While the prime purpose of backups is the recovery of data in case of loss, there are a number of applications that can be carried out using some of the techniques covered in this chapter. We are going to briefly describe two of them.
Most organizations have some sort of year-end procedure in place. This might be at the end of an academic year, a term, a financial year, or in the case of roll-on/roll-off setups, on a monthly basis. Given the nature and importance of the procedure it is vital that each step is planned well in advance. The key considerations are:
When do you run the year-end procedure?
What has to be done?
Who is involved?
Where will the archives go?
A list of some typical steps that might or might not apply to your setup is as follows. It gives you an idea of how such a procedure might look and demonstrates the importance of the backup facility:
1. Archive: Create backups of all courses and even consider including a system backup...