Describing Backup and Recovery in SAP System Administration

Watch the following video to learn more about the importance of protecting data.

Data loss can occur through a number of situations. One of them is hacking. Your company got hacked! An outside agent stole your company data!

If, as the System Administrator, you had used some of the techniques we'll see later in this lesson, you would have avoided the data loss.

Be aware of the other situations such as hardware crashes (a disk, a power source, or the entire server fails), site failure, data corruption, user error, where data is accidentally updated or deleted improperly.

A permanent loss of data can be a severe problem for an organization. It may be very difficult or even impossible to re-create the data. Even a temporary loss of data may be costly to repair. In many cases, there are legal mandates requiring procedures to protect against data loss.

There are several techniques to avoid data loss such as security management, change control, and regular system updates and patch management. Automated monitoring and alerting, hardware redundancy and disaster recovery are also part of these techniques. You'll see all six of them in other lessons of this course.

Now you start to learn about the topic of backup and recovery - meaning create permanent copies of data, stored in a safe place, which can be restored in case of an emergency.

Backup is the process of copying data from its original location and storing it in a safe place. When necessary, this data can then be restored to its original location.

Backups can be created at the hardware, operating system, database, application, and other levels. It is your responsibility as System Administrator to create a backup strategy that will do the following:

Defining the best strategy for backing up the data involves:

• Identifying all data that needs to be preserved
• Deciding on what tools will be used to back up the data
• Determining the frequency of backups
• Finding a safe, reliable, and efficient place to store backups
• Determining a backup lifecycle policy - how long will each type of backup be kept
• Assigning responsibilities for setting up, performing, monitoring, and troubleshooting backups

Here's a question to you now: are you already familiar with any of these elements of defining a backup strategy? Perhaps you have already taken part in such activities?

Typically, software systems are delivered with their own backup tools. For example, SAP HANA has a complete built-in backup and restore mechanism for all databases. But there are also third-party tools that may offer additional features.

Watch the following video for more information about backup and recovery.

There are several issues that complicate backup and recovery.

• Backup takes a longer amount of time. This may impact the frequency with which backups can be made. This can lead to issues of potential data loss.
• Difficult to store backup files. You will need additional resources to maintain multiple backup copies over time.
• Restore takes a longer amount of time. This may prolong downtime during a crisis.

• Data Recovery Time Objective (RTO) is the amount of time that a system can be down without causing significant damage to the enterprise. Also, the time spent restoring the application and its data to resume normal business operations after a significant incident.
• Some systems have extremely restrictive downtime limitations. If a public web site is serving customers on the internet, the loss of that web site will cost money and customers the longer that it's down.
• On the other hand, back office processes like accounting may allow for a more relaxed approach to downtime.
• If permissible downtime is constrained, restoring from a backup may take too long, especially if there is a lot of data involved. Other solutions, like disaster recovery scenarios, may be necessary.

• Data Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is how much data loss a company can experience within a period most relevant to its business before significant harm occurs, from the start of a disruptive event to the last data backup.
• In some applications, it is easy to re-enter or re-capture data that was lost because of a system failure. Once the system is running normally, this data can be re-entered, and processing can continue normally.
• In other applications, data re-entry is difficult or impossible. In these cases, the system must find a way to ensure that all data is captured and stored until it is completely processed. This may involve solutions such as front-end data capture mechanisms or replication to secondary solutions, and so on. The closer you try to get to RPO zero, the more complicated (and expensive) these solutions become.

Different types of technology require different types of backups. For example, each database management system (DBMS) has a different mechanism for doing backups. They may have incompatible procedures, individual features, and different result sets. All of this must be integrated and coordinated to ensure that all data is backed up and can be successfully restored.

Data may be scattered all over an enterprise's IT infrastructure. With multiple organizations, lines of responsibility, application groups, and so on, it may be difficult to ensure that all vital data is properly backed up. Typically, IT has the obligation to take care of this, but application users must also ensure that all necessary procedures are being performed.

The more effort that goes into recoverability, the greater the cost involved. If there have been no incidents in a while, it may be tempting to see these costs as unnecessary. Everyone involved has to understand that the cost of downtime typically exceeds the cost of recoverability by a significant margin.

Frequently, backup and restore is used with a collection of other techniques. For example, in a cloud environment, the cloud vendor may routinely perform database backups. At the same time, they may have duplicate hardware available, using techniques like mirroring and failover. They may also offer availability zones, which allow duplicate setups in a separate location.

How far this needs to go is determined by you the System Administrators. It is your responsibility to create a backup and recovery policy for all of the enterprise's data, which will ensure the safety and ongoing execution of IT processes at a reasonable cost.

Watch the following video for more information about disaster recovery.

You are now able to describe backup and recovery as a high-level skill in SAP System Administration.