Q: Why do you have daily backups?

A: When you get a call from someone asking where 25GB of files went.

Today could have been a whole lot worse than it was.

4 Responses to “Q: Why do you have daily backups?”


  1. 1 Jason Powell Jan 30th, 2007 at 1:53 am

    YIKES! Gotta love those backups!

  2. 2 Tony Dye Jan 30th, 2007 at 10:59 am

    Do you do any sort of undelete? For instance, new file created today, stored on the server, but accidentally deleted before the backup runs. Any hope of recovering that file tomorrow?

  3. 3 Jason Powell Jan 30th, 2007 at 4:04 pm

    When we were experimenting with Microsoft DPM we could go back several versions on any files … and users could restore prior versions themselves. It ate up space to do so, but it was pretty slick.
    We stopped using DPM when we put the SAN in place … ’cause we basically forgot about it :-)

    We’re in the final stages of completely overhauling our backup strategy … I’ll post about it once we get it all in place.

    We’re also looking into better mobile file sync solutions … I’m not a fan of MS Offline folder sync … we’ve been bitten by it before when users have both a laptop and desktop. Anyone using anything they like?

  4. 4 Bob Brown Jan 30th, 2007 at 7:37 pm

    We currently just have the nightly and then a weekly for much of our data. I would like to have something a bit more secure though.

    I second that opinion on Off line sync for laptops. Mine was set up like that when I first started here. It was originally just a nuisance. Then it was a pain in the neck. The day I lost an excel file filled with carefully tracked down information about every network point in the building due to a resync was the day I removed it from my computer. I take it off of most people’s systems now.

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