Someone got their database lost today. A decision support system (DSS) database, 200GB size, running in noarchive log mode, and no backup available. One of the hard disk got corrupted, after got the data files back with disk utilities, they found there are a lot of corrupted or fractured blocks in system tablespace, about 100 damaged blocks found with DBVerify utility.
I want to ask them, why no backup? Lack of storage? The disk space is cheap now, I can get 1TB storage within 500USD for PC hard disks, where they spent the storage money? Nobody know how to take effective backup? Hiring a DBA who knows how to perform backup is not expensive, where they spent the money to hire a qualified DBA? And they had no backup of the table structure, want to find these back from the corrupted system tablespace, it's not a easy job. Of cause, the cost saving is in wrong place.
They asked me for possible recovery solutions. In this case, I told them that they can get some of the data recovered with Oracle DUL or AUL/MyDUL utility, if there are no corrupt blocks in other data files, we can get all the data recovered. But after ask me how I will charge them for the data recovery, they keep sliently, their department leaders are waiting for a free recovery. Is this correct cost saving method?
A decision support system with 200GB data should be very important to the company, but they don't worry about it, seems the data is not important at all. Then why the company spend money in building it? Previous similar case is a OLAP database with 500GB data in it, finally they decide to spend several months of time to reload the data from business system because they do not want to pay for the recovery or they just want to pay several hundreds of dollars for it.
We are very hard to get the reward for support service. A lot of costing saving occurred in wrong place.