I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
momjian.us
I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
1–10 of 53 posts
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#2RAID is not a backup strategy. RAID is an availability strategy. Unfortunately, it appears that many people don't understand the distinction.
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#3I once started work somewhere where they did software releases by RAID.
Their systems involved shipping a server (effectively an appliance) to the customer with all of the working components on it. However, there was no build or deployment process for these components - so the only way to create a new server was to take an existing one and create a copy.
This was done by opening up a working server running with RAID 1, removing one of the disks and installing the disk into a new server. Let the RAID recover the data onto the other blank disk then remove it and put the other blank disk in and let it rebuild.... result, a copied server!
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#4In case anyone is confused, what happens when the server catches fire or is stolen?
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#5We live in a sad world where most companies don't have a real disaster recovery plan. Many times in my career I've had customers ask me to save them because they "thought" they were backing up but when they went to restore from the {tape|floppy|backup disk} media they found it to be corrupt.
Backup and Disaster recovery strategies seem really easy until you think through all the failure modes and realize the old axiom "You don't know what you don't know" is there to make your life full of pain and suffering.
Years ago my customers would literally restore their entire environments onto new metal to verify they had a working disaster recovery plan. Today most clients think having a "cloud backup" is awesome.. Until they realize in the moment of disaster that they are missing little things like license keys for software, network settings, passwords to local admin on windows boxes etc.
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#6redundancy != backup
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#7for most of my stuff dropbox pro (with packrat addon for unlimited file histories) + github handle all my backup needs. Of course this wouldnt work for all scenarios but i dont work with/have loads of huge files.
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#8I once started work somewhere where they did software releases by RAID. Their systems involved shipping a server (effectively an appliance) to the customer with all of the working components on it. However, there was no build or deployment process for these components - so the only way to create a new server was to take an existing one and create a copy. This was done by opening up a working server running with RAID…
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#9You must test your backups. I used a commercial backup service that sent daily status emails. It seemed great for months until I realized it had a bug and there was nothing in the archive.
Re: I Don't Need Backups, I Use Raid1
#10The underlying cognitive bias in "I don't need backups, I use raid1" seems to be the quite common one of "I don't do anything stupid, so I don't need anti-stupidity devices" (feel free to substitute "careless" or similar for "stupid"), maybe with a side-order of "if I set up systems that protect me from my stupidity then only stupid people will want to work with me". The fact is, most of us do many stupid things every day--some stupid at the time, some stupid in retrospect--and systems that don't let us recover from them are poor systems.