Planning your backups

A well-planned backup strategy should adequately address the following.

  1. Classify or prioritize data in terms of criticality of operations

Set an operational value on your data assets to help you establish an informed backup strategy for your data.

  1. Ensure data consistency

Open files affect consistency of data. It is advisable to refrain from high activity when you back up files.

  1. Choose an appropriate backup destination

An off-site or remote backup is recommended for data that is critical to your operations. A remote backup is advised for important files.

  1. Choose an appropriate transfer mode

You can choose to backup files using an FTP server or download them to a local desktop. FTP is more reliable and faster and the recommended option. Large backups to a remote server must be transferred using FTP, while small files may be downloaded.

  1. Determine an appropriate time to perform backups

Take backups during a period of low activity. Changes or revisions to data during a backup may introduce data inconsistencies and corrupt a backup. Also, changes done when a backup is in progress may not be backed up. As a result, you may lose data revisions that occurred after the last back up.

  1. Schedule backups

Schedule backups to run regularly at an appointed time, typically, when activity on the system is low. Frequency of changes to a file is a good indicator of how often a backup must be scheduled.

  1. Determine the frequency of backups

Ideally, critical files must be backed up daily; files that can be replaced with minimal effort and loss of time can be backed up weekly or monthly.

  1. Try dummy restores from the backup

After taking a backup, perform a dummy restore and check the file sizes to ensure that the backup will restore successfully when needed.

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