August 28, 2005 at 8:40 pm
I was reading Douglas Reilly's article at Red-Gate software's Simple Talk on backups and one of the things he talks about in terms of reliability with backups was "The SCUD Test". What would happen if a missle hit your business?
Granted if you were inside the business you might not care too much. Probably bigger things to worry about. But suppose it was the middle of the night, all your employees were gone, and you sustained some type of catastrophic event. After 9/11, it's not so far fetched. And speaking of how some companies handled that event, check out this Business 2.0 article. Interestingly enough, almost all of the companies listed didn't have data loss, but since they're banks of some sort and highly regulated, they've spent some money to be prepared.
I've had this discussion with a few employers and they often want zero data loss and protection against the SCUD Test, but they don't want the price tag. I can understand this and usually just work within the confines of my budget, providing the level of protection I can.
In most of the small companies I've worked for, we've had halfway measures, usually taking the backup tapes offsite and that's about it. Most companies don't want to or cannot afford to buy a second site. And since disaster rarely strikes, perhaps it's worthwhile. I think as IT people we want to provide the best technical solution and when the budget gets in the way, we get easily frustrated with the situation.
Instead of getting upset or annoyed, or worse, throwing up your hands, provide the best solution you can. Think about the real dangers you face, fire, power loss, water leaks or spills, etc. And malicious actions by employees. There is a decent chance that someone will get upset at one point and delete lots of data on purpose. Be sure that you can recover from that when they do.
The SCUD Test is a nice idea, but even in today's world, it's not likely. And probably not worth spending the money on for most places. But you should still plan for some type of disaster, sooner or later one will occur.
Steve Jones
August 29, 2005 at 12:01 pm
While we haven't called it "the Scud" test, our business requires the scary 99.999% uptime. As a result we're clustered in one datacenter, log shipping to a second cluster at a different datacenter, and backing up to our servers here in the office as a 3rd server option if somehow BOTH datacenters go down. (And yes, the backups are then stored off-site).
It is, by no means, a cheap setup. But it is something our clients demand, and, fortunately, are willing to help pay for.
David W. Clary
MCSD
Data Miner 49er
Sr. Database Administrator, Ceiva Logic
August 30, 2005 at 1:39 pm
Just an observation, last night I saw on the news a generator mounted at sea level in Alabama. It was half underwater. I sure hope it wasn't considered a backup site.
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