{"id":961,"date":"2009-09-09T07:21:23","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T21:21:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nsrd.wordpress.com\/?p=961"},"modified":"2018-12-12T15:43:38","modified_gmt":"2018-12-12T05:43:38","slug":"you-cant-escape-cloning-with-cross-site-backups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/2009\/09\/09\/you-cant-escape-cloning-with-cross-site-backups\/","title":{"rendered":"You can&#8217;t escape cloning with cross-site backups"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Periodically someone will tell me that they don&#8217;t need to clone because they run cross-site backups. I.e., they&#8217;ll have an architecture such as the following:<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_962\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-962\" style=\"width: 500px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-962\" title=\"Sample cross site backup configuration\" src=\"http:\/\/nsrd.files.wordpress.com\/2009\/09\/cloning-and-remote-sites.jpg\" alt=\"Sample cross site backup configuration\" width=\"500\" height=\"324\" srcset=\"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/cloning-and-remote-sites.jpg 550w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/cloning-and-remote-sites-300x194.jpg 300w, https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/09\/cloning-and-remote-sites-462x300.jpg 462w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-962\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Sample cross site backup configuration<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Looking at a tape-only environment for simplicity, this configuration sees the backup media immediately off-sited by virtue of the tape library being physically located in another site.<\/p>\n<p>The fallacious assumption made by some companies is that by running off-site backups, they don&#8217;t need to clone \u2013 their backups are off-site as soon as they&#8217;re generated, after all. This is incorrect, and can be readily shown when we evaluate a &#8220;site destroyed&#8221; scenario.<\/p>\n<p>If the disaster recovery site is destroyed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>All historical backup information has been lost. We have only the &#8220;current&#8221; data stored on site.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>If the production site is destroyed:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We are left with only one copy of our data, and can easily encounter a catastrophic single point of failure within the backup environment.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Therefore, regardless of whether you run cross-site backups, if you want full data protection, you still need to clone, so that:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>If the production site is destroyed, you don&#8217;t have to rely on single-copies of backups.<\/li>\n<li>If the disaster recovery site is destroyed, you still have access to historical backups.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Please, don&#8217;t make the mistake of thinking that cross-site backups are sufficient justification to avoid cloning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Periodically someone will tell me that they don&#8217;t need to clone because they run cross-site backups. I.e., they&#8217;ll have an&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":[5],"tags":[226,228,692],"class_list":["post-961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-backup-theory","tag-clone","tag-cloning","tag-off-site-backups"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pKpIN-fv","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961","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=961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7617,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/961\/revisions\/7617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nsrd.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}