Hot Backup: Detailed Information You Should Know

What Is Hot Backup

Backup is an important preventive measure to prevent your data from disaster due to system crashes, hardware failures, or human operation errors. 

Hot backup is just one type of backup, it is called the two basic types of system backup together with cold backup. Whether you want to perform system backup, disk backup, or other backups, you will involve in these two types of backup. Hot backup is also called online backup or dynamic backup because of its working mode.

Operation

Hot backup uses a technology that can perform real-time backup while the system is still running. Even if the data you want to back up is being edited or read at this time, the hot backup will continue to generate new backup data to provide continuous data protection for your computer. 

In the process of hot backup, all your data will be copied to the secondary location so that you can see the changes in relevant data from the new backup.

Applicable environment

If you want to use hot backup mode, the following computer environment is the most suitable for hot backup.

• Systems that often operate around the clock
• Updating data frequently 
• Multiuser system
• Large storage space
• Database in ARCHIVELOG mode

The Advantages of Hot Backup

The following are the 3 main advantages of hot backup:

• Convenience: 

Hot backup provides a very convenient backup scheme, which is the preferred method for most database backups.

• Flexibility: 

Because hot backup is online, you can access the database at any time during the entire backup process. This flexibility facilitates the workflow of multi-user systems.

• High Speed of Data Recovery: 

Hot backup can provide fast data recovery. Hot backup keeps updating data, so when the production server has an accident, hot backup can quickly solve the problem.

The Disadvantages of Hot Backup

Now let’s check out the disadvantages of hot backup:

• Cost: 

Hot backup requires more maintenance costs.

• Slow Backup speed: 

compared with its data recovery speed, the backup speed of hot backup is obviously not its strength.

• Low fault tolerance: 

If an error occurs during the hot backup, the hot backup will easily fail, resulting in inaccessible data and unachievable point-level recovery.

Concluding Remarks

As one of the two backup methods, hot backup has very distinct characteristics. 

It can provide continuous data backup and update for the system and protect the security of the running system 24 hours a day. Its biggest advantage is flexibility, which can support you to read or edit any data at any time during the backup process.

However, the disadvantages of hot backup are also obvious. It requires more cost to maintain and lacks fault tolerance. If you have a preliminary understanding of hot backup after reading this article and want to know more about another kind of cold backup, you can read this article: Hot Backup vs. Cold Backup.