Day 730, Phew, it worked

If you are going to do backups of your data you also need to be sure that you can recover that data.

Don't laugh, there are lots of people that never check whether backed up data is recoverable or not.  In fact most people are so blasé about the subject that they never bother to check, or if they aren't the people doing the backup they don't ask those responsible whether they have checked.  Ok, yes, this is anecdotal evidence.  However, it is based on over 20 years experience of working in IT in a variety of different environments and businesses.

If you can't recover the data then why bother spending any money on a system or method of backing it up.  The reality is that more effort, and cash, should be put into designing and building the process to make sure that recovery is possible.  Focus on recovery if the data is of value.  Once you understand what you want from recovery then work on how to do the backup in as non-invasive a manner as possible to give you the platform for the recovery.  This will ensure that the way that backup is carried out is more appropriate to your requirements, and actually works in a timely manner.

What is it you want from the process?

All your data back in exactly the same form as before?

Every system back and running in the same form as before?

Bear in mind that any changes to data and systems since a backup was taken will be lost, unless there is a much more costly 'continuous data protection' type backup in place.

Below is just a desktop PC that has the C: drive occasionally imaged off to a backup disk  Here the recovery of the entire image was successful after booting from a pre-configured USB stick.  This is not something that it's convenient to test that often, but it works.  The general changes to the system, patches and reconfiguration, haven't broken the software and it is simple enough that it is recoverable when needed - in this case migrating to a larger SSD.  It is still time consuming and fiddly, but it is manageable for a single system.

Imagine recovering tens of hundreds of servers, and hundreds of TeraBytes of storage.  However well thought out the process to recover that scale of data it is going to take some time - assuming that the hardware is available.

What's the lead time on enterprise grade hardware from multiple different vendors...

Obviously, if your data has no value whatsoever then forget about it, in fact why not just set fire to your computer right now, clearly you don't need it.

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