{"id":906,"date":"2009-08-27T07:22:16","date_gmt":"2009-08-26T21:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.wordpress.com\/?p=906"},"modified":"2009-08-27T07:22:16","modified_gmt":"2009-08-26T21:22:16","slug":"backup-does-not-suck","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/08\/27\/backup-does-not-suck\/","title":{"rendered":"Backup does not suck"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a common misconception that, well, backup sucks<\/em>. This for the most part seems to come from one of three sources: misunderstandings, issues, or vendors trying to sell you some New and Shiny Thing.<\/p>\n

Invariably when someone tells me that backup sucks, it isn’t backup that sucks, it’s the design, implementation or processes at their site that … ahem, suck. Perhaps more so than any other function of IT, backup lends itself most to rigorous procedural implementation. If you think this is why<\/em> it sucks, I’d suggest that you’re not thinking of the benefits of such processes.<\/p>\n

These benefits are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Predictability<\/strong>: You know, with absolute certainty, what the end results should<\/em> be of backup activities, every single day. (Successful recovery from a successful backup.)<\/li>\n
  2. Task management<\/strong>: Only exceptions require additional task management; all other functions are sufficiently routine as to allow standard operational guidelines.<\/li>\n
  3. You know today, you know tomorrow<\/strong>: Not only do you have a good sense of direction in your day to day activities, you also know many of your long term goals as a matter of fact (capacity planning, reporting, etc.)<\/li>\n
  4. Be the hero<\/strong>: That may sound petty, but there’s nothing wrong with knowing that your work helps to ensure the company survives in the event of a failure. This is a great cause for job satisfaction.<\/li>\n
  5. Problem solving<\/strong>: OK, all of IT gets to work in problem solving, but problem solving in backup environments is one of immense satisfaction; you get to take something that’s not working, and not only fix<\/em> it, but fix it to ensure recoverability<\/em>.<\/li>\n
  6. Breadth of access and experience<\/strong>: In a heterogeneous environment, a backup administrator gets to work with a very broad scope of operating systems, applications, databases, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Personally, I think this represents great scope for job satisfaction! So let me suggest again \u2013 if you think that backup sucks, maybe that means there’s scope to improve things: the design, or the implementation, or the procedures. The job however should be immensely rewarding.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It’s a common misconception that, well, backup sucks. This for the most part seems to come from one of three…<\/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":[5],"tags":[509],"class_list":["post-906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-backup-theory","tag-job-satisfaction"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pKpIN-eC","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906","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=906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/906\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}