[ale] Backup frequency question

Tue Apr 13 12:50:55 EDT 2010

At a prior employer where they wanted to insure they minimized downtime
in the event of a catastrophic failure we essentially created a
duplicate (standby) database from a cold backup of PRODUCTION.   We then
had a process in place to copy the archive logs (redo logs in
filesystem) from PRODUCTION server to the Standby server and simply had
it apply those logs.   We also backed up the logs on a fairly frequent
basis.   Although we copied the logs right away we built in a 6 hour
delay in actually applying them to the Standby database so that if there
was some untoward event (e.g. someone deleted all the records from
PRODUCTION) we'd have time to prevent the logs from being applied to the
Standby.   That was with an Oracle DB but some of the proprietary
products I've seen create logs as well so it could probably be done.

________________________________

From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Richard Faulkner
Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 12:09 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: Re: [ale] Backup frequency question

Learning is a good thing and researching alternative solutions costs
only your time and minimal (if no) cash.  You are the consumer and
should vote with your money.  If Sybase is not responding to valid needs
of the consumer then it's your right in this economy to vote with our
money...correct?  (Sorry that I'm stating the obvious).  I don't believe
in a perfect world but I also don't believe that your fears are
unfounded.

Personally I look for redundancy of hardware, redundancy of data and
remote off-site back-up for business critical systems.  I'm not a
database guru but sounds like it's time to do some homework....

-----Original Message-----
From: William Fragakis <william at fragakis.com
<mailto:William%20Fragakis%20%3cwilliam at fragakis.com%3e> >
Reply-to: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux! <ale at ale.org>
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes!We run Linux! <ale at ale.org
<mailto:Atlanta%20Linux%20Enthusiasts%20-%20Yes!We%20run%20Linux!%20%3ca
le at ale.org%3e> >
Subject: [ale] Backup frequency question
Date: Tue, 13 Apr 2010 10:21:03 -0400

Opinions requested from those wiser/smarter than me (which includes all
of you, your pets and probably your houseplants):

My wife's medical practice management software writes to a closed source
database*. Prior to Jan, the version of the database we used allowed for
"hot" backups - you could copy (we used rsync) the files to another
server while the database was in use. Thus, we could make hourly copies
as well as the usual nightly copy which was also sent off site. The
hourly copies were written to a duplicate machine so if the primary data
server failed in any catastrophic way, we'd have both the data and a
machine configured to serve it available quickly. Losing an hour's worth
of work seemed to be the level of risk we felt we could assume. We don't
feel comfortable losing a day's worth of work. Of course, the database
and the duplicate both use RAID 1, the primary server using Windows and
hardware (motherboard) RAID and the backup, Linux software RAID.

While the risk of losing both disks of a RAID are statistically low, I'm
freaky about both data preservation and availability.

Since Jan., an update in the database version prevents us from making
live copies (we either have to kick off all the users or ignore file
locking, both not what you want for obvious reasons). We can still make
nightly backups but we are "naked" (at least it feels that way) for the
next 24 hours.

Ideally, we'd just migrate to an open source solution but, invariably,
it's not that easy (or at least quick). 

In the meantime, am I being overly paranoid or should I be concerned? Of
course, the vendor is telling me that I'm worrying over something that
has a low probability and at this point has no plans to add a utility to
the management program to allow live copies - which they could do but
won't. I can't do it directly because they won't give us the level of
access to the database we need to do it ourselves. Thoughts?

TIA,
William

*Advantage Database ver. 8.1

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