the drive about once a week. If not, you may find all your efforts fruitless, because you may not have anything to restore when you need it.
For GoldMine FrontOffice users all the above applies as well, and then some. With FrontOffice, comes MS-SQL. By leveraging the power of SQL you can recover your data to the “moment” before the corruption, loss, or crash. By making a full backup of your transaction log to the hard drive (preferably a separate hard drive), regular incremental backups, and backing them all up to tape before clearing them, you dramatically increase the flexibility of recovery.
Yes, this information is simplified a bit, but hopefully it will get you thinking and might prompt you to review your options with your local FrontRange Solutions Partner.
