Adobe Connect Database Disaster Recovery Options

Having a good recovery strategy allows for recovery of data in case of unforeseen events such as user error, hardware failure, drone strikes and fecal tsunamis. There are three recovery models:

• Simple Recovery
• Bulked Logged Recovery
• Full Recovery

Simple Recovery is the most rudimentary. When the DB recovery mode is set to simple, the transaction log does not get backed up. It is auto-truncated and you can only ever recover to a full db backup; this builds-in the potential for data loss as a point-in-time recovery is not possible. Generally, the Simple Recovery option is recommended for development or test environments where data recovery is not critical. It is also a good strategy for a novice DBA as you don’t have to worry about a detailed backup and restore plan/jobs. Mission critical databases should never be in simple mode, but for non-mission critical deployments it is a low-overhead alternative.

The Bulk Logged Mode is not very commonly used. When the DB recovery mode is set to Bulk Logged, bulk operations are only minimally logged (Select Into, Create Index, etc.). This results in in reduced log space consumption. The shortfall is that if the last transaction log has bulk operations in it, then point in time recovery is not possible; if it does not have bulk operations in it, then point in time recovery is possible. While it may be prudent to switch full recovery databases temporarily into Bulk Logged Mode for the purpose of re-indexing a very large database, be sure to always switch them back as critical databases probably shouldn’t be in Bulk Logged recovery mode.

Full Recovery Mode is the default recovery model and is the most granular. When the database recovery mode is set to full, everything get’s logged to the Transaction Log resulting in greater log space consumption. Point in time recovery is possible in full recovery mode. This is the recovery model most users should choose for production data. By using this recovery model with regularly scheduled full backups, differential backups and transaction log backups, it allows for quicker point in time recovery.

Choosing a backup and recovery plan is relevant to the following criteria:

• How important is the Data? The more important the data, the more likely you will choose full recovery and schedule regular full backups, differential backups and log backups.
• How often does the data change? How busy is the Connect server?
  If the data only changes frequently during normal business hours, scheduling log backups closer together during these times and further apart during non business hours might work out.
• How much space do you have available for backups? This could determine how many backups will you store and how often will you back up.
• How quickly do you need to recover data? If recovery speed is not important, but point in time is, you might choose not to do any differential backups and just do Full nightly backups and regular transaction log backups.

Based on the answers to the previous questions, you should be able to determine a backup plan that fits your needs. Remember to test the recovery of your backups regularly.  Backing up is useless if backups are corrupt or not working correctly.

Another important consideration is with the timing of backups. Keep in mind that performing backups is resource intensive.  To help determine an appropriate schedule of your backups, consider the ongoing activities on the Connect servers.

If  you want to focus on recovering data in case of fire or natural disaster then you you should consider storing the backups offsite.  Many savvy DBA’s they keep a predetermined number of current backups on site and also ship the backups offsite (tape or network).  They might choose to keep five current backups onsite and as many as 30 offsite.

SQL 2008 has backup compression allowing you to save on disk space, but it comes with a cost of speed. Choose the compression level that suits your speed of backup. Third-party products offer backup compression as well.

Consider also the various high availability options:

• SQL clustering relies on Windows clustering. It clusters the entire server not just the database. The fail-over is slower than mirroring and doesn’t provide a fail-over against disk failure.
• Mirroring (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms189852.aspx) is a faster fail-over solution. The Connect SQL driver has the ability to choose a fail-over server. This can be done at the DB level.
• Log Shipping ships completed transactions to the log shipped database; this can be done on the database level and requires manual intervention to fail-over as the log-shipped db is considered a warm DB

Note: Replication is not a recommended option.

Adobe’s Hosted infrastructure uses a hybrid high-availability strategy. We use database mirroring as the primary fail-over solution.It provides faster fail-over and does not have a single point of failure as does clustering which relies on the single disk. We also use log shipping as a secondary fail-over solution. In the extreme case that all mirrored databases go down, the log shipped database can be used with some user intervention: Break the log shipping, take the database out of standby mode and point the Connect server to it.