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Why don't people make backups anymore? I know that using Google Apps is much easier than running your own stuff in-house. It requires much less time and resourc

Why don't people make backups anymore? I know that using Google Apps is much easier than running your own stuff in-house. It requires much less time and resources, but at the same time there are still best practices and disaster recovery plans that should always have something about backups in them. And just having them isn't good enough. They also need to be followed. Having worked at a place without these ( and attempting to get them implemented ) versus where I currently work that has them and follows them, I have to say, there are a lot fewer times where I feel like screaming here. Do it, and stop expecting 100% uptime and availability of all docs/important information from any service, internal or external. Nothing is 100% but there are many ways to make it less stressful.

e1ven 15y ago
That's what we're doing now. We have backups of all our servers, and user backups for all the laptops.. But Google Apps is a pain in the butt to backup, since we don't have direct file access to things. The best strategy I can see, if you want to stick with it, is to email yourself every file, every edit. That's pretty insanely tedious.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  Aren't the Google Docs GDATA enabled? [1] If so then it should be pretty straightforward to write a script which would pull down copies of any file that had changed for local backup. [1] http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_docslist.html http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_docslis...
  - geekam 15y ago
    Again, the idea is that a 'paying' customer should not have to deal with this.
    - ChuckMcM 15y ago
      I understood that, he's going through the 'standard' Google escalation process for paying customers. Someone from Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) in the docs group is no doubt working on a ticket to track down broken GFS cell or maybe a PCR (that was code for changes that might take out a whole cluster or data center for periods of time). Its probably one of a few dozen they are looking at and given the layering the actual fix could take a couple of days to take hold, especially if the data in question is actually only available on tape at this point. But he's an operations guy like me, and he probably wears both a belt and suspenders just in case the belt breaks. So in response to the complaint that emailing yourself files to insure you have copies is a pain, I suggested he script the moral equivalent using Google's provided APIs to the docs service.
- jgarmon 15y ago
  Actually, since SugarSync inaugurated the shameless plug portion of the thread, let it be said that Google Apps is hard to manually backup. That why we automated it at Backupify. http://www.backupify.com http://www.backupify.com Automatic daily Google Apps backups -- all of it, even Google Sites -- for just $3 per user per month. Unlimited storage. One-click restore for Google Docs and Gmail messages. And we're soon rolling out full-domain search, so you can query all your Gmail, Docs and Calendar accounts simultaneously. We also backup your Twitter Feed, your Facebook Pages and your Flickr or Picasa photo albums, should the need arise. Also, for the record, we have a 1-800 number that we actually answer, so in the event you have trouble with our service, we'll pick up the phone and talk you through the fix. We can't repair your Apps account, but we can darn well make sure you get to the data that's in it. We wouldn't charge you, otherwise.
  - edanm 15y ago
    That sounds great, I'll be looking into it. Do you have any integration (or plans for integration) with Dropbox? I'd love to sign up to a service that simply dumps a copy of all my backed up files to a Dropbox folder somewhere, once a week.
    - jgarmon 15y ago
      That's on our roadmap, yes. In the future we'll be storage-agnostic, so you can use our S3 storage, your own S3 storage, Box.net, Dropbox, and a few other options we're mulling over.
  - SupremumLimit 15y ago
    So how come the first paid plan on your site is $4.99 when you said $3?
    - jgarmon 15y ago
      The $4.99 per month plan, Backupify Pro 100, allows for 5 users on an Apps domain and 20GB of storage. That plan is geared towards small mom & pop operations, not the bigdog system e1ven was running. Our Pro 500 plan is $19.99 per month and includes 10 Google Apps users and unlimited storage. That actually breaks down to less than $2 per user per month. Beyond that first ten, additional users are $3 per user per month. I usually just quote the $3 figure for simplicity's sake, especially since most admins using a paid Google Apps domain (Google Apps Premium) have more than 10 users anyway.
Glide 15y ago
One of the system admins here made a comment about how important backups are for a business. He said the only time he ever saw someone get fired immediately was when they screwed up the backup system. He talked me through all the design considerations they had to do for their backup system for the datacenter here. It's a lot of work, but there is a lot of business value in having a working backup system.
