IssueTrak Blog

The question of “How much data can you afford to lose?” is one we must answer when we setup a backup and maintenance plan. Data management is important in whatever business you are in. We feel compelled to mention a few recommendations to consider when addressing your own data concerns.

The most important aspect of any data maintenance plan is data backup. One must consider server backups as well as database backups. For server backups, we do recommend at least one backup per week is sent off-site for disaster recovery purposes. When implementing a server backup plan, make sure that all of your critical data is being backed up. For IssueTrak this means both the database and the website directory. This should be done at least once a week or more frequently depending on how much data you can afford to lose.. File system backup is especially important for IssueTrak due to the attachments, kb attachments, and embedded images.

When considering the plan for your database, there are many factors to consider. One nice thing about Microsoft SQL Server is that when installing it, you can choose the option of installing the SQL Maintenance Plan Wizard. In many cases by simply following the defaults in this wizard, your SQL maintenance plan will be setup and ready to go. If you prefer to do things manually, the greatest focus for SQL would be on regularly backing up your database and maintaining your transaction logs. When considering the plan for your transaction logs, consider shrinking and truncating your logs. In both cases, this can be done by setting up a SQL job at a frequency that you have determined. One other important setting for transaction logs is restricting the transaction log growth size. This setting is very important as without this setting, your log will grow really large.

Once your backup plan is setup and everything is working as it should, you will need to have a plan to regularly verify that the backups are running and operational. With SQL, you can verify that the database backup is good by setting up a test database and restoring the backup to this test database. This plan should also be monitored and updated periodically as priorities and resources may change. As your use of IssueTrak increases, disk space also needs to be part of your plan. On the database side, your database continues to grow with every new issue, note, user, organization, asset, audit, or survey along with the storage needed for backups and log files. On the web server, it is also important to consider the space needed for attachments, scheduled reports, kb attachments, embedded images in addition to the website files.

We do have a couple of great features within IssueTrak which assist with archiving data. This is done through the ability to archive issue audits and the ability archive asset audits.

As you can see, taking care of your data can be a very complex process with many factors to consider. The above information is merely a guide with some things to be considered while examining the way that you handle your data. We would recommend that you consider evaluating your plan frequently to determine if any changes need to be made. When evaluating your own maintenance plan, it is important to always remember the 5 Ps. Proper planning prevents poor performance. As stated earlier, any of us looking at setting up or reviewing our own maintenance plan need to ask the big question: “How much data can you afford to lose?” as this will help us determine the best path forward.