5 ms·

I think that a lot of people think they have backups, but they've never restored them, so I thought it would be a good practice if everyone starting thinking in

by spolsky 17y ago

I think that a lot of people think they have backups, but they've never restored them, so I thought it would be a good practice if everyone starting thinking in terms of "have we restored" rather than "are we backing up." Of course, there's no question that the thought process started when Jeff Atwood's personal blog was lost, but don't think for a minute that the only way I communicate with him is by blogging... we talk all the time, over skype, over email, over FogBugz, and sometimes, when there's something other people can learn, in public on the internet.

telemachos 17y ago
The weird part is not that you made a blog post about this issue now. The weird part is that you didn't mention the 400 pound gorilla in the room. ("I've been thinking about this for a long time, but it really hit home recently when...") To my mind, that's why the post seems odd or passive aggressive. (It's a relatively short post as well. It just feels clipped somehow. The reader inevitably says, "What's not here?")
- mechanical_fish 17y ago
  It may be difficult to remember now that Twitter is all the rage, but essayists often aim for that "timeless" quality. You want the essay to seem as relevant three years from now as it is today. The web has more than enough content that feels stale after a week. Better to aim for something with a slightly longer shelf life.
  - pyre 17y ago
    Yea, but how is "my friend/business partner recently lost his entire blog due to poor backups, and it got me thinking..." not 'timeless?'
    - mattmanser 17y ago
      Not poor backups, poor restores. You're missing the point of the article!
      - oscardelben 17y ago
        It's also poor backup. They thought the backup was being done by their hosting company while in reality it was failing silently.
        Periodic 17y ago
        A good backup is one that can be restored.
      - pyre 17y ago
        A poor backup becomes a poor restore, while a good backup isn't necessarily a good restore. It's like quibbling over whether I said, "his car was completely totaled in the race" rather than, "he didn't win the race." No one thinks that not crashing your car implies that you've won a race, but you can't win a race with a crashed car.
    - forensic 17y ago
      To be honest, I don't give a shit about his friend/business partner. But I do like his idea. So I appreciate that he omits pointless personal details and just sticks to the meat of the article. When a writer expects me to read a bunch of self-indulgent cliche boilerplate I usually hit the back button.
- flogic 17y ago
  It's generally better if you try to avoid putting your business partners or employees down in public.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- nollidge 17y ago
  This doesn't make any sense. Unless you have some other reason to suspect there's animosity between them, why would you invent drama between the lines?
  - mistermann 17y ago
    Check the URL in your browser....and the author of the article being discussed. Sufficient explanation for anything that will transpire here.
oscardelben 17y ago
Also I see your business partner saying that the chance of a fire in the datacenter is so small that he should also worry about meteors at that point. I think that event is not that rare tough, just recall the last one in Seattle...
bhousel 17y ago
"Let’s stop asking people if they’re doing backups, and start asking if they’re doing restores." No, because restores wouldn't have helped Jeff Atwood. You can backup a database onto the same server that hosts the database, and still successfully restore it later. We should instead be talking about the concept of Continuity of Business. Decide how important it is for your data to continue to be available (constant availability vs. several days downtime vs. don't care if it disappears entirely?), then make a plan that gives you that availability. What I'm describing isn't necessarily complicated. For example, I keep all my backup data (photos, music, etc) on a USB drive. Every morning it's rsynced to a hot spare. Every few weeks, I swap the spare with another one in a safe deposit box at the bank. (This means that we can recover from both immediate accidental deletions, and also ones that we don't catch for a few days, and disasters like theft or fire). I check every few days to make sure the drives are still working, and my wife knows how to switch the drives and has a key to the safe deposit box, just in case something happens to me. Anyway, we feel that these are appropriate steps for protecting the data that we don't want to lose. But the important point is that everyone should make a plan that's appropriate for them.
- spolsky 17y ago
  In the article, I wrote "If you’re running a web service, you need to be able to show me that you can build a reasonably recent copy of the entire site, in a reasonable amount of time, on a new server or servers without ever accessing anything that was in the original data center."
wglb 17y ago
Good blog post, particularly since it agrees with something I noted a little while ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=990903 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=990903
nomoresecrets 17y ago
Yes, in many ways, Jeff 'took one for the team' in a big way, in that he reminded a lot of people to "Er...I'll just check my backups and make sure they're working." We're tech types, but e.g. I know a programmer who never backed up his laptop (with important stuff) because he'd never had a hard drive go bad on him. You'll never guess what happened... The hard part is getting 'normal' people to back up. It's really hard. They have all their data/documents on that laptop, and all the digital photographs from the first 18 months of their baby's life or whatever, but if you advise them to back up, you sound like some crazy lady who throws cats at people in the street.
- access_denied 17y ago
  [ ] Your normal people do use Mac OS X Leopare [X] Your normal people do not use Mac OS X Leopard Time Machine is the solution: everyone gets it (at least the normal people I introduced it to).
- diN0bot 17y ago
  lots of people want to, but it can seem overwhelming. i'm quite technical as a programmer, but even i avoid IT muck whenever possible. that's probably why companies such as dropbox are doing so well. making backups/restores easy is sweet. (ps - thanks superduper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription... "heroic system recovery for mere mortals")
lucifer 17y ago
What's ironic (and somewhat irksome) is the preachy tone of your post.

