Practice Practice Practice

[James Dawes]

So you have been backing up your data for a while now, just in-case of a disaster. That is great. However, how many of you are familiar with how to run a data restore or how to recovery an image of your server to dissimilar hardware?

We recommend that you run a test restore at least once per month, not only to verify the validity of the backups, but to practice the process so that if the time comes where you need to restore your data in the middle of the night, you can do so with confidence and ease.

Do random restores of file by file data to alternate locations so as to not overwrite precious data. You can delete the restore files afterword.

Practice those dissimilar hardware recoveries and restore to smaller/larger volumes so that you won't need to second guess the process when production is on the line.

We also recommend that you download the user guides for UltraBac and UBDR from our website so that you have them at your disposal:

http://www.ultrabac.com/subcontent.aspx?SecID=762