Data and System Backup

Overview

Data backup is an integral part of disaster recovery planning.  Data backup protects against the loss of data in the event of a physical disaster, data corruption, error propagation in resilient systems, hardware or software failure, or other incident which may lead to the loss of data. 

Step One: Business Impact Analysis

1. Work with your department's Continuity of Operations (COOP) or Business Continuity (BC) contact to review your department's business impact analysis.

Step Two: Develop a Backup Strategy

1. Use the system's business impact analysis to develop backup and recovery strategies.  
2. Remember to use the Backup 3-2-1 Rule
   • 3 copies of your data
   • 2 different formats
   • 1 off-site backup
3. Use the Storage Decision Tree to select data storage and backup options.
4. Use OU IT Virtual Servers where virtual server snapshot technology takes a daily snapshot of your virtual machine and retains the snapshot for 15 days.
5. Use OU IT Databases to backup databases.

Step Three: Document Backup Strategy

1. Document the procedures for restoring systems or data from backup in the IT Disaster Recovery Runbook.