What is backup and restore? (Backup to Basics Series)
As we continue our "Backup to Basics" series, we touch on one of the most important questions of all: what is backup and restore? (And how does it different than archive and retrieve?) The answer to these questions are both simple and nuanced. It's important to have a solid understanding of backup and restore in order to understand how archive is different.
Reminder: You can download a complimentary copy of Mr. Backup's latest book, Modern Data Protection here: https://druva.com/ebook.
Mentioned in this episode:
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hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it all podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, aka Mr.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup.
W. Curtis Preston:And I have with me a guy who I hope is coming over to my house this weekend
W. Curtis Preston:to help me pull up some vinyl planking Prasanna Malaiyandi, how's it going?
W. Curtis Preston:Prasanna,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm good, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm
W. Curtis Preston:you coming over?
W. Curtis Preston:You coming over?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:if there's a Turkey or a brisket involved.
W. Curtis Preston:There will be definitely a Turkey.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't, I, you know, I didn't, I didn't plan for a brisket.
W. Curtis Preston:I sh I really should have, I still got time to go to Costco, but I don't have
W. Curtis Preston:time for the, for the full Curtis brisket experience, which is a 30 day wet age.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:wait
W. Curtis Preston:I'm sure what.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:for Christmas.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You're gonna do a ham, I'm assuming.
W. Curtis Preston:Well with Ham.
W. Curtis Preston:Ham we do the, we just get the honey baked, the honey baked
W. Curtis Preston:ham, which is way too much money, but you know, it is what it is.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that's right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Last year you stood in a really long line the day
W. Curtis Preston:It was a really long line.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, it's stupid.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but, uh, yeah, so, you know, this thing that's going on with my kitchen,
W. Curtis Preston:um, it, it really, it's really all about the dishwasher and I don't
W. Curtis Preston:know what's up with the dishwasher.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I should probably see if I could fix that or address that before,
W. Curtis Preston:because here's the really weird thing.
W. Curtis Preston:thought that my daughter redid the, like, started using the dishwasher
W. Curtis Preston:after I said, don't use it.
W. Curtis Preston:But that actually didn't happen because when I got home last night,
W. Curtis Preston:um, uh, from my trip, I went and I looked just, you know, just to, I
W. Curtis Preston:was like, I'm gonna take the look.
W. Curtis Preston:Or actually, I guess it was the day before it.
W. Curtis Preston:But anyway, when I got home, I saw it again that there was water all the floor.
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm like, okay, well I'm gonna, I'm.
W. Curtis Preston:J just, I'm gonna vacuum out the, basically when I open up the
W. Curtis Preston:dishwasher, there's, it's full of water.
W. Curtis Preston:So I got the wet vac and I, and I, I sucked out the water.
W. Curtis Preston:And I'm like, okay, well that'll, that'll take care of any further problems.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But then you got water again.
W. Curtis Preston:And then I got water again, and I'm like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And is it still collecting water?
W. Curtis Preston:I hope I should figure that out and I
W. Curtis Preston:hope it is something simple.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and then, and then once I fix that, then I have to rip up all the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the,
W. Curtis Preston:uh, flooring, let it dry and put it back down.
W. Curtis Preston:So I thought I was done with the kitchen and I'm not done with the kitchen.
W. Curtis Preston:But
Prasanna Malaiyandi:in positive note, we got to hang out in person in real
W. Curtis Preston:we did get to hang out and have not so good barbecue
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm sorry.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I, I should have known better than to try to take someone who loves
Prasanna Malaiyandi:barbecue to a barbecue place.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think I should just,
W. Curtis Preston:been
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think I should just stick with like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:well, California barbecue.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think I should just stick with like Indian, Korean.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Thai,
W. Curtis Preston:Hey, speaking of Korean, my book
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:got trans, my got translated into Korean.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and at least I think that that's Korean, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That looks like Korean.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That does look like Korean.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, that
W. Curtis Preston:like Korean.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, um, the, you know, which is kind of cool, uh, they always
W. Curtis Preston:send me a copy when they translate the book into another language.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, they also send me a little bit of money.
