Fried Chicken

Tony Raven said the following on 01/11/2007 12:51:

Quoted message said:

R J Chicken's warehouse has been burnt down including their records so
they have no way of contacting people. So if you were expecting
something and it doesn't arrive that might be why
http://www.bikebiz.com/news/29203/RJ-Chicken-warehouse-razed-to-the-
ground

Presumably the records can be recovered from their backups so that they
can at least get in touch with people. They would have had backups,
wouldn't they??

--
Paul Boyd
http://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

Paul Boyd usenet.is.worse@plusnet said:

Tony Raven said the following on 01/11/2007 12:51:

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Presumably the records can be recovered from their backups so that they
can at least get in touch with people. They would have had backups,
wouldn't they??

--
Paul Boydhttp://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

Drifting off into an OT rant (sorry, can't work out how to change the
subject line with Google groups):

I've no idea about RJ Chicken, but you might be surprised how many
businesses (even relatively large ones) don't.

It's an area I work in, and in addition to firms who don't do backups
at all, I've come across:

A very comprehensive and complete set of backups, every one of them
kept in a filing cabinet in the computer room, beside the servers.

A very comprehensive and complete set of backups, all encrypted on the
media (best practice where the tapes are stored off site), but no one
has the key to decrypt them.

A very comprehensive and complete set of backup tapes, with exactly no
contents on any of them - the backup had been set up incorrectly on
day one, four years earlier.
The media had been loaded/unloaded correctly, and even replaced on
schedule, but no one had ever done a test restore
No one had even read the logs where it said, every day for 4 years,
(and this may have been the first clue) "0 files written to tape".

A large firm (500+ direct employees) who got a new "remote disk
mirror" at their second site - as soon as the data was written at the
main site, it was replicated to the secondary site. As both site
weren't going to get burnt down on the same day, they then decided to
"save money" by stopping doing backups to tape. When their DBA
accidentaly overwrote a large chunk of data, this mistake was
immediately and efficently replicated to their second site.

Backups normally run fine. It's the restores that are troublesome...

regards,

bookieb

bookieb said:

It's an area I work in, and in addition to firms who don't do backups
at all, I've come across:

I work in this area too, for a data life-cycle company that does network
backup, archiving, encryption etc. Your stories touch me to the quick. I
almost think we should incorporate a list of DON'Ts like this into our
manuals and training material.

Cheers,

EFR
Ile de France

bookieb said:

Paul Boyd usenet.is.worse@plusnet said:

Tony Raven said the following on 01/11/2007 12:51:

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Presumably the records can be recovered from their backups so that they
can at least get in touch with people. They would have had backups,
wouldn't they??

--
Paul Boydhttp://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

Drifting off into an OT rant (sorry, can't work out how to change the
subject line with Google groups):

I've no idea about RJ Chicken, but you might be surprised how many
businesses (even relatively large ones) don't.

It's an area I work in, and in addition to firms who don't do backups
at all, I've come across:

A very comprehensive and complete set of backups, every one of them
kept in a filing cabinet in the computer room, beside the servers.

A very comprehensive and complete set of backups, all encrypted on the
media (best practice where the tapes are stored off site), but no one
has the key to decrypt them.

A very comprehensive and complete set of backup tapes, with exactly no
contents on any of them - the backup had been set up incorrectly on
day one, four years earlier.
The media had been loaded/unloaded correctly, and even replaced on
schedule, but no one had ever done a test restore
No one had even read the logs where it said, every day for 4 years,
(and this may have been the first clue) "0 files written to tape".

A large firm (500+ direct employees) who got a new "remote disk
mirror" at their second site - as soon as the data was written at the
main site, it was replicated to the secondary site. As both site
weren't going to get burnt down on the same day, they then decided to
"save money" by stopping doing backups to tape. When their DBA
accidentaly overwrote a large chunk of data, this mistake was
immediately and efficently replicated to their second site.

Backups normally run fine. It's the restores that are troublesome...

regards,

bookieb

How about a large university storing the backups in a separate building,
which also housed the telephone switching. When one building went up in
smoke, so did the switchboard 😉 Saved only by a technician who
happenend to be present by pulling out wires untill the smoke stopped .
The mobiles of the senior management ran out of juice shortly after 😉

--
/Marten

info(apestaartje)m-gineering(punt)nl

bookieb said:

Backups normally run fine. It's the restores that are troublesome...

A jewellery shop running a system on HP hardware lost their hard drive
and, when the system had been rebuilt, were unable to restore their
data from floppy disk. The backup ran to multiple volumes. When the
prompt appeared to insert the next diskette the operator had simply
ejected the one diskette they possessed, reinserted it and carried on.

