[LINK] Navitaire was a Virgin, and now Blue as well

[Steven Clark]

  On 12/10/2010 5:29 PM, Stilgherrian wrote:
> On 12/10/2010, at 10:33 AM, Steven Clark wrote:
>>> [So, finally, we have the answer.
>>> [The backup and recovery plan had never been tested.]
>> which is fail! in both senses>.<  it's not a backup and recovery system if you're not even sure it works. *headdesk*
>>
>> though this is not as surprising as it ought to be. so very often,
>> technologies are assumed to 'just work'.
> Indeed, Steven. I had wondered, when I saw in Teh Meedjuh and other places, so many commentators saying that not testing your backup and disaster recovery was "stupid" and worse, how certain they themselves were that their own organisations weren't in exactly the same boat.



> Gentle Linkers, when was the last time you tested the process for restoring your own computer from backup, including data, applications and their configuration? And how long did it take?

Data? Backed up daily. Then Weekly to a second location. (Who wants to 
rewrite a day's worth of PhD wrangling?)
System? Monthly: Win7, largely vanilla - some custom settings + updates.
Configuration settings? Weekly.
Applications? Only three 'mission critical' apps - those I backup 
monthly, with configs and email data weekly.
My uni account is managed by ITSS. So who knows - they say regularly 
(daily? weekly? of what?). I keep my own copies of everything I prefer 
not to loose ...

Last restore test: three months ago. Then the day after I verified my 
most recent major system backup, I cleverly deleted the wrong directory 
tree and Win7 went potty. Not a complete success: the above is 
*averages* and even 'automated' backups only capture what you tell them 
too (of course!). But I was able to get my word processor talking to 
EndNote again. *relief*

Guess who used to do legacy database integration work, and disaster 
recovery? (I do *not* recommend rebuilding a 5M HDD by hand, by the way. 
Gets the job done, but ... Oh Gods ...)

-- 
Steven