W. Curtis Preston:They, they, the, the company that does it is actually a different company
W. Curtis Preston:and they actually pay a license.
W. Curtis Preston:So Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:So I got a little, little bit of money
Prasanna Malaiyandi:so for our Korean listeners, if you
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:For.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:out Curtis' book, it is now available
W. Curtis Preston:what's one funny thing about my name?
W. Curtis Preston:So if you look at the name, they didn't translate the W, it's just
W. Curtis Preston:W and then, and then my name.
W. Curtis Preston:I thought that was kind of funny.
W. Curtis Preston:were maybe a little confused by the, the random W Um, and if you
W. Curtis Preston:look at the letters, the letters, it's not a letter by letter.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, it's
W. Curtis Preston:it's, it's it's a phonetic,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:it's a phonetic language.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, uh, Japanese, the letters, I remember when, um,
W. Curtis Preston:or the characters, I'm sorry.
W. Curtis Preston:I remember when my book first got translated into Japanese and I had
W. Curtis Preston:a copy of it with me cuz I thought it was really cool just like this.
W. Curtis Preston:And a friend came up who he was learning to read Japanese.
W. Curtis Preston:American learning to read Japanese.
W. Curtis Preston:And he looked at the, he looked at the, um, the name of the
W. Curtis Preston:book was Backup and Recovery.
W. Curtis Preston:So he looked at the, the cover and he's like, BA cool buddy He like, he
W. Curtis Preston:like sounded out the sounds that were, I'm like, wait, that's what that says.
W. Curtis Preston:Cause it's a, it's a phonetic, uh, it's the phonetic characters.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, thought that was kind of funny.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I wonder how long it takes to do the translation.
W. Curtis Preston:you know, obviously I have no idea.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, the degree to which to use technology or a hundred percent people.
W. Curtis Preston:Donna.
W. Curtis Preston:Donna.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so speaking of the book, we're gonna continue our backup to basic
W. Curtis Preston:series, and there is no more basic topic than the one we're gonna talk about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:which is What
W. Curtis Preston:is backup
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:What is backup Curtis?
W. Curtis Preston:what is, what is backup?
W. Curtis Preston:And you know, and the thing is, you know, if you're a longtime backup
W. Curtis Preston:person and you're like, oh my God, this will be boring, I promise
W. Curtis Preston:you, you'll learn one or two things that you might find interesting.
W. Curtis Preston:So we'll take the actual, the definition.
W. Curtis Preston:Of, you know, my, my, I, I have a formal definition of backup in the book, which
W. Curtis Preston:by the way, is meant to distinguish it from archive, which will be the next.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup and archive are two very different things.
W. Curtis Preston:They're very similar, um, in a lot of ways Right.
W. Curtis Preston:But completely different.
W. Curtis Preston:Mainly they're similar in that they're a copy of data.
W. Curtis Preston:They're completely different in what the copy is for.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and also quite different in how typically quite different
W. Curtis Preston:in how the, it's stored,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And before you jump into your definition of backup,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you wanna throw out our disclaimer
W. Curtis Preston:Sure.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I dunno.
W. Curtis Preston:I was gonna, I was gonna, no, I was gonna think some sassy way to
W. Curtis Preston:do it, but, uh, so yeah, Prasanna and I work for different companies.
W. Curtis Preston:He works for Zoom, I work for Druva, and this is not a podcast of either company.
W. Curtis Preston:The opinions that you hear are ours and, uh, we'd love for you to rate us.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, just go to your favorite pod catcher, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:you're listening to us on one.
W. Curtis Preston:Most likely you're not listening to this directly on, um, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:unless you're watching it on the website, in which case, hi, I see you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:watch the video.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:By the way, if you wanna see this on video, just go to backup central.com.
W. Curtis Preston:We have it on video there.
W. Curtis Preston:And, Uh, but yeah, just click and, and rate us, right, and put a comment.
W. Curtis Preston:The comments are great.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, we love to hear it from you.
W. Curtis Preston:And then also, uh, if you wanna join the conversation, uh, if you wanna argue,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, if you're like, Curtis', definition of backup is bonkers.
W. Curtis Preston:Curtis' bonkers, right?
W. Curtis Preston:I love Prasanna's beard, and I wanna know more about it.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:whole episode on Beard
W. Curtis Preston:could, we, we could do a whole episode on beard care.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, by the way, for those of you that were hoping for the, the 25 comments
W. Curtis Preston:and the Santa Beard on Curtis, I'm sorry, but the listeners let you down.
W. Curtis Preston:There just weren't enough comments to support me continuing to
W. Curtis Preston:grow the beard that honestly, I didn't want in the first place.
W. Curtis Preston:. So I, so I trimmed it, I trimmed it down to sort of what I feel
W. Curtis Preston:is a more manageable size mean.
W. Curtis Preston:My friend Prasanna still hasn't cut his beard at all.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's still going strong.
