Data backup
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As the requirement for 24 x 7 availability becomes essential for many businesses, organizations cannot afford the downtime involved in backing up critical data offline. By taking a snapshot of the data, and backing up from this snapshot, business-critical applications can continue to run without extended down time or impacted performance.
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Decision support analysis and reporting
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Because snapshots hold a point-in-time copy of a production database, a replica of the database can be set up using the snapshots. Operations such as decision support analysis and business reporting do not require access to up-to-the-minute information. This means that they can use a database copy that is running on a host other than the primary. When required, the database copy can quickly be synchronized with the data in the primary database.
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Testing and training
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Development or service groups can use snapshots as test data for new applications. Snapshot data provides developers, system testers and QA groups with a realistic basis for testing the robustness, integrity and performance of new applications.
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Database error recovery
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Logic errors caused by an administrator or an application program can compromise the integrity of a database. By restoring the database table files from a snapshot copy, the database can be recovered more quickly than by full restoration from tape or other backup media.
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