Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 14. Backing Up and Restoring
Databases
A database is often the culmination of the work of many people, sometimes thousands of
people. The organization creating the database employs developers and administrators.
Then there are people who contribute content, and who may be employees or members of
the organization. But much of the content of a database can come from other people, such
as clients, and unknown people providing content through a website. The amount of data
can be enormous. It's not unusual for even a small site to accumulate thousands of rows of
data. A large site could easily have millions of rows of data. All of this content — all of
this work from hundreds or thousands of people — can be lost easily, through something as
simple as the failure of a hard drive on the server. Because of this, it's essential to make
backups regularly and correctly: too many and too much depend on it.
If you're going to be a database administrator, you will need to understand how to make
backups and restore them. You will need to develop a plan of what will be backed up, as
well as when and where. In addition, you will need to check occasionally that backups are
not failing. You shouldn't wait until you need to restore data to find that the backups
haven't been working. And you will need practice restoring backups so that you will be
ready when you need to quickly restore them. We will cover all of this in this chapter.
