[HN Gopher] You can never have too many backups
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You can never have too many backups
Author : CHB0403085482
Score : 31 points
Date : 2022-09-06 09:59 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theregister.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theregister.com)
| GnarfGnarf wrote:
| I backup to DVDs. I have every backup for the last ten years. And
| yes, I can still read them.
| ttkari wrote:
| > And yes, I can still read them.
|
| Just curious - how often do you test this?
| muttled wrote:
| To add to this: having the backups copy somewhere that has write-
| only permissions can be a life-saver in a crypto-ransom malware
| situation. Hackers are smart enough to delete or encrypt backups,
| and this is made far easier for them when admins have full
| read/write permissions to the backup location.
| bombcar wrote:
| _Offline_ backups are very important - not only because they
| can 't be modified because they're disconnected, but because
| they force _you_ to spend time going and getting them and that
| time can be important. Many backups are successfully
| _destroyed_ in trying to back them up, and spending some time
| to think about what is happening can be worth it.
| SahAssar wrote:
| rsync.net is great for this. They keep ZFS snapshots, so even
| though you have read/write access you will always have the
| snapshots stored. So you will be safe at least as long as you
| notice the corruption within the normal 7-day rolling window
| (there are options for other windows or manual snapshots too
| IIRC).
|
| This should also lead to the question of how up-to-date your
| backups need to be and is your solution setup for that (is it
| 1s, 1m, 1h, 1d, etc.)? Define an actual SLA for how much data
| you can loose and test for that.
| yohannparis wrote:
| A good trick to convince oneselves to backup and the cost of
| redoing the work lost.
|
| Sometimes, just a couple of pages of documents, or a setup
| script, is worth weeks of work, ressources, money, etc. And it's
| nothing compare to the costs of creating multiple backups.
| AyyWS wrote:
| Makes sense to backup user data, and script your
| server/app/database install and setup.
|
| If your RTO is very short, then full backups with fast restores
| are best.
| zie wrote:
| If you are backing up users data that is not yours to own and do
| with as you please, yes you absolutely can have to many backups.
| If you are required by law or policy to erase user data and it's
| in your backup(s), you now have a real problem on your hands.
|
| Note: Sometimes the law/policy will make a carve-out exception
| for backups, if so, yay for you! I'm not currently aware of a law
| that does this.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Note: Sometimes the law/policy will make a carve-out
| exception for backups, if so, yay for you! I'm not currently
| aware of a law that does this.
|
| I am confused by these sentences. Sometimes the law does it,
| but you're not aware of a law that does it?
| darkteflon wrote:
| The bigger story here is: checklists, checklists, checklists.
| They're underrated!
| ghaff wrote:
| And automation. So long as you confirm that the automation is
| doing what you think it's doing.
|
| Another comment mentioned an offline backup. And I agree. But
| it's also easy to go from having a month old offline backup to
| a year old to...
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Do you know of a good app for doing checklists of this type?
| Many TODO-list apps market themselves as "checklist apps" but
| they really just mean "yeah we've got checkboxes". They don't
| mean "our app lets you choose from a library of checklists for
| common tasks and pull a fresh one to tick off when you want to
| perform one of those tasks."
|
| One that seems close is ForeFlight (demo:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d05_ZQMm6Zo&t=23s), but it's
| just one feature of a much larger app, is mobile only, and
| obviously targeted at aviation.
|
| I'm looking for similar functionality but more IT-oriented (or
| at least generic, not referring to airplane models, etc.) and
| preferably with an offline desktop "client" (it is especially
| critical that you have your checklist library available if the
| whole corporate network is down, for example) or, barring that,
| at least a desktop-friendly web UI.
|
| Honestly, if I knew there was a market for this, I would build
| it. It's either a great opportunity or the market isn't big
| enough.
| themadturk wrote:
| It's Apple only but I use a grocery list app called Grocery
| (which uses the Apple Reminders database) and it remembers
| items, allowing you to easily restore things you've check off
| previously to an unchecked status.
| jiehong wrote:
| I also used one called CheckYourList, as it proposes to
| uncheck everything as soon as you've been through a list.
| [0]
|
| Perfect for do-check lists.
|
| [0]: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/daily-checklist-
| checkyourlist/...
| akkartik wrote:
| In the spirit of being wrong so I can learn: this seems easy?
| Would a simple open source CLI suffice?
| travisjungroth wrote:
| I was a flight instructor and am now a software engineer,
| plus I've made a daily checklist app. So I think I'm at
| least qualified to throw out some opinions on this.
|
| It's not a software engineering challenge. The minimal
| features are textbook basic CRUD. The essential UI will be
| well-supported by any framework. Even the challenges when
| you branch out are solved problems. Device sync, sharing,
| backups, etc all have some off-the shelf solution or are
| solved in another space you can look at.
|
| It's a product design / UX / whatever you want to call it
| problem. Within the set of choices that are easily
| available to you in the software engineering world, you
| have to make the right ones! Most people won't naturally
| make good checklists. How do you help them? One of the
| biggest (maybe single biggest) issues with checklist is
| using them at all. How do you get compliance up? How do you
| handle "skipping" items? Do you go with read/do or
| do/confirm? How do you keep checklists up-to-date (critical
| for emergency checklists). It would be very easy to get
| this stuff wrong.
|
| It also hits a weird spot in the market. What would people
| pay for this? I don't think you hit enough users for "free"
| and then my guess is it's a really weird curve with some
| people paying $1 and then a minority paying like a lot
| ($100?). I don't know, that's a total guess. Just bringing
| this up to cover "why isn't a company already doing this?".
|
| Not to be discouraging! Just don't take it as a software
| engineering challenge. If you're experienced and working on
| your home turf, it will be easy. The hard thing will be
| making the _right_ easy thing. Best way to do that is to
| solve your own problem btw. Maybe start with a "I crashed
| the server" checklist or something.
|
| If anyone wants to take a stab, the essay that the book
| "The Checklist Manifesto" is based on would be a good
| start. The book itself is a bit verbose, but would be worth
| it if you get serious. I'd also chat for 30 minutes or
| answer random questions for anyone who's going to make
| something. My email is my last name at gmail.
| koheripbal wrote:
| We use orgmode sync'd to a common folder.
| neilv wrote:
| In an early startup, where developers are also doing ops, and
| there are periodic manual tasks (like daily/weekly/monthly
| running certain kinds of backups, eyeballing AWS dashboards and
| logs to check for anything alerts missed, etc.), using the same
| board and issue-tracker you use for development tasks helps.
|
| In one company, I used GitLab Board, and had special tags for the
| recurring and background tasks, which were sticky in Kanban
| columns right below the generally one-time development tasks. The
| deadline dates for recurring tasks kept changing to the next time
| the task had to be done. The Issue description had the concise
| immediate instructions for the steps of the task (with a link to
| the wiki for related and background info). And every time you did
| the task, you added a very quick Comment with any notes, and
| bumped the due date.
|
| It was very lightweight, and fit the simplicity I was advocating
| (e.g., the GitLab Kanban board says what everyone is doing, all
| info goes into GitLab in one form or another, minimal other tools
| and silos to juggle, etc.).
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| > Kanban board
|
| Does it have specific meaning in software engineering? Isn't
| Kanban just billboard in Japanese?
| SahAssar wrote:
| Yes, it's usually a column-based system for tracking progress
| of tasks that move through various stages (eg. planning,
| development, testing, rollout, evaluation).
|
| See here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanban_board
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