MEPX
Chapter 10 of 10All chapters
  1. 1Why a database
  2. 2Tables, rows and types
  3. 3Keys
  4. 4Relationships
  5. 5Normalisation
  6. 6Transactions
  7. 7Indexes
  8. 8When not to use tables
  9. 9Changing the schema
  10. 10Backups and growth

Chapter 10 of 10

Backups and growth

The unglamorous half.

Backups

A backup nobody has restored is a hope, not a backup. Test the restore on a schedule and time it, because the recovery time is what matters during an incident.

  • Keep at least one copy offline or immutable, out of reach of ransomware.
  • Point in time recovery lets you rewind to just before a bad deployment.

Growing

Read replicas spread reads, caching removes them, and partitioning splits large tables. Reach for those in that order, because each one adds a way to be wrong.