I only get one chance every four years to write a blog post on February 29th. However, I am not writing this just to get something posted with a Feb 29 date. I want to warn you about a serious danger of using replication as a backup strategy. Replicating files or databases ensures that you have a secondary copy of your data in a different location in the event that your primary storage fails or is destroyed. The replicated data can be in an off-site location which adds some additional protection against disasters that may render your entire office or data-center unusable.
While replication protects data against many hardware and connectivity problems, there are many other hazards to your data that replication offers absolutely no protection for. Suppose your data is accidentally deleted or overwritten, which are common causes of data loss. Guess what? Your replicated data is also deleted or overwritten. What if a virus, malicious code, hacker, or other security problem affects your data? Your replicated data will almost certainly be affected in the same way. The fact is that replication does not protect against the most common causes of data loss.
Data replication is not a substitute for backup and recovery procedures. If data is important enough to be replicated then it also needs to be backed-up.
1 comment:
You failed to call out the huge advantage of replication. Your backup data is current up to the minute. Other backups are only as current as of the last backup.
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