The lesson here isn't "back up everything" but really is (and has always been) "make sure we can restore the system" Because backing up is good but totally irr

The lesson here isn't "back up everything" but really is (and has always been) "make sure we can restore the system" Because backing up is good but totally irrelevant if you don't occasionally use on of those backups to restore back to a good state. One quick an easy way to test that is to have new developers apply the deploy/restore system to their own machine using a recent backup. (Obviously scrubbed of sensitive info.) You get a developer online faster, another set of eyes on the process, and validation that it works. It's not perfect but pretty good.