{"id":3477,"date":"2011-12-30T06:33:49","date_gmt":"2011-12-29T20:33:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/?p=3477"},"modified":"2018-12-11T14:52:19","modified_gmt":"2018-12-11T04:52:19","slug":"why-backup-theory-is-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2011\/12\/30\/why-backup-theory-is-important\/","title":{"rendered":"Why backup theory is important"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Obviously the NetWorker Blog gets a lot of referrals from search engines via people looking specifically for help on particular NetWorker issues they&#8217;re encountering. Even just in the last 8+ hours, here are just some of the search terms that people used:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>nmc doesn&#8217;t start<\/p>\n<p>restore networker aborted saveset<\/p>\n<p>networker disk backup module<\/p>\n<p>nsr_render_log command<\/p>\n<p>nsr_render_log daemon.raw<\/p>\n<p>networker centos support<\/p>\n<p>39077:jbconfig: error, you must install the lus scsi passthrough driver before configuring<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And the list goes on and on, on a daily basis. This was reflected in the <a title=\"Top 10 for 2011\" href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2011\/12\/21\/the-top-ten-for-2011\/\" target=\"_blank\">Top 10 for 2011<\/a> (and indeed, the top 10 for every previous year, too).<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll let you all in on a little secret though: all of those tips, all of those NetWorker basics articles and how to use nsradmin user guides \u2013 they&#8217;re all just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to getting a working backup <em>system<\/em>&nbsp;in place.<\/p>\n<p>You see, a lot of sites don&#8217;t have a backup system at all \u2013 they just have some backup software and backup hardware and configuration. That doesn&#8217;t represent a backup <em>system<\/em>&nbsp;at all. From my article, &#8220;<a title=\"What is a backup system?\" href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2011\/01\/25\/what-is-a-backup-system\/\" target=\"_blank\">What is a backup system?<\/a>&#8220;, I provided this diagram to explain such beasts:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Backup-system.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-2770\" title=\"Backup system\" src=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Backup-system.jpg\" alt=\"Backup system\" width=\"448\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Backup-system.jpg 448w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Backup-system-300x240.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Backup-system-374x300.jpg 374w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 448px) 100vw, 448px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As you can see, the technology (the backup software, hardware and configuration) represents just <em>one<\/em>&nbsp;entry point to having a backup system. The others though are all equally critical; and when you add them all in together, it becomes clear that a backup system will derive much of its success and reliability from the <em>human<\/em>&nbsp;and <em>business<\/em>&nbsp;factors.<\/p>\n<p>The technology, you see, is the easiest part of the backup environment; and it&#8217;s also the part that&#8217;s most likely to appeal to IT people. If you were to graph how much time the average site spends on each of those activities, it would probably look like this:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Imbalanced-backup-systems.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3479\" title=\"Imbalanced backup systems\" src=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Imbalanced-backup-systems.png\" alt=\"Imbalanced backup systems\" width=\"435\" height=\"271\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Imbalanced-backup-systems.png 435w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Imbalanced-backup-systems-300x186.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 435px) 100vw, 435px\" \/><\/a>When in actual fact, it should look more like this:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Balanced-backup-system.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3480\" title=\"Balanced backup system\" src=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Balanced-backup-system.png\" alt=\"Balanced backup system\" width=\"401\" height=\"256\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Balanced-backup-system.png 401w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Balanced-backup-system-300x191.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 401px) 100vw, 401px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The short description? If you chart the amount of time you spend on your backup &#8220;system&#8221;, and the the Technology aspect (software, hardware, configuration) becomes a Pacman to the rest of the components, eating away at the rest of those facets, then you&#8217;ve got a cannibalistic environment that&#8217;s surviving as much as anything on luck\/good fortune as it is on good design.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why I bang on so much about backup theory \u2013 because all the latest and greatest technology in the world won&#8217;t help you at all if you don&#8217;t have everything else set up in conjunction with it:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The <strong>people<\/strong> involved need to know their roles, and participate in both the architecture of the environment and its ongoing operation;<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>processes<\/strong> for use of the system must be well established;<\/li>\n<li>The system must be thoroughly <strong>documented<\/strong>;<\/li>\n<li>The system must be <strong>tested<\/strong> or you&#8217;ve got no way of establishing reliability;<\/li>\n<li>The <strong>Service Level Agreements<\/strong> have to be established or else there&#8217;s no point whatsoever to what you&#8217;re doing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Backup theory isn&#8217;t the <em>boring<\/em>&nbsp;part of a backup system; I&#8217;d suggest it&#8217;s actually the most interesting part of it. Just as I suggested that <a title=\"7 new years backup resolutions for companies\" href=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2011\/12\/27\/7-new-years-backup-resolutions-for-companies\/\" target=\"_blank\">companies need to plan to follow some new years resolutions for backup systems<\/a>, I&#8217;d equally suggest that the people involved in backups should start making it their goal to spend a balanced amount of time on the components that form a backup system.<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t have the theory, you actually don&#8217;t have a system.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to know more, you should <a title=\"Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A corporate insurance policy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Enterprise-Systems-Backup-Recovery-Corporate\/dp\/1420076396\/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1237771982&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">treat yourself to my book<\/a> (now available in <a title=\"Enterprise Systems Backup and Recovery: A corporate insurance policy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Enterprise-Systems-Backup-Recovery-ebook\/dp\/B003HNOS1E\/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&amp;m=A24IB90LPZJ0BS&amp;qid=1237771982&amp;sr=8-1\" target=\"_blank\">Kindle format<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Obviously the NetWorker Blog gets a lot of referrals from search engines via people looking specifically for help on particular&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[152,339,728,763,844,846,896,994,995],"class_list":["post-3477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-architecture","category-backup-theory","tag-backup-system","tag-documentation","tag-people","tag-processes","tag-rpo","tag-rto","tag-sla","tag-testing","tag-theory"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pKpIN-U5","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7492,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3477\/revisions\/7492"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}