Don’t Wanna Pay Ransom Gangs? Test Your Backups
"Test your backups" is so easy to say, but quite difficult for many to do. There are a lot of shops that probably don't know how to recreate a machine from scratch. How many systems are developed as balls of clay. Little bits added and smeared in over time until the ball just gets bigger, but each piece lost in the process. How many folks can go through their local config files and explain all of entries, how many can even tell which ones they have changed, or why? Especially when they were changed by Frank, but he left 2 years ago.<p>You'd like to think you can just restore the system from backup and it'll just light back up. But how do you test this without cratering your existing system? Like a boat in a basement, many system are built in-situ and can be very rigid.<p>Modern environments like cloud computing and creation scripts can mitigate this a bit organically, but how many of these systems are just a tower running Windows w/SQL Server and who knows what else? Plus whatever client software is on the client machines.<p>How do you test that in isolation?<p>At least read the media to see if it can be read (who doesn't love watching a backup tape fail halfway through the restore).<p>Simply, it takes a lot of engineering to make a system that can be reliably restored, much less on a frequent basis. And this is all engineering that doesn't impact the actual project -- getting features to users and empowering the business. Which can make the task even more difficult.