Backups - why you should

[Robert Brockway]

Another quick comment :)

There was a famous quote from Linus Torvalds about backups that I wanted 
to put in the talk.  I couldn't find it when I looked.  Well it just 
turned up in the /. thread... :)

"Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff
on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it ;)"
                               Linus Torvalds Jul 20 1996, 3:00 am


Rob


On Fri, 15 May 2009, Robert Brockway wrote:

> On Fri, 15 May 2009, Giles Orr wrote:
>
>> Three days after Robert Brockway's talk about backups, Slashdot posts
>> a high profile story about hackers taking down a site - and completely
>> destroying it because the site owners didn't have off-line backups.
>> Off-site would have been good, but in this case even off-line would
>> have saved them:
>> 
>> http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/15/0138204
>
> Hi Giles.  Thanks for the link.  Interesting comment from one guy about how 
> he backed up a server his employer told him not to, and saved the day when 
> people were using it for storage.  Remember the slide about disks normally 
> having more useful data than we think ;)
>
> This morning I remembered an important point about backups that I forgot to 
> put in my talk.  This is a good time to mention it :)  I'll be adding it to 
> the slides.
>
> I often hear comments about how Mr Smith or Mrs Jones couldn't be expected to 
> keep good backups as they know nothing about technology.
>
> News Flash:  "Backups have nothing to do with technology".
>
> We use modern technology to do the backups for our systems based on modern 
> technology, but that is because it makes sense to do that.
>
> In reality, backups are as old as language.
>
> Medieval European monks used to spend a good deal of their lives hand copying 
> important texts.  This allowed for the disemination of information but it 
> also allowed for retention (backup) of the information in the case of a 
> disaster.  The monks were fully aware of this.  If a monastery burned down 
> the surrounding monasteries would make copies of their texts in order to 
> repopulate the library that was lost.  This was a form of enlightened self 
> interest as the next monastery to be lost might have been theirs.
>
> It is largely thanks to the disciplined backup procedures of these monks that 
> so many texts survive to the modern day.
>
> Even memorising an oral tradition is a form of backup.  Before the invention 
> of writing it was the only option if information was to survive beyond a 
> single human lifespan.  Naturally this format has reliability problems but 
> then so do so many modern formats ;)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rob
>
>

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