Analyzing Restore Requirements

After answering these questions, you should be able to develop a restore plan and a set of procedures to address both optimal system operations and extraordinary disaster situations.

When designing a restore plan, consider the following:

• Should restore operations occur at the end of the day, on a weekend, or over a long holiday? How will this decision affect the recovery time or the number of transactions that could be lost due to failure?
• Should backup media be stored onsite or offsite? How will this decision affect the time taken to recover from failure?
• The effect of losing a backup set or backup media, such as a tape? Are other recovery procedures in place to eliminate or minimize the effects of this happening?
• How do you recover from data loss without damaging your enterprise financially?
• How long does it take to restore the full database and apply any applicable transaction logs?
• What will happen to your enterprise if users cannot access data for one hour, one day, a week, or longer?
• Does a system administrator need to be onsite during the restore operations?
• Are your system operators trained to perform the restore operations?
• Who makes the decisions about the type of restore operation to use?