You better spend time and make sure it’s saved.
THE DISCUSSION
What is one of the most important actions an IT organization can take regarding the users of the organization they support? I know, you can think of at least a half dozen things right? But to a user his most important item is his stuff. In this case his data. You, the IT guy, better have his stuff if he loses it. And we, the IT guys, better have his stuff if we lose it. Yes, it happens both ways; a user’s hard drive crashes or (heaven forbid) a mail file store dies in the middle of the duty day.
So, what is your back up plan? You have one right? Have you actually seen it in hard copy or has your server shop lead told you the plan. You know, full backups on Friday, incrementals Saturday through Thursday, and offsite storage of the Friday backup tapes transported on Saturday, and at least three weeks of full backups off site. Yes is sounds great and we all have something similar but when was the last time you updated the plan. Perhaps you changed your offsite location or as many you now use online storage, or feed your date to an offsite server over the internet, and even perhaps your hardware has changed. Yes, this has happened to me. A new offsite location and data feed versus tape means outdated plan.
Here is another question; when was the last time you verified that this backup plan was actually being executed? So you ask your backup guy (this is only an example and has never happened to me, all of my backup guys would never let this happen) how Fridays backup went. He looks thoughtful and says that the initial backup was corrupt so they tried again with the same result. He couldn’t get the full to work so he ended up doing an incremental. So that means you have a full from last Friday and nine incrementals counting the weekend. Here comes that thoughtful look again, well no, last Fridays full didn’t work either. So now you’re looking at 16 incrementals and a full backup. You next piece of sage advice is get with the vendor and get this thing fixed. Fine thing you checked.
Remember; what gets checked gets done.
THE ACTION
1. Get a hard copy of your plan.
2. Update the plan with all the changes needed. Include hardware devices and how to actually do the backup. Sometimes backup guys find other jobs.
3. Publish and check the plan for two full backup cycles. Have someone other than the backup guy do the actual backups. See step 2 above about backup guys.
4. At least once a month have a non backup guy work up a full backup.
5. Every six months review you plan for currency. Put in on your email client with a reminder notice.
6. At least once a week physically check that the backup was done.
Hint: Remember to do the weekly check because…what gets checked gets done.
-DO IT NOW AND ENGAGE-
