Question

Please explain the best practices for creating backups in Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X in a paragraph or two.

Answer 1

for windows:

• Create a backup and restore plan

  Be sure your backup plan specifies:

  • The computer where backups will be stored

  • The programs that you will use to back up your system

  • The computers you want to back up

  • The schedule when backups will occur

  • The offsite location where you will archive backups

• Keep a written record of all changes to your BizTalk Server system

  Be sure to write down all changes to your system, such as service packs, hotfixes, and QFEs that have been applied. This is crucial to getting your system restored as closely as possible to what existed before the hardware failure.

• Implement the following measures to help prevent or minimize the effect of a disaster:

  • Have your software and firmware updates available.

  • Have all software installation disks readily available. This includes both system software such as specialized drivers, and application software such as BizTalk Server.

  • Have a plan to monitor servers proactively. This is very important, since orchestration instances on a failed host may not be recovered by a second host for up to ten minutes.

  • Maintain hardware records.

  • Maintain software records.

• Implement fault tolerance in your organization at the hardware or software level

  Implementing clusters and redundant array of independent disks (RAID) helps ensure that your system can survive a hardware failure.

• Archive the backup media on a regular basis in a secure location

  Create a schedule for archiving your backup media on a regular basis and keep the archives in a secure, offsite location. This ensures that you have a backup available when you need it.

• Verify the integrity of your backups and that they occur without error

  Monitor all of your backup jobs and ensure that they complete without any errors.

• Keep identical spare hardware available

  Having identical spare hardware available ensures that you can quickly replace defective hardware to get up-and-running more quickly.

• Document and test your recovery procedures

  Ideally, disaster recovery testing should be conducted before running your system in production. Having plans in place and performing prerelease testing will ensure that your IT staff can recover your BizTalk Server systems. This generally means that you must periodically attempt to retore the system backup to the actual hardware you will use

• Train your IT staff on disaster recovery procedures

  Ensure that your IT staff is prepared to recover the system should the need arise.

• Practice restoring from backup in a test environment

  Practice restoring your BizTalk Server system in a test environment to ensure that you can restore it to your production environment if a failure occurs.

Best Practices for Linux Backup Every Administrator Should Know

Linux is well known for its out of the box security, stability, and rock-solid reliability. But like any other OS, this platform is vulnerable to data loss sparked by:

• Hardware failure
• Electrical surge
• Fire
• Physical theft
• IT security breach

If you’re a Linux administrator, knowing these best backup practices can help you avoid data loss and downtime, save time and money, and keep that sometimes cushy position in the IT department.

Plan to Backup

The importance of planning ahead is a universal best practice for backups. Planning is that critical stage where you identify all the key components of your strategy. What are you backing up? If it’s databases from MySQL or Postgre SQL, you’ll need to specifically plan around database backup utilities. What type of backups do you prefer? Full or incremental? How often do you need to run them? This plan should be laid out and carefully weaved into your daily IT operations.

Automate Where Possible

Some of the most powerful Linux backup utilities require you to go to work from the command line.

Tailor-made for Linux, StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect SPX is a perfect example of how the right tools can automate and streamline backup administration. SPX allows administrators to monitor scheduled backup jobs from the built-in job timeline feature, and quickly restore entire systems to either hardware or virtual environments in a matter of minutes. This level of automation proves handy for knocking out daily management tasks, and especially when disaster recovery goes into effect.

Invest in Backup Storage

A backup plan will likely force you to revisit your storage strategy. Backup software helps optimize storage by compressing files, but taming those copies is ultimately a matter of sound storage practices. You can build a solid foundation by connecting your Linux box to an external hard drive or NAS appliance. 1 TB external drives for the desktop or server can be found under $100 while NAS devices that support multiple TB drives can be found for around $400 more. Worried about the lack of platform support? Don’t be. The leading NAS vendors all make appliances for Linux.

Address Security Challenges

If you’re backing up mission-critical data, then you must be proactive in safeguarding it from threats at all times. Any backup data sent over the Internet, which is insecure by nature, should be encrypted during transit. You’ll also want the backups you store in a remote location under lock in key. One of the coolest admin features I’ve found on Linux is an encryption tool called Seahorse. From the simple interface, Seahorse lets you create and manage network passwords, PGP keys, and Secure Shell keys you can use to securely connect to other systems.

Protect Your Backups

Whether they’re on another partition or different machine altogether, housing all your backups onsite is counter-intuitive. Should disaster strike headquarters, years’ worth of hard work could go up in smoke.

This leaves you with two realistic options:

1. Remove and transport: Removable media such as tape and DVDs offer a cheap way to beef up your backup strategy. Now you can supplement those local backups with copies you suck away in another data center or office. There’s the hassle of physically transporting and swapping out media, but hey, at least your data’s offsite.
2. Network transfer. If you have access to a remote server, network transfer could be the most convenient way to get your backups offsite. Although the actual length of time varies depending on the size of your backups, the transfer process is fairly quick and initiating it is usually as simple as uploading files to a web server. Network transfer also speeds up recovery time by eliminating the need to locate and load up the physical media.

Test Your Backups

on Mac OS x

A good, safe backup strategy

To give your data the best chance of surviving a range of problems, and to minimize your down time if disaster strikes (which is especially important if you rely on your Mac for you livelihood), you should do three things:

• Back up using Time Machine (to a disk connected to your network for extra convenience, particularly if you use a laptop)
• Clone your hard disk daily to a disk connected to your Mac
• Use a cloud backup or peer-to-peer backup service

By mixing these three strategies, you get file versioning from Time Machine (great if you overwrite or delete something, or want to go back to an earlier draft of a file), the ability to quickly boot from your cloned disk if your internal drive fails (so you can keep working without missing a beat), and are safeguarded against theft or damage (whether that’s something like dropping your MacBook or a more serious disaster such as fire) by having your data also stored elsewhere in the world with a cloud or other remote backup system. Plus, as well as their individual strengths, you also have three copies of your data, which is great if one or more fails.

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