Re: Hot Backup - Mailing list pgsql-general

I must agree Andrew. Having worked in the Financial sector these kinds
of questions are actually put forward with genuine concern, and when
people are paying the "big bucks" to here the answers, nothing is ever
"yeah, right", it's always answered with a costed solution to meet the
needs.
Given the events of Sept 11th, the serious consideration of a building
being destroyed is actually a potential reality. However, rather than
being a terrorist attack, it could easily be a natural disaster, like an
earthquake or a tornado. Admittedly nuclear strikes are remote ;-) Well,
I'd like to think that, seeing I live in New Zealand.

Most of the upper management don't have a clue as to what can be done on
a lower level to protect that data that is being gathered. In protecting
data, having a reliable OS and Database application is only part of the
solution. I've worked on Enterprise solutions that contain massive RAID
5 volumes with hard mirroring occuring across a WAN to a remote site,
physically located in another building, JUST, to cover the what if
scenarios, in addition, there was log shipping occuring every 30mins to
remote servers in other centres and then nightly backups of those logs.

I tend to take the view that doing database work is best taken from a
holistic approach. I feel happy once I have an overall level of
satisfaction that not only will the database and OS perform to
expectation, but that the "data", the one thing I am really concerned
about is always recoverable.

Basically, backup is available to N degrees of complexity, what kills it
is how much you're willing to spend and at what level you feel satisfied
that you could put your hand over your heart and say, "Yes, this data is
100% recoverable from this point in time, regardless of the following
circumstances...".

My 5c.

Hadley


On Fri, 2002-10-25 at 09:11, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 24, 2002 at 10:42:00AM -0400, Robert Treat wrote:
> > I think you missed the part of the thread where the nuclear bomb hit the
> > data center.  hmm... maybe it wasn't a nuclear bomb, but it was getting
> > there. :-)
>
> No, I didn't miss it.  Have a look at the Internet Society bid to run
> .org -- it's available for public consumption on ICANN's site.  One may
> belive that, if people are launching nuclear attacks, suicide
> bombings, and anthrax releases, the disposition of some set of data
> one looks after is unlikely to be of tremendous importance.  But
> lawyers and insurers don't think that way, and if you really want
> PostgreSQL to be taken seriously in the "enterprise market", you have
> to please lawyers and insurers.
>
> Having undertaken the exercise, I really can say that it is a little
> strange to think about what would happen to data I am in charge of in
> case a fairly large US centre were completely blown off the map.  But
> with a little careful planning, you actually _can_ think about that,
> and provide strong assurances that things won't get lost.  But it
> doesn't pay to call such questions "silly", because they are
> questions that people will demand answers to before they entrust you
> with their millions of dollars of data.
>
> A
>
> --
> ----
> Andrew Sullivan                         204-4141 Yonge Street
> Liberty RMS                           Toronto, Ontario Canada
> <andrew@libertyrms.info>                              M2P 2A8
>                                          +1 416 646 3304 x110
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--
Hadley Willan > Systems Development > Deeper Design Limited.
hadley@deeper.co.nz > www.deeperdesign.com > +64 (21) 28 41 463