Before getting into the core idea, let run through an spoofed Q&A with an IT provider team, that could pan out to be the case with anybody out there. Just play along with us here.
Q: When you have critical data in your system, that needs to be built for business continuity, what measures would you apply to make sure your data is secure and safe in the midst of disasters?
A: No worries. We got it all covered. We have backups configured for all our critical data”.
Q: Quick followup on that, if you dont mind. What if the backups you have is found to be corrupted and unrecoverable at the exact time in need?.
A:”Hmmm… we may be in trouble if the product doesn’t live up to its claims”
We agree with that ! To get this issue of data corruption sorted out, one should start with analysing the possible reasons and the root causes behind it. The most important fact is that when you are backing up data, you should be aware of its source and also if it is essentially required for that source application to function while the backup takes place. (i.e Exchange,SQL, VM etc.)
Let me give you a real time scenario to explain it in raw terms You have configured an exchange backup for exchange 2010 server and the backup’s been triggered unknowingly while the data is being locked up for some internal function to perform its job. The result would not raise eyebrows since the backup will complete as configured but the rotten truth is the state of the data may very well be unrecoverable and partial at best in most of the cases, thus resulting in an unexpected failure to restore it.
This is where AppAware backups comes as a lifesaver, to overcome such issues. When you configure an AppAware backup, it will make sure that an application is in consistent and idle state for starting up a backup job. This will avoid any instability during the process of backing up the data. Whenever the applications are in usage and therefore inconsistent with any meddling process, the AppAware module will catch on with the situation dynamically and wait for the application to complete its operation into trigger a backup job.
Added to this, the built-in AppAware intelligence will also have an added advantage when it comes to exchange restores. In this case, the exchange backups will be configured with AppAware such that it will initialize log purging which in turn will save enormous space by removing unwanted log files constantly after each successful backup.
In Vembu BDR, we use AppAware backups with deep VSS integration which takes snapshots of data when the application comes to a consistent state. This will ensure avoiding data corruptions and partial restores. In BDR, exchange restores are made swiftly with log purging and a special feature called Granular recovery can also be availed with AppAware backup. So, now you can have individual and mail level restore from exchange mailbox.
Are you ready to have your data backed up in the right manner ?
Then our recommendation is that you should take a look at the way we ensure stable backups.
Just visit https://www.bdrsuite.com/features/bdr/application-aware/
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