Darxus

Off site backups.

Off site backups.

[info]darxus
7/22/10 12:04 am
Previous Entry Add to Memories Share this! Next Entry
2009-09-29
Makes me want to scream.

Repeated major movie plot hole.

Assuming you can go to one building and destroy all of somebody's data.

Companies have continuously maintained backups in other cities for things like this. Well, mostly for natural disasters and fires and things, not protagonists.

They have business continuity plans too. One city falls down, people regroup in another city with the data restored. And with any kind of money behind them they have an entirely redundant branch in another city that doesn't need waiting to regroup.

I know that if greater Boston gets nuked today, the company I work for headquartered there will be fully operational tomorrow in another city. It's just basic responsible business practice.


I really need to get around to doing this with my own data. Anybody want to let me stick a computer in your house and use some of your bandwidth in the middle of the night? Maybe an exchange?
Previous Entry Add to Memories Share this! Next Entry

  • [info]feng_huang
    7/22/10 07:13 am (UTC)
    I know what you mean. That was all I could think about at the end of Fight Club, even though I loved the movie itself. "Haven't these people heard of off-site backups?"

    Not to discourage you from the computer plan, but have you not thought about backing up to your colo server? Or do you still have a server colo'd somewhere?

    • [info]darxus
      7/22/10 02:51 pm (UTC)
      I switched from colo to a linode three years ago. I don't want to pay for the disk space there. I do back it up to my house.

      My linode has 35gb, 14 free, and adding 6gb would cost $144 per year.

      And there is still no linux program for backing up to DVD.

      • [info]feng_huang
        7/22/10 08:41 pm (UTC)
        Ah, I didn't realize that your colo box had gone away. Yeah, that's just not cost-effective.

        And there is still no linux program for backing up to DVD.
        I haven't tried these myself, and you've probably already noticed these, but just a quick "apt-cache search dvd |grep -i backup" on my Debian system showed backup-manager ("Automatically burning archives to removable media such as CD or DVD is also possible.") and backupninja ("Backupninja currently supports common backup utilities, easing their configuration, currently supported are: rdiff-backup, duplicity, CD/DVD"). Have you looked into these?

        Edit: I was actually interested in exchanging bandwidth with you, but I see you already got an offer. I guess it's not a big deal for me, since I have a colo box through work (for now).

        Edited at 2010-07-22 08:46 pm (UTC)

        • [info]darxus
          7/22/10 08:48 pm (UTC)
          Yeah, at the time, linode gave me far more bandwidth, more disk space, and enough ram, for about the same price I was paying for cheap colo of my 1u. And they keep increasing ram / disk / bandwidth that comes with each plan.

          My guess is none of those programs can just simply give me a copy of my files split up on DVDs. I should check though, thanks.

          • [info]feng_huang
            7/22/10 09:08 pm (UTC)
            Hmm, I don't know. I think they probably tar up the files (and optionally compress) so that you retain Unix metadata that ISO9660 doesn't support (although Rock Ridge extensions might help), like ownership and permissions and such, not to mention that Unix-like filesystems support much longer filenames than does ISO9660 (and extensions might not fully help with this). Of course, as you know, the advantage of putting plain, non-archived files on the disc is that you don't have to seek through the whole archive to get to a file at the end, so I guess it's a trade-off.

  • [info]mangosteen
    7/22/10 01:07 pm (UTC)
    I will note that off-site backups are only loosely related to business continuity.

    It's not about destroying the data when you destroy the HQ. It's about the people, the processes, the institutional memory, and all the other artifices that are sundered when you do a successful decapitation attack.

  • I don't mind you using my bandwidth

    [info]drwex
    7/22/10 03:46 pm (UTC)
    Which is just a typical cable modem.

    I'm using the commercial service "Mozy" for my own off-site back-ups. It's ridiculously cheap (like $5/mo/machine) and they're now owned by EMC which gives me some confidence they know at least a bit about data storage and such.

    • Re: I don't mind you using my bandwidth

      [info]darxus
      7/22/10 04:32 pm (UTC)
      Cool, thanks, I'll work on putting that box back together.
Powered by LiveJournal.com