by spolsky 17y ago

telemachos 17y ago

The weird part is not that you made a blog post about this issue now. The weird part is that you didn't mention the 400 pound gorilla in the room. ("I've been thinking about this for a long time, but it really hit home recently when...") To my mind, that's why the post seems odd or passive aggressive. (It's a relatively short post as well. It just feels clipped somehow. The reader inevitably says, "What's not here?")

mechanical_fish 17y ago
It may be difficult to remember now that Twitter is all the rage, but essayists often aim for that "timeless" quality. You want the essay to seem as relevant three years from now as it is today. The web has more than enough content that feels stale after a week. Better to aim for something with a slightly longer shelf life.
- pyre 17y ago
  Yea, but how is "my friend/business partner recently lost his entire blog due to poor backups, and it got me thinking..." not 'timeless?'
  - mattmanser 17y ago
    Not poor backups, poor restores. You're missing the point of the article!
    - oscardelben 17y ago
      It's also poor backup. They thought the backup was being done by their hosting company while in reality it was failing silently.
      - Periodic 17y ago
        A good backup is one that can be restored.
    - pyre 17y ago
      A poor backup becomes a poor restore, while a good backup isn't necessarily a good restore. It's like quibbling over whether I said, "his car was completely totaled in the race" rather than, "he didn't win the race." No one thinks that not crashing your car implies that you've won a race, but you can't win a race with a crashed car.
  - forensic 17y ago
    To be honest, I don't give a shit about his friend/business partner. But I do like his idea. So I appreciate that he omits pointless personal details and just sticks to the meat of the article. When a writer expects me to read a bunch of self-indulgent cliche boilerplate I usually hit the back button.
flogic 17y ago
It's generally better if you try to avoid putting your business partners or employees down in public.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
nollidge 17y ago
This doesn't make any sense. Unless you have some other reason to suspect there's animosity between them, why would you invent drama between the lines?
- mistermann 17y ago
  Check the URL in your browser....and the author of the article being discussed. Sufficient explanation for anything that will transpire here.

oscardelben 17y ago

Also I see your business partner saying that the chance of a fire in the datacenter is so small that he should also worry about meteors at that point. I think that event is not that rare tough, just recall the last one in Seattle...

bhousel 17y ago

"Let’s stop asking people if they’re doing backups, and start asking if they’re doing restores." No, because restores wouldn't have helped Jeff Atwood. You can backup a database onto the same server that hosts the database, and still successfully restore it later. We should instead be talking about the concept of Continuity of Business. Decide how important it is for your data to continue to be available (constant availability vs. several days downtime vs. don't care if it disappears entirely?), then make a plan that gives you that availability. What I'm describing isn't necessarily complicated. For example, I keep all my backup data (photos, music, etc) on a USB drive. Every morning it's rsynced to a hot spare. Every few weeks, I swap the spare with another one in a safe deposit box at the bank. (This means that we can recover from both immediate accidental deletions, and also ones that we don't catch for a few days, and disasters like theft or fire). I check every few days to make sure the drives are still working, and my wife knows how to switch the drives and has a key to the safe deposit box, just in case something happens to me. Anyway, we feel that these are appropriate steps for protecting the data that we don't want to lose. But the important point is that everyone should make a plan that's appropriate for them.

spolsky 17y ago
In the article, I wrote "If you’re running a web service, you need to be able to show me that you can build a reasonably recent copy of the entire site, in a reasonable amount of time, on a new server or servers without ever accessing anything that was in the original data center."

wglb 17y ago

Good blog post, particularly since it agrees with something I noted a little while ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=990903 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=990903

nomoresecrets 17y ago

Yes, in many ways, Jeff 'took one for the team' in a big way, in that he reminded a lot of people to "Er...I'll just check my backups and make sure they're working." We're tech types, but e.g. I know a programmer who never backed up his laptop (with important stuff) because he'd never had a hard drive go bad on him. You'll never guess what happened... The hard part is getting 'normal' people to back up. It's really hard. They have all their data/documents on that laptop, and all the digital photographs from the first 18 months of their baby's life or whatever, but if you advise them to back up, you sound like some crazy lady who throws cats at people in the street.

access_denied 17y ago
[ ] Your normal people do use Mac OS X Leopare [X] Your normal people do not use Mac OS X Leopard Time Machine is the solution: everyone gets it (at least the normal people I introduced it to).
diN0bot 17y ago
lots of people want to, but it can seem overwhelming. i'm quite technical as a programmer, but even i avoid IT muck whenever possible. that's probably why companies such as dropbox are doing so well. making backups/restores easy is sweet. (ps - thanks superduper! http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription... "heroic system recovery for mere mortals")

lucifer 17y ago

What's ironic (and somewhat irksome) is the preachy tone of your post.