Databases, also referred to as structured data, are an essential part of any data center. While databases do not typically hold a high percentage of the terabytes housed in a given data center, they do hold a high percentage of mission-critical data. Understanding their unique structure and operation is key to backing them up.
Structured data cannot be backed up like unstructured data due to three very big challenges. First, databases are typically stored in datafiles that are constantly changing as long as something is making updates to the database. This means you cannot just back them up like any other file.
