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Yes, but I'm not sure if your comment is targeted at CrystalTech or codinghorror? You can't outsource liability. If YOU are not testing YOUR backups. YOU fai

by brk 17y ago

Yes, but I'm not sure if your comment is targeted at CrystalTech or codinghorror? You can't outsource liability. If YOU are not testing YOUR backups. YOU fail.

jrockway 17y ago
It's a blog. How much time and money is worth spending on this? (I backup my Slicehost account with their official service. If they die and my backup dies with it, that's fine; I don't have the time or money to do anything better.)
- robryan 17y ago
  I'd say a lot to Jeff, not only is it a popular blog standing alone and probably generates a decent income but it's also very important to him for cross promotion.
  - bad_user 17y ago
    And do you think Jeff's blog just got less popular?
    - gaius 17y ago
      He's not serving any AdWords off that page :-P
    - diN0bot 17y ago
      his position as looking down on coding horror has somewhat moved to being part of the team. not necessarily a bad thing.
- samdk 17y ago
  You don't need to put much time or money into it. The bare minimum of a weekly cron-automated rsync job can be done in a few minutes, even if you've never done it before.
- PStamatiou 17y ago
  If I was in his shoes, yeah I'd be freaking out too and trying to get everything recovered ASAP. Then again my blog pays more than my (startup) job so that's why I care about it.
Confusion 17y ago
You can't outsource liability. So you've tested whether your toaster has proper grounding and other safety precautions, in case it shortcircuits? I bet you haven't and that why you should stop repeating that stupid soundbite. We all 'outsource' liability all the time: we pay others to perform services for us and hold them responsible for the proper execution of those services. This includes hosting content and backing up that content.
- brk 17y ago
  So you've tested whether your toaster has proper grounding and other safety precautions, in case it shortcircuits? Nope. I have a fully paid and verified home owners insurance policy though that covers any probable loss from a toaster fire. It's sort of like having an offsite backup of my important personal stuff. Your example is really not a parallel to a data backup. It's difficult to fully test all of the toasters failure modes in a non-destructive way. It's easy to setup an automated backup to a remote location. Given the gmail storage limits, you could tar and gzip your files and email your gmail account with the backup data. A better example in a "homeowner" realm is the flood pans that you can buy to put under your water heater or washing machine. You'd like to be able to trust that the manufacturer made a waterproof device, but at the same time it's cheap and easy to insure yourself against the most common failure modes. The sound bite is not stupid. People who believe you can outsource all the messyness of keeping a website alive are continually bitten in the ass by EC2, Rackspace, etc. failures.
  - sailormoon 17y ago
    An insurance policy is equivalent to an offsite backup? So you don't have any personal items of any intrinsic value at all; you could lose it all, get a cheque in return, and be happy? Wow. Well, awesome, but I doubt that is common. And look, I agree with you in many ways - people need to take responsibility for their own backups, sure. But there is a division of responsibility. I mean, even if all my backups are 100% perfect, I am still trusting the hosting provider to, well, keep the power on. Pay the peering bill. Keep the server temp down. Not go bankrupt tomorrow. You can just follow this chain as far as you want. Whether you like it or not, you're utterly dependent on the DNS root server admins. There is nothing at all you can do to prepare yourself for their failure. I bet you can't generate your own electricity or grow your own food, either. All of civilisation is built on co-dependency and delegation of responsibility. It's the only way to do anything complex. At some point, you must delegate. Atwood should have checked - but he was paying his host to do it. That's like having an employee whose job it is to do backups. At some point, you just have to let go and trust them. Otherwise you can never really do anything; you're caught up in checking minutia; I can give examples of this kind of leadership failure until my keyboard breaks.

by brk 17y ago

Yes, but I'm not sure if your comment is targeted at CrystalTech or codinghorror? You can't outsource liability. If YOU are not testing YOUR backups. YOU fail.

jrockway 17y ago

It's a blog. How much time and money is worth spending on this? (I backup my Slicehost account with their official service. If they die and my backup dies with it, that's fine; I don't have the time or money to do anything better.)

robryan 17y ago
I'd say a lot to Jeff, not only is it a popular blog standing alone and probably generates a decent income but it's also very important to him for cross promotion.
- bad_user 17y ago
  And do you think Jeff's blog just got less popular?
  - gaius 17y ago
    He's not serving any AdWords off that page :-P
  - diN0bot 17y ago
    his position as looking down on coding horror has somewhat moved to being part of the team. not necessarily a bad thing.
samdk 17y ago
You don't need to put much time or money into it. The bare minimum of a weekly cron-automated rsync job can be done in a few minutes, even if you've never done it before.
PStamatiou 17y ago
If I was in his shoes, yeah I'd be freaking out too and trying to get everything recovered ASAP. Then again my blog pays more than my (startup) job so that's why I care about it.

Confusion 17y ago

You can't outsource liability. So you've tested whether your toaster has proper grounding and other safety precautions, in case it shortcircuits? I bet you haven't and that why you should stop repeating that stupid soundbite. We all 'outsource' liability all the time: we pay others to perform services for us and hold them responsible for the proper execution of those services. This includes hosting content and backing up that content.

brk 17y ago
So you've tested whether your toaster has proper grounding and other safety precautions, in case it shortcircuits? Nope. I have a fully paid and verified home owners insurance policy though that covers any probable loss from a toaster fire. It's sort of like having an offsite backup of my important personal stuff. Your example is really not a parallel to a data backup. It's difficult to fully test all of the toasters failure modes in a non-destructive way. It's easy to setup an automated backup to a remote location. Given the gmail storage limits, you could tar and gzip your files and email your gmail account with the backup data. A better example in a "homeowner" realm is the flood pans that you can buy to put under your water heater or washing machine. You'd like to be able to trust that the manufacturer made a waterproof device, but at the same time it's cheap and easy to insure yourself against the most common failure modes. The sound bite is not stupid. People who believe you can outsource all the messyness of keeping a website alive are continually bitten in the ass by EC2, Rackspace, etc. failures.
- sailormoon 17y ago
  An insurance policy is equivalent to an offsite backup? So you don't have any personal items of any intrinsic value at all; you could lose it all, get a cheque in return, and be happy? Wow. Well, awesome, but I doubt that is common. And look, I agree with you in many ways - people need to take responsibility for their own backups, sure. But there is a division of responsibility. I mean, even if all my backups are 100% perfect, I am still trusting the hosting provider to, well, keep the power on. Pay the peering bill. Keep the server temp down. Not go bankrupt tomorrow. You can just follow this chain as far as you want. Whether you like it or not, you're utterly dependent on the DNS root server admins. There is nothing at all you can do to prepare yourself for their failure. I bet you can't generate your own electricity or grow your own food, either. All of civilisation is built on co-dependency and delegation of responsibility. It's the only way to do anything complex. At some point, you must delegate. Atwood should have checked - but he was paying his host to do it. That's like having an employee whose job it is to do backups. At some point, you just have to let go and trust them. Otherwise you can never really do anything; you're caught up in checking minutia; I can give examples of this kind of leadership failure until my keyboard breaks.