©2003 DCMS, Inc. May/June 2003 www.afcom.

com

Head for the Open Flow With

Multiple ISPs
Good as Gold:
Knowledge
Management

5 Essentials for a
B&R Strategy

Frameworks vs. Toolkits

Cut Costs, Improve Control With
E-Provisioning
$pending Money to $ave Money:

Building a Backup and Recovery Strategy Based on TCO

Making sure that data is available is a big concern for the data center manager. Downtime
is expensive and is just not tolerated in today’s fast-paced, demanding, if-you’re-not-available-
If your No. 1 criteria I’m-going-elsewhere environment. Things happen, though — human error, electrical outages
in creating a and more — and every minute of downtime can easily equate to a tremendous amount of lost
revenue. You just can’t take chances any longer — it’s time to build a backup and recovery
B&R plan is money, strategy. Management says to go ahead and put a strategy into place, but you must:
1. Hold hardware expenses flat, and
think again. Pinching 2. Hold — or even decrease — your people expenses.

pennies now can Spend Money to Save Money

What’s the answer? Spend money on a solid backup and recovery solution. You’ve been
cost precious dollars asked to reduce costs and the answer is to spend money on software? How can that help you
and irreplaceable meet your goals of holding hardware expenses and decreasing people expenses? The answer is
in seeing the money you spend on software as being an investment with a low total cost of
data later. ownership (TCO) that can even save you money over time.
You may be thinking that the backup and recovery utilities that came with your database
software can do the job for you. They didn’t cost anything extra, so aren’t they the
most cost-efficient solution? Not necessarily. Just because you didn’t pay for these
by Diane Beeler and Mati Pitkanen
utilities up front doesn’t mean you won’t pay for them over the long term if they are
Copyright 2003 AFCOM. This article originally appeared in the March/April issue of dcm magazine. Permission to post and transmit in PDF form expires October 16, 2004.
Further duplication in any form, electronic or otherwise, is strictly prohibited. Visit www.afcom.com.
more difficult to learn how to use, install and
configure, and if they are not as fast, robust
and fully functional as a solution you
purchase separately. You could pay in
increased people expenses and increased
hardware expenses with this “free” solution
— but this is clearly counter to the two goals
the boss gave you. So just what factors should
you consider in choosing a backup and
recovery solution that will actually help you
save money over the long run?
Five Factors that Affect the Cost of Your
Backup and Recovery Solution
The Aberdeen Group, in a recent Aberdeen
Group Profile paper on evaluating data
management software for cost-effective
administration, found that initial software
costs should not be the primary factor in a
company’s evaluation process. Instead, initial
software costs should be compared with other
key factors: administrative productivity,
scalability, robustness, comprehensiveness
and integration.
What specific features should you look for
in a backup and recovery solution that
demonstrate these qualities and keep your
total cost of ownership low?
1. Administrative Productivity
Spending money on an intelligent and
automated backup and recovery software
solution can actually reduce your DBA and
system administrator expenses and free them
up to do more proactive work, such as opti-
mizing the database. What should you look
for in a good software solution that will help
you reduce the time your team spends on
backups and recoveries?
Minimum time to install and configure
the backup and recovery solution
• Choose a backup and recovery solution
that is easy to install and configure. The
solution that came with your database
may not have cost you extra dollars and
it may appear seamless to install, but
usually it involves installing additional
pieces and may be very difficult and
time-consuming to install.
• Choose a solution that doesn’t require a
client/server setup that involves agent
and/or repository technology. If your solu-
tion does require this, it can mean
additional installation time and configura-
tion headaches and additional resources.
• Choose a solution that gives you the flexi-
bility to backup/restore to a file
management system, but doesn’t require it.
Copyright 2003 AFCOM. This article originally appeared in the March/April issue of dcm magazine. Permission to post and transmit in PDF form expires October 16, 2004.
Further duplication in any form, electronic or otherwise, is strictly prohibited. Visit www.afcom.com.
Backing up and restoring to a file manage-
ment system may seem like the ideal
solution, but the configuration is often
complex and can take days to implement.
Minimum time to learn how to use the
backup and recovery solution
• Recoveries are not done on a daily basis