--
Dave...

bookieb said:

Paul Boyd usenet.is.worse@plusnet said:

Tony Raven said the following on 01/11/2007 12:51:

<snip>

Quoted message said:

Presumably the records can be recovered from their backups so that
they can at least get in touch with people. They would have had
backups, wouldn't they??

--
Paul Boydhttp://www.paul-boyd.co.uk/

Drifting off into an OT rant (sorry, can't work out how to change the
subject line with Google groups):

I've no idea about RJ Chicken, but you might be surprised how many
businesses (even relatively large ones) don't.

It's an area I work in, and in addition to firms who don't do backups
at all, I've come across:

A very comprehensive and complete set of backups, every one of them
kept in a filing cabinet in the computer room, beside the servers.

A very comprehensive and complete set of backups, all encrypted on the
media (best practice where the tapes are stored off site), but no one
has the key to decrypt them.

A very comprehensive and complete set of backup tapes, with exactly no
contents on any of them - the backup had been set up incorrectly on
day one, four years earlier.
The media had been loaded/unloaded correctly, and even replaced on
schedule, but no one had ever done a test restore
No one had even read the logs where it said, every day for 4 years,
(and this may have been the first clue) "0 files written to tape".

A large firm (500+ direct employees) who got a new "remote disk
mirror" at their second site - as soon as the data was written at the
main site, it was replicated to the secondary site. As both site
weren't going to get burnt down on the same day, they then decided to
"save money" by stopping doing backups to tape. When their DBA
accidentaly overwrote a large chunk of data, this mistake was
immediately and efficently replicated to their second site.

Backups normally run fine. It's the restores that are troublesome...

Ah, the problems of write-only data storage.

I make it a point of checking that I can read computer backups that I make.
And checking regularly.

- Nigel

--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

dkahn400 said:

bookieb said:

Backups normally run fine. It's the restores that are troublesome...

A jewellery shop running a system on HP hardware lost their hard drive
and, when the system had been rebuilt, were unable to restore their
data from floppy disk. The backup ran to multiple volumes. When the
prompt appeared to insert the next diskette the operator had simply
ejected the one diskette they possessed, reinserted it and carried on.

--
Dave...

Now that one I haven't heard before.
It's absolutely brilliant!

Thanks,

bookieb.

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden]
says...

Quoted message said:

bookieb said:

It's an area I work in, and in addition to firms who don't do backups
at all, I've come across:

I work in this area too, for a data life-cycle company that does network
backup, archiving, encryption etc. Your stories touch me to the quick. I
almost think we should incorporate a list of DON'Ts like this into our
manuals and training material.

One of my previous companies we had a "expert consultancy" in to advise
on and set up a backup system. After it had been running a month and
before I paid their bill, I asked for a test restore to be run. Red
faces all round at "expert consultancy" Tapes all blank.

--
Tony

" I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong."
Bertrand Russell

dkahn400 said:

A jewellery shop running a system on HP hardware lost their hard drive
and, when the system had been rebuilt, were unable to restore their
data from floppy disk. The backup ran to multiple volumes. When the
prompt appeared to insert the next diskette the operator had simply
ejected the one diskette they possessed, reinserted it and carried on.

I used to support a system where the majority of customers did backups
to floppy, as they seemed to think that paying someone to post anything
up to 40 floppies into the drive every afternoon was more cost effective
than buying a tape drive. I remember one customer, when told they
needed to restore from backup, revealing that the last backup had been
taken 6 months earlier.

"Why haven't you taken a backup for 6 months."

"We haven't had many problems recently, so we didn't think we needed one."

The mind boggles.

--
Danny Colyer <http://www.redpedals.co.uk>
Reply address is valid, but that on my website is checked more often
"The plural of anecdote is not data" - Frank Kotsonis

Tony Raven said:

In article <[email hidden]>, [email hidden]
says...

Quoted message said:

bookieb said:

It's an area I work in, and in addition to firms who don't do backups
at all, I've come across:

I work in this area too, for a data life-cycle company that does network
backup, archiving, encryption etc. Your stories touch me to the quick. I
almost think we should incorporate a list of DON'Ts like this into our
manuals and training material.

One of my previous companies we had a "expert consultancy" in to advise
on and set up a backup system. After it had been running a month and
before I paid their bill, I asked for a test restore to be run. Red
faces all round at "expert consultancy" Tapes all blank.

http://www.taobackup.com/
(warning - contains mild advertising)

--
Don Whybrow

Sequi Bonum Non Time

Give your child mental blocks for Christmas.