Data Backup Procedures in IBM DB2

Data Backup Procedures in IBM DB2

The backup and recovery strategy of the database application is considered to be very essential in preventing the loss of data for any production system. As the size of the application database increases, it becomes very difficult to complete the full backup process within the time frame for scheduled backups set by Service Level Agreement (SLA). Thus, IBM has come up with its DB2 database management system which has helped in reducing the time required for backup and recovery, thus enhancing the performance of applications running on it. DB2 directly goes into the Object and backs up the data and indices. This feature makes IBM DB2 very flexible at the time of restoring of data.
The IBM DB2 has also implemented the concept of incremental backup, where changes between two backup images are recorded in the logs. In the general scenario, the Database Administrator (DBA) schedules a database backup exercise at a fixed interval of time (daily, weekly or even monthly). However, once a backup job runs, a backup image along with the change logs is created. These two resources can independently restore the application database on some other system, even if the original system gets corrupted. On the other hand, if data corruption occurs it can be recovered very quickly & restored from backup. Moreover it also helps in finding where the corruption occurred, so that errors can be rectified very easily.
The merge backup support by IBM DB2 is another feature which makes backups extremely easy and flexible. It combines the incremental and delta backups with the latest backup in order to create a full backup. As a result, the database availability is enhanced and the time spent on expensive backup processing is also reduced. It uses the DB2 database history to find which backups should be merged. The merge backup feature has made the job of a DBA extremely easy as backups can be processed quickly, giving them time to complete other database jobs simultaneously. Moreover, since the recovery process is smooth and swift, the production downtime in cases of unexpected interruptions is also minimal.
There are several backup tools that are available for IBM DB2. The Time Navigator by Atempo, for instance, has come up with a module that offers online backup & recovery for database records running on IBM DB2. This module supports Storage Area Network & uses the backup methods and interfaces supported by DB2. Time Navigator for IBM DB2 is supported by IBM AIX, Linux, Sun Solaris, Windows 2000 & Windows NT.
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