Vocera Backup Best Practices and Disaster Recovery

This page contains the best practices for backup procedures and disaster recovery to employ for a customer's Vocera appliance.

Introduction

Vocera recommends that customers follow these best practices for backup procedures and disaster recovery.

The Engine's Backup functionality creates backup files of the entire database, including stored patient data and configured adapters. The backup files provide insurance against loss of information and configuration.

In this page theDatabase Backup Configuration section lists the tasks necessary to ensure that backup files are captured and stored. The steps to perform these tasks are documented in the Engine's Backup Database wiki page for Vocera internal users.

Database Backup Configuration

Configure daily backups to complete on every primary production Vocera server, whether Virtual Machine (VM) or physical appliance.

Always export the daily backup to the secondary Vocera server; Vocera requires that customers provide a secondary production server.

Configure daily backups to export to an external, customer-provided storage location by FTP, SFTP, or SMB.

Retain a minimum of 10 backups in the secondary appliance and external storage location.

Virtual Machines

Vocera strongly recommends that customers do not complete VMWare Snapshots or other forms of daily snapshots of the Vocera server. Customers should only complete VMWare Snapshots when an Vocera representative can watch the system. See the attached VM Snapshots Product Bulletin for additional information.

Vocera highly recommends that a VM backup is taken prior to the initial deployment, as well as before and after any major Vocera system changes.

Disaster Recovery

In the event of a catastrophic failure, complete the following steps to restore the Vocera system.

  1. Restore the latest VM backup. (This backup would have been taken prior to any major changes, and while working with Vocera employees.)
  2. Retrive and restore the latest available daily system backup from the external storage location.
  3. With the assistance of Vocera Communications Support, bring the Engage application and adapters back up in the necessary order.
  4. Test all system integrations and verify that they are working properly.
  5. Test all clinical workflows to ensure they have been restored and are working properly.