Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Linux is Alright
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | For years now I've been ribbing my friend for being a Linuxhead. Then I
> | bought a Buffalo Terastation NAS for my house. Well, to make a long
> | story much shorter, I lost my array and all of my data along with it.
> | After poking around for a little while my friend discovered that it was
> | Linux-based. So he asked me if he could have a crack at recovering it. I
> | said sure... I wasn't really looking forward to the $3K it would take to
> | have it recovered elsewhere. And did I mention this array had all my SQL
> | backups and other important docs on it? I really couldn't afford to lose
> | everything on it.
> |
> | Well, after messing with it off and on for a couple weeks, he came over
> | last night with a solid game plan and got the array back up and I was
> | able to pull pretty much everything off of it.
> |
> | I don't know if something like this would've been possible on a Windows
> | system.
> `----
>
>
http://weblog.infoworld.com/dbunderground/archives/2007/09/linux_is_alrigh.html
>
spit-snarl-grrrrrrrr
I'm sorry if I scared you, but this subject does make me cross.
How many times do I have to say this hmmmmm? Ok, so you may not have heard
me say it before but you had better listen this time.
AN ARRAY IS NOT A BACKUP
A SERVER IS NOT A BACKUP
A NAS IS NOT A BACKUP
Each can have a backup, or each can be a backup, but none of them is a
backup.
So do not assume that any of them is a backup of your system or system data.
If you have your world on any of those then you still have your data in one
place with one point of failure.
An array can give you uninterrupted processing and data access. It is only
protecting you from the problem of a failed drive, or in the case of a
cluster a failed machine. The word backup don't come into it at all.
A server is only a backup if you also have your data in another place. I
know that is simple, but it's amazing how many machines I still come across
where the server is the only location of a companies data, often with just
a few individual backups running for what they believe are important files.
Gads man I even have come across a guy who backed up his company server
using a Windows PC, where he backed up from a mapped drive F: onto another
mapped drive Z:. Yes, you guessed it, both on the same volume on the same
physical drive on the same server. BUB (Bloody Useless Backup).
NAS is only an external drive that you access via the network, it isn't a
backup unless you also have that data somewhere else.
Phew, have to wipe my brow with a damp dish cloth now. I tell you the truth,
that very early in my carreer on UNIX I nearly lost an entire company
because I was lazy with backups. I had the worst weekend of my life, fate
took me right through the 48 hours in a sweat believing that I had screwed
up the whole company, and it was pure luck, not design, that allowed me to
recover the server data with just enough time for a quick test before users
started coming online.
Since then I go for overkill in backups. You don't have to go as far with it
as I do, but an absolute minimum backup is very simply having your data in
more than one place so that one point of failure can not wipe you out. Then
to update that backup on a regular basis, even when you can't be arsed.
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