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When stuff "just works", you don't need to check your backups. I fully trust my iPhone's iCloud backups, my Time Machine backups, and my cloud rsyncs. Time Mach

When stuff "just works", you don't need to check your backups. I fully trust my iPhone's iCloud backups, my Time Machine backups, and my cloud rsyncs. Time Machine also lets me know if they get corrupted, or if I haven't backed up in a while. That's how backups should work - an adage of "you don't have backups unless you check them" just won't work for most people.

mosselman 10y ago
Having Time Machine report to you is 'checking' as well. Nobody said anything about any manual labour as far as I can tell.
- timcederman 10y ago
  In the thread about the Gitlab backups, manual checking (not "labour") was suggested at least twice.
cookiecaper 10y ago
Big difference between consumer-level backup of phones and PCs and enterprise backup for servers crammed with custom software.
- timcederman 10y ago
  Why should "check your backups day" apply to only enterprise backup? I've seen it repeated as gospel many times on Hacker News to folks who've lost backups that it was their own fault for not checking them. My point is we should focus on a software solution to making this more robust, and not blaming people.
  - cookiecaper 10y ago
    I'm not saying it should apply only to enterprise backup, it's just that as you pointed out, the consumer-oriented backup solutions already work pretty reliably, making a "check your backups day" unlikely to matter to the average consumer (nevermind that given daily interaction with the gamut of Google's and Apple's services, consumers frequently "check their backups" in the course of their daily activities). I think easy, good server-level backup software would be great. The problem is that enterprise servers are usually highly customized, part of a large, unique architecture, and contain a lot of proprietary, confidential, and potentially personal, legally protected data. That makes it a lot harder to get a one-size-fits-all backup solution set up, which means that the onus of reliable backups will, of necessity, rest upon the company's administrators. It is very sad when no one checks backups. This bites companies every day and it's usually easy to sympathize, but there's no excuse for it. GitLab needs to perform a serious review of its processes. I've checked out the GitLab job listings that get published on HN Who's Hiring and other places regularly (I'm currently 100% remote with my current employer and like to track other 100% remote employment opportunities). They have a salary calculator/estimator and personally, I was really underwhelmed with the values it would put out. That calculator makes a city price index adjustment from the base salary and contains a statement that says GitLab prefers to hire people who live in less expensive cities. I also remember feeling that their interview process sounded a little overbearing. It may be time for GitLab to consider upping the ante on its recruitment procedures and adding some more experienced people to the ranks.
pjc50 10y ago
I've seen the occasional report of Time Machine failure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10681776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10681776
misternugget 10y ago
You might want to check your Time Machine backups by hand from time to time using the tmutil[1] tool. My Time Machine backups in the past have been missing gigabytes of data, without me telling anything about it. And not just volatile data, like temp files or caches, but photos, music and documents. [1]: http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/21/compare-time-machine-backups-tmutil/ http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/21/compare-time-machine-backups-...
- overcast 10y ago
  I use Time Machine for quick recovery stuff, and then Arq Backup to send to remote storage.
wila 10y ago
Time Machine backups are great for a lot of use cases, but beware to not trust your virtual machines to Time Machine [0]. You might end up disappointed if you do. [0] https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013628 https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013628

mosselman 10y ago

Having Time Machine report to you is 'checking' as well. Nobody said anything about any manual labour as far as I can tell.

timcederman 10y ago
In the thread about the Gitlab backups, manual checking (not "labour") was suggested at least twice.

cookiecaper 10y ago

Big difference between consumer-level backup of phones and PCs and enterprise backup for servers crammed with custom software.

timcederman 10y ago
Why should "check your backups day" apply to only enterprise backup? I've seen it repeated as gospel many times on Hacker News to folks who've lost backups that it was their own fault for not checking them. My point is we should focus on a software solution to making this more robust, and not blaming people.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  I'm not saying it should apply only to enterprise backup, it's just that as you pointed out, the consumer-oriented backup solutions already work pretty reliably, making a "check your backups day" unlikely to matter to the average consumer (nevermind that given daily interaction with the gamut of Google's and Apple's services, consumers frequently "check their backups" in the course of their daily activities). I think easy, good server-level backup software would be great. The problem is that enterprise servers are usually highly customized, part of a large, unique architecture, and contain a lot of proprietary, confidential, and potentially personal, legally protected data. That makes it a lot harder to get a one-size-fits-all backup solution set up, which means that the onus of reliable backups will, of necessity, rest upon the company's administrators. It is very sad when no one checks backups. This bites companies every day and it's usually easy to sympathize, but there's no excuse for it. GitLab needs to perform a serious review of its processes. I've checked out the GitLab job listings that get published on HN Who's Hiring and other places regularly (I'm currently 100% remote with my current employer and like to track other 100% remote employment opportunities). They have a salary calculator/estimator and personally, I was really underwhelmed with the values it would put out. That calculator makes a city price index adjustment from the base salary and contains a statement that says GitLab prefers to hire people who live in less expensive cities. I also remember feeling that their interview process sounded a little overbearing. It may be time for GitLab to consider upping the ante on its recruitment procedures and adding some more experienced people to the ranks.

pjc50 10y ago

I've seen the occasional report of Time Machine failure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10681776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10681776

misternugget 10y ago

You might want to check your Time Machine backups by hand from time to time using the tmutil[1] tool. My Time Machine backups in the past have been missing gigabytes of data, without me telling anything about it. And not just volatile data, like temp files or caches, but photos, music and documents. [1]: http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/21/compare-time-machine-backups-tmutil/ http://osxdaily.com/2012/01/21/compare-time-machine-backups-...

overcast 10y ago
I use Time Machine for quick recovery stuff, and then Arq Backup to send to remote storage.

wila 10y ago

Time Machine backups are great for a lot of use cases, but beware to not trust your virtual machines to Time Machine [0]. You might end up disappointed if you do. [0] https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013628 https://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013628