Summary

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We hope you will find this work very useful as you plan, maintain, and administer your backup environments. It is our desire that the practices found in this work provide you a level of consistency in the planning, architecting, and delivery of your solutions. One thing we have learned while writing this book is that there are a variety of ways to accomplish the same task. What we have attempted to do here is to document those practices that will minimize the complexity within your environment while maintaining a highly efficient and effective solution.

In the beginning of this introduction, we welcomed you to the wonderful world of backup and recovery. However, when it comes to planning, we should really call it the wonderful world of 'recovery and backup.' As you will see in the pages that follow, it is the recovery requirement that defines our backup strategy, and it is our time to recovery that defines our success-not the speed of our backup. The role of the backup administrator is integral in any company; in fact, you can consider it the second most important job in your company. When does it become the first? When they can't access their data!

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