Database backup and restore tool: do regular backups?

Hello Thomas,

would it be a good idea to use this tool do regular backups

:smileytongue: no, if 1. you think it's impossible that your database can be lost (e.g. due to a hardware failure) or 2. you don't care about historical data and are happy to redo all the configuration you've done before :smileytongue:

Seriously - a backup before an upgrade is simply best practice. Failures are known to occur during routine operation as well and you should be able to recover from them. Which method is best depends on many things though. As implied above, the database is the only place which contains your data (except for some bits which give the server its identity) - some of which will be lost "forever": As parts of the policies are often created in response to alerts and events it'd be all but impossible to recreate them after a database loss and this will subsequently have a considerable impact on endpoint operation. 

There is an article (or better, there are at least two) which explicitly states when to make backups (and perhaps it should be linked from the DataBackupRestore and similar articles): How to back up and restore your Sophos Management Server (it recommends weekly and after ... ) and (referred) Sophos SQL Best Practice Guide for Endpoint products.

You don't have to use DataBackupRestore though if you have other means of backup and recovery (e.g. snapshots in a virtual environment, database on a SQL cluster).

Christian

Christian,

thanks for your explanation. Of course we do have regular backups of this server, but these are "hot" file level backups, with no shutdown of the Sophos MS Sql Server DB.

Thus, I doubt, if this would give a valid backup of the database files (which appear to be in a path like C:\Programme\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.SOPHOS\MSSQL\DATA).

So again, would it be worth the effort to do regular runs of the tool to get valid DB server backups?

Thanks, Thomas

Hello Thomas,

would it be worth the effort

actually it's not much effort as you have file level backups (with, I assume versioning and expiration) in place. Simply schedule a (daily or weekly) task to run DataBackupRestore at an appropriate time and make sure your backups include the files in C:\ProgramData\Sophos\ManagementServer\Backup.

As an aside, for our less complex virtual servers (and where a complete recovery to the point of failure is not necessary) we have a hybrid strategy to minimize backup and recovery time: Back up only the essential files (like SEC's backups and IIS configuration) required to rebuild from scratch or to correct an application problem. To quickly recover from major incidents (but not total disasters) we regularly take a "snapshot" of the live (but momentarily "frozen") systems which when booted looks like a stop (e.g. power failure). The OS has no problem to recover from such a failure and the applications normally can deal with it as well.

Christian

Christian,

thanks, to summarize: it is a good idea to setup regular runs of the DataBackupRestore.exe program.

I would suggest that Sophos documentation also suggests to setup such a backup, as an postinstallation task.

Regards, Thomas