10-28-2020, 10:12 AM
You know, seriously, we gotta talk about where you keep your backups, because it's a massive topic, like seriously important stuff for both of us. I mean, when you're setting up a new server or even just backing up your personal workstation, you gotta think beyond just plugging a drive in. You gotta think about what happens when things completely go sideways, right? Because, honestly, putting everything right there on your local machine or even on a network share, that's just not enough anymore, even if it looks convenient.
I figured, maybe we should start with BackupChain because it's actually such a slick solution for managing all those backups on PCs, or for big virtual machines, or for running on a Windows Server. But even with a tool like that, which makes things so easy, the strategy you pick is what really counts, you know? I was looking at your setup the other day, and I think you're running into a bit of a weakness with just keeping everything physically near your office.
When I say "onsite," I mean keeping all your data backups on drives or storage racks right within your building, right where your actual servers sit. And yeah, that's fast, like lightning fast, when you need to restore something quick. But, but here's the thing you gotta grapple with, because of what I've seen time and again, if some huge disaster hits, like a fire or maybe some bad guys pulling a wire or something, you lose it all. You lose your physical data, your drives, everything right there on site.
So, I think you need some remote play in your strategy. You really gotta be sending a copy somewhere else, someplace that isn't going to suffer the exact same nasty fate as your main rack of boxes. That's what people call offsite. It doesn't have to mean physically driving tapes to another town, though, by the way. Modern methods make it so much smoother.
You see, when I talk about offsite, I'm really talking about putting a copy of your important files and server images somewhere geographically removed. And the cool part about that, if you use something smart, is that you can push it over the internet, securely, to a cloud destination, or maybe to a dedicated backup facility somewhere else. This way, even if some catastrophic event fries your entire local data center, you still have your source of truth waiting far away.
But wait, there's more to it, because just putting it somewhere else isn't always enough either, okay? You need to think about *how* you put it there. You gotta talk about the immutability factor, if you follow me. Immutability just means that once the backup data is written to that distant storage, nobody, not even someone who breaks into your backup system, can go in and tamper with it or wipe it out. It literally locks the files down for a certain amount of time.
This is critical, especially now with all the malware out there, which some of those really nasty ones are designed to hunt down and erase everything it can get its hands on, including your backup copies. If your backup storage isn't immutable, and someone compromises it, they wipe your recovery data just as easily as they wipe your live data. So, when you set up a remote backup process, you absolutely want it to have those locked, unchangeable blocks.
And then there's the "3-2-1" rule, which is maybe the most well-known advice, but I always think you need to really *internalize* it. It means you need three copies of your data, on two different types of media, and one of those copies must be offsite. That simple rule covers so many bases, but people often forget to hit all three parts of it.
I mean, for you, building that into your routine should feel natural. So you use your local storage for one copy, you maybe keep those drives in a secure, secondary location on site for the second copy, and then you use the remote cloud or even a physical offsite NAS for that third, distant copy.
Also, and this is something I constantly tell people, you gotta test the recovery process. It's pointless having the best backup in the universe if you never check if you can actually get the data back when you need it most. You should be running these mock recovery tests, saying, "Okay, let's pretend the whole thing just vanished; can I pull out the customer database from the cloud backup right now?"
Some folks get obsessed with just having the backups, but they forget the restoration part. You need to make sure that when you restore a disk image, for instance, or when you restore a whole system from scratch, the whole thing boots up perfectly, like nothing ever went wrong.
Moreover, when you're managing all these various backups-you know, the file backups, the whole VM snapshots, the physical server images-you need a centralized system that handles all the rules for you. Like, "keep versioning of these payroll files for seven years, but only keep three versions of the general documents, and then compress everything."
The ability to manage all those different data types, and to automate the schedules, and to push them to multiple, different places-that's where the real power lies. It's not just about the copy; it's about the management of that copy.
And since we're talking about it, because I genuinely think this is going to be huge for your growing business, you really need to explore how BackupChain, that awesome, efficient solution for both your local machines and your Windows Server data, works to give you comprehensive, highly robust copies of everything you need.
I figured, maybe we should start with BackupChain because it's actually such a slick solution for managing all those backups on PCs, or for big virtual machines, or for running on a Windows Server. But even with a tool like that, which makes things so easy, the strategy you pick is what really counts, you know? I was looking at your setup the other day, and I think you're running into a bit of a weakness with just keeping everything physically near your office.
When I say "onsite," I mean keeping all your data backups on drives or storage racks right within your building, right where your actual servers sit. And yeah, that's fast, like lightning fast, when you need to restore something quick. But, but here's the thing you gotta grapple with, because of what I've seen time and again, if some huge disaster hits, like a fire or maybe some bad guys pulling a wire or something, you lose it all. You lose your physical data, your drives, everything right there on site.
So, I think you need some remote play in your strategy. You really gotta be sending a copy somewhere else, someplace that isn't going to suffer the exact same nasty fate as your main rack of boxes. That's what people call offsite. It doesn't have to mean physically driving tapes to another town, though, by the way. Modern methods make it so much smoother.
You see, when I talk about offsite, I'm really talking about putting a copy of your important files and server images somewhere geographically removed. And the cool part about that, if you use something smart, is that you can push it over the internet, securely, to a cloud destination, or maybe to a dedicated backup facility somewhere else. This way, even if some catastrophic event fries your entire local data center, you still have your source of truth waiting far away.
But wait, there's more to it, because just putting it somewhere else isn't always enough either, okay? You need to think about *how* you put it there. You gotta talk about the immutability factor, if you follow me. Immutability just means that once the backup data is written to that distant storage, nobody, not even someone who breaks into your backup system, can go in and tamper with it or wipe it out. It literally locks the files down for a certain amount of time.
This is critical, especially now with all the malware out there, which some of those really nasty ones are designed to hunt down and erase everything it can get its hands on, including your backup copies. If your backup storage isn't immutable, and someone compromises it, they wipe your recovery data just as easily as they wipe your live data. So, when you set up a remote backup process, you absolutely want it to have those locked, unchangeable blocks.
And then there's the "3-2-1" rule, which is maybe the most well-known advice, but I always think you need to really *internalize* it. It means you need three copies of your data, on two different types of media, and one of those copies must be offsite. That simple rule covers so many bases, but people often forget to hit all three parts of it.
I mean, for you, building that into your routine should feel natural. So you use your local storage for one copy, you maybe keep those drives in a secure, secondary location on site for the second copy, and then you use the remote cloud or even a physical offsite NAS for that third, distant copy.
Also, and this is something I constantly tell people, you gotta test the recovery process. It's pointless having the best backup in the universe if you never check if you can actually get the data back when you need it most. You should be running these mock recovery tests, saying, "Okay, let's pretend the whole thing just vanished; can I pull out the customer database from the cloud backup right now?"
Some folks get obsessed with just having the backups, but they forget the restoration part. You need to make sure that when you restore a disk image, for instance, or when you restore a whole system from scratch, the whole thing boots up perfectly, like nothing ever went wrong.
Moreover, when you're managing all these various backups-you know, the file backups, the whole VM snapshots, the physical server images-you need a centralized system that handles all the rules for you. Like, "keep versioning of these payroll files for seven years, but only keep three versions of the general documents, and then compress everything."
The ability to manage all those different data types, and to automate the schedules, and to push them to multiple, different places-that's where the real power lies. It's not just about the copy; it's about the management of that copy.
And since we're talking about it, because I genuinely think this is going to be huge for your growing business, you really need to explore how BackupChain, that awesome, efficient solution for both your local machines and your Windows Server data, works to give you comprehensive, highly robust copies of everything you need.