— and probably no one on your team
would call themselves an expert on doing
recoveries — so even if your DBA knows
how to use a tool to do a backup, she may
not know how to use it do a recovery.
Having a tool that steps her through how
to do a recovery is a big time saver.
• If the solution you choose does not
guide the DBA through a recovery, he
will most likely have to call a support
line or look up how to do the recovery
in a manual before starting the recovery.
This is time-consuming.
• Choosing a solution that has pre-
written scripts or that allows the DBA
to quickly configure scripts through
menu-driven choices can save the DBA
a lot of time. With backup and recovery
solutions that don’t have this built-in
intelligence, the DBA has to write her
own scripts and this often involves
learning a new scripting language first.
If that person later leaves the company,
her successor may not be able to deci-
pher how the scripts are supposed to
work and may have to start all over
again with writing new scripts.
Maximum effectiveness and efficiency in
using the backup and recovery solution
• A solution that allows the DBA to
monitor a backup or recovery in real-time
allows him to determine how much time
to schedule for the backup in the future
and allows him to track the progress of the
recovery during a time-critical recovery.
• Choose a solution that provides the
DBA the option of accessing databases
from a Web browser, giving him the
freedom and capacity to do his job from
anywhere at any time.
• Select a solution that allows the DBA to
customize her view of reporting based
on what she needs to see to do her job.
2. Scalability
The sheer volume of data is increasing by
30 percent to 40 percent each year. To handle
backing up all that increasing data, it would
be tempting to just go out and buy more
hardware. Management has said there is no
money to buy additional hardware. What are
you going to do? How can you increase your
capacity to handle backing up more data?
Purchase of additional hardware
not the solution
• Purchasing additional tape drives or
backup servers to accommodate the
amount of data in the backup window is
a very expensive solution. You need a
solution that allows you to reduce the
amount of data you back up, enabling
you to back up more data in your
existing backup window.
• If you are really worried about having
standby systems for recovery purposes,
choose a solution that provides the same
benefit without the cost of an intelligent
storage device.
• Look for a backup and recovery solution
that mimics a mirrored environment
using extra system resources and that
stores information in a cache rather
than on an intelligent storage device.
3. Robustness
The more robust backup and recovery
solution you choose, the more likely your
database will perform at top speed and
provide maximum uptime and availability.
Downtime is very expensive.
According to Information Access
Company, industry-standard figures reveal
these average downtime costs:
• E-commerce applications
$2,500 to $7,800 per minute
• ERP applications
$6,400 to $7,900 per minute
• Data warehouse applications
$5,800 to $6,300 per minute
So what factors are important to consider in
choosing a robust backup and recovery solution?
Minimum downtime
• If you have intelligent storage devices
(ISDs), look for a backup and recovery
solution that can exploit the mirroring
capabilities of the ISD. This gives you
the ability to create a point-in-time
image of the database from which to
perform backups, giving you greater
uptime and reducing the amount of
data that needs to be backed up.
• If you do not have ISDs, there are still
backup and recovery solutions that can
create point-in-time images of the
 database in software and perform
backups from these images. This
provides near 24x7 database availability
and shrinks the backup window to
almost zero.
• It is also wise to choose a backup and
recovery solution that dynamically fails
over to a secondary copy of the database
on another device if the primary one
fails or is offline.
• Backup and recovery operations can fail
for any number of reasons — missing
media, insufficient disk space, hardware
outages, etc. Choose a backup and
recovery solution that allows processes
to restart from the point of failure,
rather than requiring a rerun from the
first step. During a time-critical
recovery operation, this capability can
greatly reduce the total time to recovery
(TTR) and minimize downtime.
Maximum speed of the backup
and of the recovery
• It takes a lot longer to back up a lot more
data so look for a backup and recovery
solution that reduces the amount of time
it takes to perform the backup. That
equals considerable savings.
• During recovery, a significant amount
of time is spent restoring data files, or
databases, from the backup device. If
you select a solution that improves the
speed of restoring, you will benefit from
