Protection
We have a backup. Is that not enough?
A backup is necessary and not sufficient. Ask how long a full recovery takes and when it was last rehearsed. If the answers are unknown, you have a backup and not a plan.
Answered by Nate Weigel, Protection Director
Backup and recovery are different things
A backup is a copy. A recovery is that copy back in service, with your people working, by a time somebody has promised. Most businesses have the first and assume the second. The difference is measured in days of lost work and discovered on the worst possible day.
Three questions
Who receives the alert when a backup job fails, and when did they last see one? When was a restore last tested, and what was restored? How long would it take to be back at work if the server died tonight? If any answer is a shrug, the backup is not a plan yet.
What a plan adds
A written recovery time for each system, agreed with the owner. Somewhere to recover to: a second host, spare hardware or a cloud sandbox. A rehearsal, on a schedule, with the results logged. A copy of the backup that ransomware cannot reach, because a backup on the same network as the server gets encrypted with it.
What it costs
Less than people expect, and far less than a week without the accounting system. We have kept a client's own backup server and built a plan around it, and we have designed second hosts for businesses that could not afford a day down. Either way it starts with the three questions.
Where we did this
A backup that has never been restored is a hope, not a plan. Ask for the date of the last tested restore.
What to actually test Did you knowRecovery time is a number. If nobody can say how long it takes to be back to work after the server dies, nobody has planned it.
A recovery plan with a time on itPeople also ask
How warm is too warm for our server room?
Equipment is designed for roughly 18 to 27 degrees Celsius, 64 to 81 Fahrenheit, measured at the front where it draws air in. The number that matters is not the one on a Tuesday afternoon; it is the one at 2am on a Sunday.
The full answerWhere should our server actually live?
In a space with airflow, stable power, no water above it and a door that locks. Heat is the most common environmental killer of business equipment, and the room that is fine in March is a different room in July.
The full answerWhat is a server room reorganization, and is it worth paying for?
It is making the room possible to reason about: inventory, cable management, labelling at both ends, documentation, power and airflow. It turns a two-hour outage into a twenty-minute one, and it is far cheaper scheduled than done in an emergency.
The full answer
"Awesome "Johnny on the Spot" service! You guys made a scary situation a lot easier to work through."
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