Preserving Data

Most data professionals I know go out of their way to take care of the data entrusted to them. Most people ensure backups are running, lots (hopefully most) test their restores. A few will ensure a good rotation their data offsite. Some of you might have formal rotation schemes, and some might just keep a rolling list of xx backups available.

Likely a few of you don’t worry about anything other than the last full backup, which is a risker approach than I’d take.

In the past, I’ve often kept around monthly backups for a year, usually with more granular backups inside of the month. Beyond that, depending on the system, we might keep quarterly backups or yearly ones for a longer period. These days with cheap storage and automated solutions, I’m sure many of you just assume your backup system keeps xx backups around. the cloud providers will keep point in time backups if you use Azure SQL DB (7 days by default) or AWS RDS (1 or 7 days, depending on the provisioning method). If you use VMs or other systems, you ought to be aware of how long backups will be kept and ensure that fits inside your RPO.

This came to mind as PBS, a US broadcaster, almost lost most of their archived data recently. Their provider stopped responding to them and they couldn’t get to the data, which was stored in Iron Mountain data centers. They sued and got access to ensure they could access and use this data. A win for them, and really, for many of us.

I don’t expect Azure or AWS to go under, but some of you are using third-parties for backups, even in the cloud. If your provider goes under, can you access your data? I can guarantee if any of these companies has issues (financial, hacking, ransomware, etc.), there will be a few clients that need a restore that day. Resolving this in the courts is likely to be successful, but after how many days?

Backups are important, but only when they facilitate a restore. It’s easy to get complacent and think because you’ve been running backups that you’re protected. Test that restores work. Have a plan, and maybe a contractual clause, that ensures you can get to backups in the event of issues. This won’t protect you from everything, but it can help speed things up.

And if you’re like me, keep at least the last backup (or two) local to your system, in a place that you can get to quickly and easily. It’s fine to assume the automated PIT backups will be there, but if AWS or Azure has issues on the day I need a restore, I’d like to think it’s worth a small cost to me employer to ensure there’s at least one backup separate from the automated service. That SLA refund isn’t likely going to cover the lost business when your database is down.

Steve Jones

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