According to data recovery firm Kroll Ontrack, human error is acknowledged as the cause for 26% of data loss incidents experienced in typical IT systems. The balance of data loss incidents are attributed to problems such as hardware failures. In virtualized environments, the human error rate rises to an alarming 65%. Some data loss incidents may be minor, but any loss of important business data costs the company time, customers, reputation, and revenue.
Here are some of the more common errors companies make in their backup and recovery process and steps to take to prevent such losses:
Doing Incremental Backups, or Optimizing Only for Backup and Not Restore
It is easy to perform daily incremental backups. They are much smaller and faster than doing a full backup. However, it also means that to do a restore requires loading the last full backup and each one of the incremental backups that have been done since that time. The danger comes when you need muliple backup sets to perform a full restore—the restore time increases and the number of tapes increase. Also, the more tapes required the higher the probability that one is missing or corrupt. You must balance your needs for quick backups with your recovery time objective.
Only Keeping the Current Backup, or Insufficient Version History
When data becomes corrupted, you need to be able to restore from an earlier version of the data before the corruption occurred. Don’t just keep the current backup version, but earlier ones as well, so you can roll back to a version that is clean of corruption. Compliance requirements may also drive a longer retention history.
Not Backing Up the Right Data, or All of the Data
If you are not backing up all your data, at least be sure to save all the essential elements of the database, application or service. For example, you may be backing up your documents, but if you also don’t have the ability to restore or reinstall the application, your recovery won’t be complete.
Failing to Adequately Store and Transport Tapes
Unless the tapes are sent to a reliable, experienced tape archival vendor, tapes can wind up getting lost or demagnetized. Many store tapes and other magnetic media in fire safes, thinking that protects them in the event of fire. Fire safes are designed to prevent from heating past 350 degrees, whereas safes for magnetic media must hold the temperature under 125 degrees.
Not Backing Up the Backup Catalog
If the backup catalog is inadequately protected or is not backed up, a restore may require running all the tapes through the system to recover the state, or more commonly throwing away old backups and starting from scratch since it is impossible to accurately determine the content of the backup tapes. Make sure you backup up the catalog.
Ignoring Persistent Backup Errors
Backup administrators can be overwhelmed with the volume of backups, and may not notice that a particular laptop isn’t being backed up during the scheduled backup window, perhaps because it was taken home or not turned on. A comprehensive view of all systems and their backup status is needed so critical data isn’t missed.
Not Testing Restores
The biggest backup problem is not testing restores. It isn’t a valid, provable backup, until it’s been restored and verified. This applies whether you are backing up to tape, using a virtual tape library or using a colocation or disaster recovery service. To make sure the data is good before being backed up and to ensure you are backing up all the needed data, you need to test to see that it can be restored to its original condition.
Most of these errors can be eliminated by using a fully automated online data backup and recovery service. Such a service puts in place the necessary policies and procedures to ensure that the data is available for restoration when needed.
By using a service such as Zetta Data Protect, backup administrators can focus on the critical, higher value tasks of data management, instead of worrying about whether the tapes are being rotated properly. For more information, see the Zetta Online Backup and Recovery Center.