Monitoring backup links

A salutary lesson

The Head of Finance at a charity recently realised how disruptive not checking all the steps in the backup process can be.

The organisation had just finished its audit and year-end close when the finance system failed. The IT department tried, but could not restore the database from the night before. It soon became apparent that the organisation had been backing up corrupt data for 20 days. The result was not only very embarrassing, but also very costly in terms of the backlog it created and the time taken to bring the system back up to date.

All IT departments know that backups are incredibly important. But there are many steps in the backup process, any of which could be forgotten or fail.

A typical process

For example, finance system databases are typically backed up on a daily basis. This requires a consistency check, to make sure that it is not corrupted. The database is then written to a staging area and finally copied to tape and taken offsite.

What happens after failure?

In the event that the finance server fails you will obviously have to restore the consistent database. But you will also have to restore the dependent databases, like the master and jobs catalogue. Who checks all this on a daily basis?

What Quadnet can do for you?

At Quadnet we can help you perform your backup routines automatically and consistently. The diagram shows how we would produce a dashboard for you. If an alert occurs at any of the stages we can inform you that something in the process has gone wrong. We can also present reports for auditing

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Monitoring backup links

A salutary lesson

A typical process

What happens after failure?

What Quadnet can do for you?