STORE and TurboSTORE/iX Products Manual (B5151-90003)

30 Chapter2
Managing Backups and Backup Media
Scheduling Backups
Scheduling Backups
There are two important considerations when planning a backup schedule:
• Plan full and partial backups to efficiently duplicate the most recent system
information.
• Schedule a regular time for performing backups.
Full and Partial Backups
There are two ways to perform a system backup. A full backup copies all files stored in
your system whether or not any of the information in them has changed since the last
backup. A partial, or incremental, backup copies only the files that have changed since the
last full backup. This can be done with the DATE parameter of the STORE command. A
well-planned backup schedule combines both methods. It usually calls for a full backup
once a week and a partial backup each remaining workday. If you follow such a schedule,
you would lose no more than 24 hours worth of information should the system experience
problems.
Your requirements for recovery time should also be considered. Although it takes less time
to make partial backups of your data between full backups, it also takes longer to restore
them, should you need to. When restoring from partial backups, the last complete full
backup must be restored first. Then, each subsequent partial backup must be restored.
This is in contrast to spending more time each night on a full backup, but only needing to
restore files once. You should examine your recovery time needs and expectations before
deciding on a backup strategy.
Figure 2-1. shows a sample backup schedule that combines both full and partial system
backups.
Figure 2-1. Sample Backup