Detailing what can go wrong in backup and recovery and how this applies to the various backup methods available, this book couples that information with recovery and business continuity tactics played out over the backdrop of various real-world scenarios. Covered is how freezes, corruption, and loss affects documents, equipment, and day-to-day business activities, and the cost of downtime and job re-creation is explained in a way that builds the best budget for availability, backup, and recovery. Protection and restoration of user data and from various locations and times is also covered, as well as how to keep a business running after a power failure, network failure, or other unforeseen event. |
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12 of 12 found the following review helpful:
 Still doesn't fully cover the topic of backup and recoveryMay 31, 2005
By Maxim Masiutin
The book starts with an educative chapter of how disastrous various data losses can be, and how to calculate the costs of these losses. Then it analyzes ways of protection from different failures at various levels: documents, applications, OS, Storage, CPUs, network, power and building.
Throughout the book there are references to various products and services of different vendors. When the author recommends certain software, there are attempts to suit three operating systems: Windows, OS X and UNIX.
In the chapter about storage corruption, there is an interesting section about SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology). I personally use SMART to monitor temperature of my HDDs. But I've found an inaccuracy in the description of the differences between SCSII and IDE. The author claims that "OS just says to SCSII 'Give me a file', and SCSII delivers it, whereas with IDE the OS deals with fragmentation of files". This is incorrect. SCSII doesn't' work on file level, and OS deals with fragmentation at SCSII as well.
The information in this book corresponds year 2000 approximately, it mentions IDE size limit of 137GB and speed limit of 33 MBps (Ultra DMA Mode 2).
The drawback of this book is lack of coverage of collaboration tools like CVS or Subversion as very efficient backup tools. These tools are very easy to use at client side, although their server side is somewhat difficult to install.
The intended audience of the book is very broad, and the style is very simple so even a computer novice can understand this book.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 A must read for Business and Technology ProsJan 22, 2004
By Father Time NY
The Backup Book should be required reading for all Executives and IT Managers. The technical information is given in an entertaining way for a business audience. The business aspects of company data are explained to the techie crowd along with the necessary technical informationAnd the writing style makes it a page turner. Buy it for yourself or the person at your company that changes the backup tapes every night. You will sleep better.
7 of 8 found the following review helpful:
Great all-around bookMay 17, 2005
By Larry Penne
This is one of the few backup books that isn't slanted toward a single product (such as a VERITAS book, or an EMC book). Covering what the authors found to be "the most prominent problems in the network today," this book focuses on basic solutions for the problems that we all face in the real world.
And it is written in a style that is part straight to the point and part humorous. The only thing that I would suggest adding is a set of powerpoint slides for training (maybe next time guys?).
Is this book an in-depth book on every subject? No. This is not the be-all-to-end-all SAN backup book. Or RAID book. Or the "best of breed" for anything that it covers. But I don't think that the authors meant it to be a drill-down-to-the-bottom type of book. It covers what it needs to cover to suggest the right solution. And for most of us, that's just fine.
But if I had to grab one book when I head out to think through backup problems, this is the book to grab.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Excellent Backup ResourceJan 21, 2004
An incredibly thorough, accurate and well thought-out reference guide written by the top talent in the industry. The Backup Book is an excellent resource for learning the basic concepts, technologies and techniques used in implementing successful backup strategies. It includes detailed information about the leading backup software products for both Windows and Mac environments. I refer to it all the time and it hasn't let me down once.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
The Bible of Disaster RecoveryJan 21, 2004
A number of things set The Backup Book apart from others: 1. The writing is fantastic -- friendly and easy to follow.
2. The examples are real -- the authors have great experiences we can learn from (without having to go through it ourselves!)
3. The book is complete -- they cover everything from determining which data is critical to a variety of methods one can use to protect the data. I also like how the authors interlace the experiences of "field editors" -- other folks who know what they're talking about -- throughout the book. If you're involved in network management and/or data security, you need to read this book.
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