quicker recoveries, and this will save on
those expensive downtime costs.
• If you choose a solution that takes a
logical snapshot of the database and
then keeps a record of changed blocks
onto the system, a recovery can occur in
seconds rather than hours, saving
money on downtime and DBA time.
• At a file level, databases are optimized
for access, not storage efficiency, and so
they can be very resource-intensive to
backup and recover. You can combat
this problem by choosing a solution that
uses advanced compression techniques
to reduce the time, network resources,
and storage resources needed for backup
and recovery operations. This results in
smaller backup files, reduced media
requirements, and faster backups, espe-
cially when backups are written across a
network to remote storage devices.
4. Comprehensiveness
In order to be maximally efficient and
effective, the DBA needs a backup and
Copyright 2003 AFCOM. This article originally appeared in the March/April issue of dcm magazine. Permission to post and transmit in PDF form expires October 16, 2004.
Further duplication in any form, electronic or otherwise, is strictly prohibited. Visit www.afcom.com.
recovery solution that provides flexibility and
extensive functionality. Look for a solution
that provides these capabilities:
Ability to limit the amount of data recovered
• Except in cases of outright system
failure, full database recoveries are rare.
The most common reason for a
recovery is human error, such as acci-
dental deletion of data or accidental
dropping of schema objects. A solution
that supports recovery at the object
level, for example a table, allows a DBA
to recover only what is needed. This
capability can also be a productivity
booster for the DBA, who can use it to
copy or move objects between instances,
make utility copies of data, etc.
Flexibility in choosing type of backup
A comprehensive backup and recovery
solution allows the DBA to choose from
several different types of backups:
• Database, tablespace, data file, archive
log, or control file
• Physical or logical, full or incremental
• Online or offline, hot or cold
One solution to span the enterprise
• Having a backup and recovery solution
that is available across multiple database
platforms means that one team can be
effective across your entire environ-
ment. They each learn how to use one
solution and then they don’t have to
learn a different solution for each data-
base platform in your environment.
5. Integration
It is important to choose a backup and
recovery solution that completely integrates
with your current environment. This saves
significant time and money.
Integration with storage
management systems
• Choose a solution that enables physical
backups and exports directly to tape,
magnetic disk or various third-party
storage management systems.
• Your DBA team will be more efficient if
the solution you choose can automati-
cally generate standard operating system
scripts for backup and recovery.
Integration with database
platform software
• A well-integrated solution provides seam-
less database backup and recovery and is
easy for the DBA to install, configure and
maintain across database platforms.
• Choose a backup and recovery solution
that has database-aware intelligence built
into it. One way this benefits the DBA is
that when the solution detects new data-
base files, it automatically reconfigures
its backup instructions. This eliminates
the need to track structural changes.
• A good solution provides functionality,
such as automatic generation of the data-
base backup and recovery commands.
Conclusion
Investing in a backup and recovery solution
that provides administrative productivity, scal-
ability, robustness, comprehensiveness and
integration can actually save money over time
in the following areas:
Backups
• 35 percent increase in back opera-
tional efficiency
• 20 percent reduction in backup tasks
for the DBA
Recoveries
• 30 percent increase in restored oper-
ational efficiency
• 30 percent reduction in recovery
tasks for the DBA
Downtime
• 20 percent reduction in productivity
lost due downtime
Storage media
• 50 percent savings from not having
to purchase additional storage media
Spending money on a good backup and
recovery software solution can pay for itself
within three months and then produce
savings that amount to a huge return on your
investment year after year. ■
Diane Beeler has 18 years of experience in the
IT industry and currently serves as consult-
ing product marketing manager in the enter-
prise data management business unit of
BMC Software.
Mati Pitkanen has worked in database environ-
ments for almost 10 years and is currently the
product manager for SQL-BackTrack for
Oracle, which provides a comprehensive back-
up and recovery solution for mission-critical
Oracle databases. For more information about
the SQL-BackTrack product line, go to
http://www.sqlbacktrack.com.