best practices WHITE PAPER Best Practices for Using BMC Recovery Manager to Meet Data Retention Regulations
Table of Contents Introduction...1 Challenges in Retaining Data...1 Addressing the Challenges...1
Introduction Over the past few years, many new regulations have appeared that impact corporate data retention practices. Now, compan nies are faced with having to comply with regulations that dictate extended time periods for maintaining data. Some of the recent regulations that companies now face are shown in the following table. Regulation Target industry Data retention duration SEC 17a-3 and 17a-4 Financial services 3 to 6 years, or more; records must be easily accesssible for two years HIPAA Health care 6 years Sarbanes-Oxley Publicly traded companies 7 years Figure 1. Challenges in Retaining Data Many challenges are inherent in storing data for extended periods of time and for retrieving old data. Once data is backed up, any operating system or software upgrade presen ents risks to the recoverability of the data. To retrieve data that is seven years old, the current hardware, operating systems, and software must be compatible with the old data. Storing data for extended time periods requires additional storage media and space, and therefore additional expense. If a company stores data in off-site locations, the security and protection of the data and the storage media is also at risk. Addressing the Challenges No software application provides a simple, risk-free, and inclusive solution. If you use BMC Recovery.Manager to help you manage your backups and recoveries, however, there are several practices that can help to mitigate the risks associated with retaining data for extended periods of time. You can use the following practices for the BMC Recovery Manager backups that you want to retain for extended periods of time: > Using logical backups instead of physical backups > Using the BMC Recovery Manager backup retention feature to allow selected backups to never expire > Encrypting the BMC Recovery Manager backups to ensure the security of the data that is stored off site > Compressing the BMC Recovery Manager backups so they take up less space on the storage media > Enabling the storage managers to retain your backups > Performing periodic dry.n.run recovery tests to ensure. the recoverability of your retained BMC Recovery Manager backup > Storing the BMC Recovery Manager catalog files with your BMC Recovery Manager backups > Storing the storage manager configuration files with. your backups > Storing the backups at an off site location > Storing disk backups on other permanent media > Maintaining access to BMC Recovery Manager and the DBMS installation media The following sections provide more detail on each practice. Using logical backups instead of physical backups Logical backups (sometimes called exports) have no dependn dencies upon database versions, operating systems, or hardware, and are preferable for retaining data for extended periods of time. Logical backups can be restored to a databn base on a different host or to a database that is a different version than the source database. They can also be restored to a database that is a different size than the source database. Depending upon the type of database that you use, logical backups also let you back up database objects such as tables, stored procedures, and views. Logical backups generally take longer than physical backups, and they allow for full backups, rather than differential or incremental backups.
Using the backup retention feature Retaining your BMC Recovery Manager backups means that the backups you select will not expire. The backup retention feature lets you create a retention point (expressed as a timestamp) that you can use in the recovery. BMC Recovery Manager then automatically retains all the backups required to restore the database to the retention point. When you use the BMC Recovery Manager backup retention feature, you must configure the storage manager that you use (IBM.TSM, EMC.LEGATO NetWorker, or VERITAS NetBackup) to retain the backups for an extended period. Encrypting backups If the backups are encrypted, only users that have the encryptn tion password can recover the backups. This provides security and protection of the backup data, even if the data is stored off site. Compressing backups If the backups are compressed, less storage space is required to store the backups. Enabling the storage managers to retain the backup data If you use a storage manager such as VERITAS NetBackup, EMC LEGATO NetWorker, or IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, enable the storage manager to save your backups for an extended period. If you use IBM Tivoli Storage Manager or VERITAS NetBackup, you can configure the storage managers to allow BMC Recovery Manager to control the backup expiran tion. For IBM TSM, if you use a backup copy group for the storage pool, you should set the RETONLY and VERDELETED values to 0. If you use an archive copy group for the storage pool, you should set the RETVER value to NOLIMIT. If you use EMC LEGATO NetWorker, you should set the appropriate value for the browse and retention policy. Performing periodic recovery tests You should perform periodic recovery tests to ensure the recoverability of your data. You can perform a complete recovery of the data to an alternate host to ensure that your data will be recovered without errors in a new version of the DBMS or the operating system. You also can use the BMC Recovery Manager dry.n.run recovery test to validate the integrity of your backup media and verify that the BMC Recovery Manager product can continue to read the data that was backed up. You can manually initiate the dry.n.run recovery tests, or you can automate the dry.n.run recovery tests, using a recovery script that BMC Recovery Manager generates. Storing the BMC Recovery Manager catalog files with your backups You should create packages that contain both the backup files and a copy of the BMC Recovery Manager catalog and store the packages in a location separate from where the daily regular backups are stored. Storing the catalog files with your backups enables access to the metadata about the backup that is required to recover your backups. If you store the packages in an offline or offsite location, the data is less likely to be overwritten or lost. Storing the storage manager configuration files with your backups If you use a storage manager such as VERITAS NetBackup, EMC LEGATO NetWorker, or IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, you should store the storage manager configuration files and the storage manager catalog files with your backups. If the storage manager that you use has both a client configurn ration file and a server configuration file, you should store both configuration files. The storage manager configuration files can be stored in the package that contains the backup files and the BMC Recovery Manager catalog. Storing the backups at on off-site location Storing the backups off site minimizes the risk of accidental deletion of the backup files and reduces the risk of the media being lost or destroyed in the event of a disaster. Storing disk backups on other permanent media Backups stored on disk can be moved to other permanent media, such as DVDs. Maintaining access to BMC Recovery Manager and the dbms installation media If you maintain access to the installation media used to install the DBMS and BMC Recovery Manager, you can reinstall the applications if necessary.
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