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+Backups of secure hosts
+=======================
+
+When you back up a secure host, you should exclude the host's keytab
+file from the backup.  If someone obtained a copy of the keytab from a
+backup, that person could make any host masquerade as the host whose
+keytab was compromised.  In many configurations, knowledge of the
+host's keytab also allows root access to the host.  This could be
+particularly dangerous if the compromised keytab was from one of your
+KDCs.  If the machine has a disk crash and the keytab file is lost, it
+is easy to generate another keytab file.  (See :ref:`add_princ_kt`.)
+If you are unable to exclude particular files from backups, you should
+ensure that the backups are kept as secure as the host's root
+password.
+
+
+Backing up the Kerberos database
+--------------------------------
+
+As with any file, it is possible that your Kerberos database could
+become corrupted.  If this happens on one of the slave KDCs, you might
+never notice, since the next automatic propagation of the database
+would install a fresh copy.  However, if it happens to the master KDC,
+the corrupted database would be propagated to all of the slaves during
+the next propagation.  For this reason, MIT recommends that you back
+up your Kerberos database regularly.  Because the master KDC is
+continuously dumping the database to a file in order to propagate it
+to the slave KDCs, it is a simple matter to have a cron job
+periodically copy the dump file to a secure machine elsewhere on your
+network.  (Of course, it is important to make the host where these
+backups are stored as secure as your KDCs, and to encrypt its
+transmission across your network.)  Then if your database becomes
+corrupted, you can load the most recent dump onto the master KDC.
+(See :ref:`restore_from_dump`.)