20 Common Misconceptions about Backup

There’s lots of misconceptions about backup – here, I want to present 20 of them:

1. Backup is an IT activity. It’s not. It’s a corporate insurance policy.
2. Backup is a function of ILM. It’s not. It belongs in ILP, which is not the same thing. See “Think Backup Belongs in ILM? Think again“.
3. Backup is not a production activity. It is. See “Backup is a production activity“.
4. You don’t need a support contract for your backup environment. You do. See, “Perils of an Icarus support contract“.
5. You can migrate hardware you’re phasing out of production into backup and DR. You can’t. See, “If you wouldn’t drink it, don’t cook with it“.
6. Backup failures happen. They don’t. (Potential recovery failures happen.) See, “There is no such thing as a backup failure“.
7. You can have a backup system without a zero error policy. You can’t. See “No Zero Error Policy? No backup system“.
8. Backup stops at servers and the occasional desktop. It doesn’t. See “What don’t you backup?“, and “But where does the DPA fit in?“
9. Deduplication can be tacked into a backup solution and immediately solve your capacity problems. It’s not that simple. See “7 common problems with deduplication“.
10. Inclusive backup policies work. They don’t. See “First, backup everything“.
11. Backup (and more generally, IT) issues are technology issues. They’re usually not. See, “Technology is rarely the issue“.
12. Backup capacity issues are solved by adding more capacity first. You should add backup capacity last. See, “A basic data lifecycle“, and its follow up posts.
13. Archive is backup. It isn’t. See “Archive is not backup“.
14. A complex backup environment is a good backup environment. Wrong. See, “Of unicorns and horses“.
15. Backups should be rigorously cost controlled, with every saving aggressively pursued. Wrong. See, “Backups are not about being miserly“.
16. Cross-site backups allow you to avoid cloning or backup duplication. Nope, definitely not. See, “You can’t escape cloning with cross-site backups“.
17. Backup sucks. Wrong. It’s actually one of the best jobs you could hope for. See, “Backup does not suck“.
18. Tape is dead. No, the usage strategy has evolved, that’s all. See, “Direct to tape is dead, long live tape“.
19. Capacity planning can be done quickly. No, it can’t (unless you have the right tools). See, “Capacity planning – quickly or properly?“
20. The dense filesystem problem doesn’t really happen. Yes, it does. See, “In-lab review of the impact of dense filesystems“.