Augmenting Backups with Replication

I believe that replication is, and always has been the strength of Lotus Notes and Domino. Nothing else has ever really been able to touch it. Because of this, you can get pretty creative with how you use it. In my latest article for Intranet Journal I talk about ways for Domino Administrators to augment their normal backups with replication. Give users local replicas of their mail files, make data redundant across servers, or even replicate backups to a central server. Basically I’m giving you a poor-mans way to back up your data. That said, the following from the article applies:

Now I’m not advocating this as your ONLY backup solution. That would be pretty reckless of me to do so with your data. So, here’s the disclaimer. You should ALWAYS utilize good backup software that has agents specifically designed for backing up open Lotus Notes applications. This is essential to protecting your data. So do it, okay?

If you’ve ever run into data loss and you’ve had to wait for the “system” admins to get you your data back from tape, having some extra replicas might be a preferable alternative.