anonymous246 15y ago
So your reply about atrocious customer service (i.e., a post about a PAYING customer being unable to get access to his file) is to say "well, you should have backed up"? The real story here is that a paying customer was unable to get anything better than a free user. FWIW, I must be lazy or something, but I don't think the user of a VERSIONED online document storage service should be reasonably be expected to also have his/her own backups. What the hell am I paying for then?
- steevdave 15y ago
  In house or external doesn't matter. You always backup. Because it seems to be a foreign concept in this day and age, I will repeat it again. You always backup.
  - windsurfer 15y ago
    Do you backup your backups? And backup your backup backups? You have to draw the "good enough" line somewhere, and to most people, Google backing up their stuff is backed up enough.
    - gloob 15y ago
      Then they should accept responsibility for the outcome of their decision when Google backing up their stuff isn't "backed up enough".
      - e1ven 15y ago
        Sure, and that's why we're moving off Google for hosted Apps. I entirely agree- When things are mission critical to you, you need them in an environment where you can control it, back it up properly, and ensure it stays up. We're not a priority to Google (Understandably.) For things that really matter to your company, you should bring them in-house, so you can ENSURE they're backed up, and available when necessary. At least that way when things do fail, you can make fixing it a top priority, rather than a nice-to-have.
sreitshamer 15y ago
CloudPull is an app that backs up Google apps data.
sdizdar 15y ago
100% agree. We are developing service which tries to solve some of these problems, so I'll do a shameless plug here. One way to address these kind of problems is to use cloudHQ to synchronize your Google Docs with SugarSync (clickable: http://cloudHQ.net/sugarsync http://cloudHQ.net/sugarsync). (We are releasing dropbox this weekend). Here is our idea: there are many different cloud storage services and each of them is very good for a particular use case but not so good for other use cases. For example, Google Docs service is excellent for collaboration but not so good for storage. On the other hand, Dropbox or Sugarsync service is excellent for storage but not so for collaboration. So if data is continuously synchronized between Google Docs and lets say SugarSync storage, then you can always fall back to SugarSync when Google Docs becomes unavailable and vice versa. In order words, you can use other service as a standby site in case of service unavailability, malicious or accidental deletion of files, etc.
- edanm 15y ago
  That sounds amazing, actually. A service which synced Google Docs documents directly to my Dropbox is definitely something I would be interested in.
- gte910h 15y ago
  I'd love an invite to that service.
kvgr 15y ago
Agree, I use backupify.com to backup my FB, Twitter, Gmail and Docs. The thing about unreliable customer service is really bad, but you just can't relly on one company, even Google.
Sukotto 15y ago
How do you backup Google Documents? Can any of the popular backup utilities do that for you as part of your whole-company backup plan? That would be pretty cool. I know you can use pop (and maybe imap) to pull email out of GMail. but can you recommend a product that can handle slurping and backing up all the mail for your domain?
- angusgr 15y ago
  This will apparently do it from the desktop: http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup You can also do it direct from the web UI. Just select all your documents from the Google Docs homescreen, click on the "Download..." link in the righthand column, and it will ask you what formats you want then generate a zip file to download. I don't know of a command line script that uses OAuth (GDocsBackup has a command line mode but uses password auth.) Anyone?
  - trezor 15y ago
    So basically no way to automate backups. In the real world, that usually translates into "doesn't really have backups".
    - mattmanser 15y ago
      https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/search?orderBy=rating&query=backup https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/search?orderBy... There are plenty of apps on the marketplace. I assume they're all automated.
- ireadzalot 15y ago
  Cyberduck allows to you bulk download them as well at once.
Estragon 15y ago
It's actually pretty easy to take a backup of a Google Apps account. I used to do it in a nightly cron job. There is probably a business idea here.
jbrayton 15y ago
I agree. Using a third party service is reasonable. The important thing is having a backup plan. Shameless plug: This is why I wrote my app, CloudPull. CloudPull backs up your Google Docs, Calendars, and Contacts to your Mac. If for any reason you are unable to access your Google account, CloudPull ensures that you have backups of your Google data on your Mac. More information about CloudPull is available at: http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/ http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/

