As businesses increasingly rely on their data for critical operations, the importance of protecting that data becomes more and more crucial. In the event of a catastrophic event, like a natural disaster or a cyberattack, organizations need a plan in place to restore their data quickly and efficiently. That’s where disaster recovery (DR) comes in. While many organizations rely solely on backups to protect their data, database administrators (DBAs) can really benefit from using DR as part of their data protection strategy. In this blog, we’ll explore why.

Why is DR so important for DBAs? 

Disaster Recovery (DR) is important for database administrators (DBAs) because it offers faster recovery time, comprehensive protection, and better testing options than traditional backups alone. DR solutions can replicate data and system resources in close to real-time, ensuring that the most recent version of the data is always available for recovery. In a catastrophic event, DR solutions can offer near-instantaneous failover and recovery, minimizing downtime and reducing the risk of data loss. By implementing a DR solution, DBAs can ensure that critical data is always available, even in the event of a disaster, and can help meet regulatory compliance requirements.

Let’s dig into these examples further:

1. Faster Recovery Time: When relying solely on backups, recovery time can be a lengthy process. An acceptable Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for mission-critical applications typically include an RTO of 15 minutes, and a near-zero RPO, according to AWS. By relying on backups, restoring large amounts of data can take hours, if not days, depending on the amount of data and the infrastructure. DR solutions, on the other hand, can offer near-instantaneous failover and recovery, minimizing downtime and reducing the risk of data loss.

2. Comprehensive Protection: DR solutions provide a level of protection that goes beyond traditional backups. Backups are taken at a particular point in time, they do not run all the time, but at scheduled intervals. This is a high risk and means you could potentially lose a large amount of data if a disaster were to occur. With DR solutions, they continuously replicate data to a warm standby database to ensure the most recent version of the data is always available for recovery. This level of protection is unparalleled to ensure businesses get back up and running quickly, which can be critical for maintaining customer satisfaction and minimizing lost revenue

3. Better Testing: One of the challenges of relying solely on backups is testing. While it’s essential to test backups, it can be challenging to simulate a disaster scenario and test the recovery process accurately. With DR solutions, failover and recovery can be tested regularly, without affecting the primary environment. DR provides a separate environment to test patches before they are applied to production systems. This allows organizations to identify any potential issues before the patches are applied, minimizing the risk of downtime or data loss due to patching errors. Furthermore, DBAs can easily switch over to a backup system and switch back to a controlled environment, without disrupting business operations. This allows DBAs to ensure that the recovery process is working as expected, and make any necessary adjustments in time, before disaster strikes.

4. Regulatory Compliance: As mentioned by TechTarget, regulatory compliance is an organization’s “adherence to laws, regulations, guidelines and specifications relevant to its business processes”. Many industries, particularly healthcare, government and finance, are subject to strict regulatory requirements for data protection. DR solutions can help DBAs meet these requirements by ensuring that critical data is always available and recoverable. If an organization fails to follow these requirements, it can result in compliance violations and steep regulatory fines, as stated by Google Cloud.

Check out our blog on the four best practices for modern database administration.

Enterprise-class DR for Oracle Standard Edition and Microsoft SQL Server 

DBAs can really benefit from using DR solutions as part of their data protection strategy. While backups are an important part of data protection, they are not enough on their own. Fortunately, DR solutions like Dbvisit’s Standby MultiPlatform (MP) make it easy for Oracle Standard Edition (SE) and SQL Server users to create a warm standby that will ensure a speedy recovery and near-zero data loss from any disaster. StandbyMP provides an alternative to Data Guard for SE users, and a Log Shipping alternative for SQL Server, which lacks automated switchover, planned switchover functionality, and efficient workflows. 

To learn more about our DR solution for these databases, read our latest white papers:

1. Deploying Gold Standard Disaster Recovery for SQL Server 

2. Key considerations when migrating databases to the cloud 

What's next?

If you are on Oracle Standard Edition or SQL Server Standard Edition and are interested in learning more about our solution, you can contact one of our team members today! Alternatively, we also have a Test Drive environment that is already pre-installed and ready to go. 

If you have any questions at all or would like to see a demo of the software, you can contact us and we will be in touch!