Re: Cloud computing ( was Re: Linux Petition )

On Tue, 2012-04-24 at 13:09 +0100, Simon Wilcox wrote:
> If you're running your own servers of course you send backups off
> site. You'd be insane not to.
> 
> In addition, you should make sure that the offsite location isn't
> somewhere to which you can be denied access at the same time by the
> same provider. e.g. not another datacentre operated by the same
> provider where you'll be locked out of both if the provider goes bust.

Backups are important (essential even!) however people often forget that
a backup is useless unless you can use it in a timely manner so it is
just as essential to ensure you can gain access to and bring into use
any backup very quickly and to actually test this with some frequency.

This means that copying to another data centre is good only to the
extent that you can then bring services into operation at that backup
data centre quickly.

Similarly copying to a backup at home or in the office is only any good
if you can quickly get that backup into service in a meaningful way.

A lot of backup facilities are useful only for storage but not for
actually using the data in situ. If you have a backup of several hundred
GB it may take days or even weeks to transfer that data to a new site
and so restore service. If that happens very often you may as well not
bother as your business is already dead.



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