e1ven 15y ago

That's what we're doing now. We have backups of all our servers, and user backups for all the laptops.. But Google Apps is a pain in the butt to backup, since we don't have direct file access to things. The best strategy I can see, if you want to stick with it, is to email yourself every file, every edit. That's pretty insanely tedious.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
Aren't the Google Docs GDATA enabled? [1] If so then it should be pretty straightforward to write a script which would pull down copies of any file that had changed for local backup. [1] http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_docslist.html http://code.google.com/googleapps/appsscript/service_docslis...
- geekam 15y ago
  Again, the idea is that a 'paying' customer should not have to deal with this.
  - ChuckMcM 15y ago
    I understood that, he's going through the 'standard' Google escalation process for paying customers. Someone from Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) in the docs group is no doubt working on a ticket to track down broken GFS cell or maybe a PCR (that was code for changes that might take out a whole cluster or data center for periods of time). Its probably one of a few dozen they are looking at and given the layering the actual fix could take a couple of days to take hold, especially if the data in question is actually only available on tape at this point. But he's an operations guy like me, and he probably wears both a belt and suspenders just in case the belt breaks. So in response to the complaint that emailing yourself files to insure you have copies is a pain, I suggested he script the moral equivalent using Google's provided APIs to the docs service.
jgarmon 15y ago
Actually, since SugarSync inaugurated the shameless plug portion of the thread, let it be said that Google Apps is hard to manually backup. That why we automated it at Backupify. http://www.backupify.com http://www.backupify.com Automatic daily Google Apps backups -- all of it, even Google Sites -- for just $3 per user per month. Unlimited storage. One-click restore for Google Docs and Gmail messages. And we're soon rolling out full-domain search, so you can query all your Gmail, Docs and Calendar accounts simultaneously. We also backup your Twitter Feed, your Facebook Pages and your Flickr or Picasa photo albums, should the need arise. Also, for the record, we have a 1-800 number that we actually answer, so in the event you have trouble with our service, we'll pick up the phone and talk you through the fix. We can't repair your Apps account, but we can darn well make sure you get to the data that's in it. We wouldn't charge you, otherwise.
- edanm 15y ago
  That sounds great, I'll be looking into it. Do you have any integration (or plans for integration) with Dropbox? I'd love to sign up to a service that simply dumps a copy of all my backed up files to a Dropbox folder somewhere, once a week.
  - jgarmon 15y ago
    That's on our roadmap, yes. In the future we'll be storage-agnostic, so you can use our S3 storage, your own S3 storage, Box.net, Dropbox, and a few other options we're mulling over.
- SupremumLimit 15y ago
  So how come the first paid plan on your site is $4.99 when you said $3?
  - jgarmon 15y ago
    The $4.99 per month plan, Backupify Pro 100, allows for 5 users on an Apps domain and 20GB of storage. That plan is geared towards small mom & pop operations, not the bigdog system e1ven was running. Our Pro 500 plan is $19.99 per month and includes 10 Google Apps users and unlimited storage. That actually breaks down to less than $2 per user per month. Beyond that first ten, additional users are $3 per user per month. I usually just quote the $3 figure for simplicity's sake, especially since most admins using a paid Google Apps domain (Google Apps Premium) have more than 10 users anyway.

