The Backup Crisis

I still see a lot of clients using manual backups to backup important files daily, picking and choosing what files to backup in the event of a disaster. Every time there is a problem and they need to recover data they always come up short. Either someone forgot to do the backup that day, they forgot to update the backup to include an important directory, or they become overwhelmed with the restore process as the underlying system was not properly backed up.

There are no real savings by using manual backups as opposed to using complete backups to tape or disk. The labor and costs involved in recovering from a single failure generally will net a break even with the correct backup equipment. You can not easily put a ticket price on loss data.

Complete automated backups are also considerably simpler to perform and even easier to recover from. You also minimize the risk of not backing up important files.

While I am on the topic of backups, I am amazed at how often clients will delay bringing in help when their backup does fail to backup for the day. Either they do not monitor and confirm successful backups daily, or they keep waiting for weeks hoping that it will just start backing up properly. A failed backup is likely useless in the event of a disaster. Thus increasing the amount of data lost due to a failure. It is disappointing to get a call to help a client recover data only to find the backup stopped working 3 weeks or, or sometimes even 8 months ago. Every backup strategy requests daily confirmation of its success and failure and on going effort to ensure successful backups.

One of the most common problem we find is that most clients never test their backups. In an event of a failure, frequently we find their "successful" backup is incomplete or unavailable when you actually need it. In an ideal world, every company would have duplicate hardware to be able to drill the recovery process on separate hardware. Unfortunately it is not common to see this properly implemented and documented.

Another common problem we find is how often clients clean their tape drives. A lot of clients believe a tape drive should be cleaned once a year or never. Proper cleaning is very important and will often be the source of failed backups and tapes that just don't recover when you need them to. Typically manufacturers recommend cleaning a tape drive every month or two depending on how many hours in service it has. Improper cleaning can and usually is a common cause of data loss.

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