DataSafeGuard (DSG) provides real-time disaster recovery, system analysis, security and replication for your Thoroughbred data. It journals every I/O that changes your database as it happens. If a system fails or is breached, the transactions can be analyzed and played back to restore the system to its last good state.
Why transaction journaling
Hardware replication such as RAID and network clustering copies blocks of disk I/O but knows nothing about database transactions or key structures. If a failure happens mid-transaction, the backup copies the error too, and finding it can take hours. Restoring last night’s backup and re-entering the day’s work is slow and error-prone. DataSafeGuard restores the transactions themselves, from a point in time you choose.
How it works
DataSafeGuard records activity at the Thoroughbred Environment level, so existing applications need no program changes. Only modified data is saved, which keeps the performance cost low. For each transaction the journal records:
- File creations, writes and removes
- Whether a write is a new record or an update
- The user, along with the values before and after the change
Journals can be kept for as long as you need them, and updates that don’t match the file’s Format definition can be logged.
Recovery and replication
- On-demand playback restores a system by loading the last backup and applying the journaled transactions.
- Real-time replication keeps a secondary server current. Playback runs on the secondary, adding no overhead to the primary, and the secondary can be local or off-site.
- Bi-directional and three-way playback keeps multiple primary servers synchronized and resolves conflicts between them.
- Other databases. Replicate to Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server or MySQL with the matching TS DataServer. See Real-Time Database Solutions.
More from a secondary server
A secondary server can act as a hot backup, take over as the primary during scheduled maintenance, handle read-only inquiries and offline ODBC access, and serve as a data warehouse for reporting and analytics.
Auditing
The journals show who changed what, where and when, by user, file and program. That record can help public companies meet Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) requirements.
Getting started
Depending on your configuration, training, services or hardware may be needed. Contact your Thoroughbred sales representative. Thoroughbred also runs DataSafeGuard for you as part of its backup and disaster recovery services.