Glide 15y ago

One of the system admins here made a comment about how important backups are for a business. He said the only time he ever saw someone get fired immediately was when they screwed up the backup system. He talked me through all the design considerations they had to do for their backup system for the datacenter here. It's a lot of work, but there is a lot of business value in having a working backup system.

anonymous246 15y ago

So your reply about atrocious customer service (i.e., a post about a PAYING customer being unable to get access to his file) is to say "well, you should have backed up"? The real story here is that a paying customer was unable to get anything better than a free user. FWIW, I must be lazy or something, but I don't think the user of a VERSIONED online document storage service should be reasonably be expected to also have his/her own backups. What the hell am I paying for then?

steevdave 15y ago
In house or external doesn't matter. You always backup. Because it seems to be a foreign concept in this day and age, I will repeat it again. You always backup.
- windsurfer 15y ago
  Do you backup your backups? And backup your backup backups? You have to draw the "good enough" line somewhere, and to most people, Google backing up their stuff is backed up enough.
  - gloob 15y ago
    Then they should accept responsibility for the outcome of their decision when Google backing up their stuff isn't "backed up enough".
    - e1ven 15y ago
      Sure, and that's why we're moving off Google for hosted Apps. I entirely agree- When things are mission critical to you, you need them in an environment where you can control it, back it up properly, and ensure it stays up. We're not a priority to Google (Understandably.) For things that really matter to your company, you should bring them in-house, so you can ENSURE they're backed up, and available when necessary. At least that way when things do fail, you can make fixing it a top priority, rather than a nice-to-have.

sreitshamer 15y ago

CloudPull is an app that backs up Google apps data.

sdizdar 15y ago

100% agree. We are developing service which tries to solve some of these problems, so I'll do a shameless plug here. One way to address these kind of problems is to use cloudHQ to synchronize your Google Docs with SugarSync (clickable: http://cloudHQ.net/sugarsync http://cloudHQ.net/sugarsync). (We are releasing dropbox this weekend). Here is our idea: there are many different cloud storage services and each of them is very good for a particular use case but not so good for other use cases. For example, Google Docs service is excellent for collaboration but not so good for storage. On the other hand, Dropbox or Sugarsync service is excellent for storage but not so for collaboration. So if data is continuously synchronized between Google Docs and lets say SugarSync storage, then you can always fall back to SugarSync when Google Docs becomes unavailable and vice versa. In order words, you can use other service as a standby site in case of service unavailability, malicious or accidental deletion of files, etc.

edanm 15y ago
That sounds amazing, actually. A service which synced Google Docs documents directly to my Dropbox is definitely something I would be interested in.
gte910h 15y ago
I'd love an invite to that service.

kvgr 15y ago

Agree, I use backupify.com to backup my FB, Twitter, Gmail and Docs. The thing about unreliable customer service is really bad, but you just can't relly on one company, even Google.

Sukotto 15y ago

How do you backup Google Documents? Can any of the popular backup utilities do that for you as part of your whole-company backup plan? That would be pretty cool. I know you can use pop (and maybe imap) to pull email out of GMail. but can you recommend a product that can handle slurping and backing up all the mail for your domain?

angusgr 15y ago
This will apparently do it from the desktop: http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup http://gs.fhtino.it/gdocbackup You can also do it direct from the web UI. Just select all your documents from the Google Docs homescreen, click on the "Download..." link in the righthand column, and it will ask you what formats you want then generate a zip file to download. I don't know of a command line script that uses OAuth (GDocsBackup has a command line mode but uses password auth.) Anyone?
- trezor 15y ago
  So basically no way to automate backups. In the real world, that usually translates into "doesn't really have backups".
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/search?orderBy=rating&query=backup https://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/search?orderBy... There are plenty of apps on the marketplace. I assume they're all automated.
ireadzalot 15y ago
Cyberduck allows to you bulk download them as well at once.

Estragon 15y ago

It's actually pretty easy to take a backup of a Google Apps account. I used to do it in a nightly cron job. There is probably a business idea here.

jbrayton 15y ago

I agree. Using a third party service is reasonable. The important thing is having a backup plan. Shameless plug: This is why I wrote my app, CloudPull. CloudPull backs up your Google Docs, Calendars, and Contacts to your Mac. If for any reason you are unable to access your Google account, CloudPull ensures that you have backups of your Google data on your Mac. More information about CloudPull is available at: http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/ http://www.goldenhillsoftware.com/