Database Backup and Recovery are essential practices in managing a database system to ensure data durability, availability, and integrity.
A Database Backup is a process of creating a copy of the database and its associated data, which can be used to restore the database in case of failure.
- Regular backups are critical to ensure that data can be recovered to a point before the failure occurred.
Database Recovery refers to the process of restoring the database from a backup or other data protection mechanisms after a failure occurs.
- Recovery ensures that the database returns to a consistent state without data loss.
In the event of a catastrophic failure—such as hardware malfunctions, disk crashes, power outages, data corruption, or natural disasters—having a robust backup and recovery system is critical for restoring the database to a consistent and operational state.
- In the case of catastrophic system failure, the latest backup copy can be reloaded from the tape to the disk, and the system can be restarted.