[H-GEN] Tape Drives

[Dale Stewart]

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Hi All,

Robert,

why does this all sound strangely familiar.

Regards

Dale Stewart

Never get into a battle of wits with an idiot....they bring you down to
their level and then beat you with experience
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Brockway" <robert at timetraveller.org>
To: <general at lists.humbug.org.au>
Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2002 4:31 PM
Subject: Re: [H-GEN] Tape Drives


> [ Humbug *General* list - semi-serious discussions about Humbug and  ]
> [ Unix-related topics.  Please observe the list's charter.           ]
> [ Worthwhile understanding: http://www.humbug.org.au/netiquette.html ]
>
> On 6 Jan 2002, Jason Henry Parker wrote:
>
> > I've thought about it.  Rsync has that nifty `tunnel me over ssh'
> > feature.
>
> Indeed.  I'll be using this soon for a pair of peered mail servers for a
> large organisation.  They will be on different floors of the same building
> (couldn't get them in different buildings at this stage :)
>
> > Another fun story:
> >
> >    Tiger Team is paid to go onsite to find a way to break into the
> >    company network and find a way to steal their IP (so the hole can
> >    be closed).  After a week of examining how things work, they pack
> >    up and leave.  The next day, a Team member waltzes into the office,
> >    and steals that week's backup tapes from the secretary (presumably
> >    distracted by a convenient phone call) who has them sitting around
> >    waiting for the courier.
>
> 2 words: physical security :)
>
> So often people build whapping great firewalls & forget physical security.
> Indeed, that's another whole thread on its own :)
>
> > > Indeed.  I'm a fan of making a restore system so straightforward you
> > > can do it either with everyone around asking when it will be done
> >
> > How do you, Robert, go about doing that?
>
> Easy.  You make it so straight forward that you can do it "under
> pressure".
>
> I've had to do alot of restores either under pressure or at unpleasant
> times of the day/night.  People do wander in every 5 minutes & ask when it
> will be done.  This is disturbing, so you need the procedure to be well
> documented and _simple_.  These people are usually under pressure from
> those above so explaining that it will "just take time" for the
> data to come off tape doesn't seem to cut it for them.
>
> These situations usually stemmed from lack of preperation of DR.  In my
> previous job I was called in all too late, all too often to fix problems
> that never would have occured if I (or another competent admin) had been
> brought in 6 months before.
>
> It is possible to make a restore procedure so straight forward that you
> can do it easily under pressure when dog tired, or that a junior admin can
> do it because you're on holidays in the Amazon Basin.  The procedure has
> to cover these eventualities because they are real eventualities.
>
> To be honest I'm not sure why people seem so resistent to the idea that
> backups should be simple.  Too often I see people implement elaborate
> backup routines (Jason none of this applies to you guys) but don't regard
> how they will restore under optimal conditions, let alone poor conditions.
>
> A restore should never get more complicated than having to boot off the
> install media, pull a few tapes & restore the needed data.  Having to have
> special apps installed just to go a restore (which seems to be the case
> with certain commercial backup packages) or having to rebuild the OS just
> to be able to restore (which is the case with at least some NT backup
> packages) doesn't cut it. That's why I recommend people do DR tests.  Get
> an old box with compatible h/w and try to restore the server to it.  See
> if the logic fails.
>
> > As for people asking when it will be done, I'd like to think that I'd
> > have sufficient clout to ask my boss to take everyone to lunch.  (If
> > the company is going to bleed money it may as well spend it wisely.)
>
> I've just stopped being a consultant.  The employees are worried because
> the server has broken & the clock is ticking.  They have called you in
> as they are out of their depth (they have never stopped to consider
> backup issues strongly).  They are under pressure. They're trying to be
> nice but you can tell that they are stressed.
>
> It's a bit different if you have a good relationship with your boss, but
> if it is a client you might only have met a few times up to that point,
> you can't ask them to take everyone to lunch :)
>
> To sum up my opinion on this: Backup procedures need to follow the KISS
> principle more than most things.  They need to be simple or their
> complications will come to bite you at the worst possible time.
>
> A general assessment of the network as a whole may be needed to ensure the
> backup procedure is rational. Eg, do you need seperate tape units on each
> server?  Can you backup several systems across the network to a single
> tape?  If you do, how do you restore that data to the (remote) system
> without having to jump through hoops to do so?
> Rob
>
> -- Robert Brockway B.Sc. email: robert at timetraveller.org  ICQ: 104781119
>    Linux counter project ID #16440 (http://counter.li.org)
>    blake: up 41 days, 20:09, 12 users,  load average: 1.00, 1.00, 0.94
>    "The earth is but one country and mankind its citizens" -Baha'u'llah
>
>
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