Computer Associates ARB6002700WF0. ..... Administration Guide - Page 52

Planning for Catastrophe Restrictive media-selection criteria and extensive off-site storage can increase your need for media well beyond the minimums calculated above. Finally, the overall size of the data you need to back up usually increases over time. Data piles up faster in some organizations than it does in others, but the pile almost always grows. The preceding calculations assume a more-or-less constant amount of data. So, when you estimate how much you need to back up (1 Terabyte in the examples), always allow for growth. Then check periodically to be sure that you always have enough extra storage to accommodate emerging needs. Testing Plans and Assumptions After you have made the required estimates, performed all the necessary calculations, and formulated a plan that should work for your organization, you should test it. Set up a pilot test configuration using a scaled down environment and run tests. Using the BrightStor ARCserve Backup logs, you can see how good your rough estimates are. You can see if you estimated the amount of backup data correctly by checking the size of a full backup generated by your plan. You can check your estimate of the average percent change in your data by checking the size of the incremental backups. You can make sure that all the data that should be backed up is backed up, and you can see if your data and network segmentation tactics have worked as intended. Planning for Catastrophe So far, we have focused on the major threat to your data-routine losses due to equipment failure or operator error-and on the processes common to all backup and recovery efforts. But there are some additional considerations when you are planning your organization's recovery from a major catastrophe. For our purposes, a catastrophe is a natural or man-made disaster, such as a fire or flood, that results in the loss of multiple hosts, a data center, or an entire network, including locally stored backup media and hardware. To handle this sort of extreme emergency, you must provide secure, off-site storage for some of your backup media, and you must keep the off-site data current. 2-14 Administrator Guide