W. Curtis Preston:is, it's, when will it be a the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, in March.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:March of 2023.
W. Curtis Preston:We'll hold a, some sort of, I think what we'll
W. Curtis Preston:do is we'll come over to your house with some, some tremors.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I actually have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:a
W. Curtis Preston:what your wife wants.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And
Prasanna Malaiyandi:a hair trimmer.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I have a beard trimmer and a hair
W. Curtis Preston:Do you though?
W. Curtis Preston:Do you though
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I do.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I just don't
W. Curtis Preston:Do you still know where it is?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I do.
W. Curtis Preston:All right, so let's see.
W. Curtis Preston:Let's talk about, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Your definition of backup.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, yeah, exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:So this is from chapter three of the book, modern Data Practice.
W. Curtis Preston:Modern data protection, which if you wanna get a copy, you can get
W. Curtis Preston:a free ebook copy of it by going to druva.com/ebook d uva.com/ebook.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And that's the English version for those folks,
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, that's the English version.
W. Curtis Preston:There is the Korean version if you want.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, but I don't know where to get that.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm assuming What, what's, what's the dot?
W. Curtis Preston:What's the.in Korea like dot, you know, amazon.kr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I don't know.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Actually.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That is a good question.
W. Curtis Preston:I dunno.
W. Curtis Preston:You know what?
W. Curtis Preston:I'll see if I can find it.
W. Curtis Preston:If I can find it.
W. Curtis Preston:I'll put it in the show notes for the, for the one Korean listeners that we
W. Curtis Preston:have . Um, so, you know, so first off, I, I, I just wanna say this, um, not
W. Curtis Preston:everybody agrees with me on, I, I, I, I take a very hard line between the
W. Curtis Preston:difference between backup and archive and, uh, and not everybody agrees with me.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but they're, they're wrong.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, . So the, what what I wanna say is this is more about the purpose
W. Curtis Preston:of these two things and less about.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know less about terminology, I guess, but it, but I don't know.
W. Curtis Preston:It is about terminology.
W. Curtis Preston:There are products and I can think, I can think of a few.
W. Curtis Preston:I know that some of the things that Druva does, some of the things that
W. Curtis Preston:combo does, um, different products have parts of their product that
W. Curtis Preston:behave as both backup and archive.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm fine with that.
W. Curtis Preston:Like I'm not that kind of purist.
W. Curtis Preston:Backup and archive must be separate.
W. Curtis Preston:The reason why I, why I, um, why I take such a hard line on it is that
W. Curtis Preston:I think many, many people, in fact, I know many, many people misuse their
W. Curtis Preston:backups as archives and they don't have any archive functionality in it.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or, or a lot of times, and I know we don't, we aren't
Prasanna Malaiyandi:talking about this yet, we should probably say this for the archive
Prasanna Malaiyandi:discussion, but a lot of times you hear people talk about like long-term
Prasanna Malaiyandi:retention, which is when they sort of take their backups and they're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like, Hey, you just keep it forever.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And that turns into long-term retention, which satisfies archive needs.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And I think that's where we have issues with those backups being
Prasanna Malaiyandi:really used for archive reason.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:The phrase that, the phrase that chaps my hide is I'm going to archive my backup.
W. Curtis Preston:That isn't a phrase.
W. Curtis Preston:That isn't, you can't say that that isn't a sentence.
W. Curtis Preston:What you're saying is, I'm going to store my backup for longer.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and I, you know, I, I can, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And this, this isn't quite as pointless as my argument that I also make about the
W. Curtis Preston:fact that golf is a noun and not a verb.
W. Curtis Preston:we talked
W. Curtis Preston:about that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We have talked about it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think we've talked about it on the podcast too.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Back is golf is a noun, not a verb.
W. Curtis Preston:Let me prove it.
W. Curtis Preston:You play golf, like you play football, play tennis.
W. Curtis Preston:Play baseball.
W. Curtis Preston:You don't go baseball Footballing or Tennis, Inc.
W. Curtis Preston:So why in the.
W. Curtis Preston:Bleepity bleep, bleep.
W. Curtis Preston:Do you go golfing?
W. Curtis Preston:You don't.
W. Curtis Preston:It's wrong.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a noun.
W. Curtis Preston:It always was a noun.
W. Curtis Preston:It's only become a verb through, you know, proper, or, I'm sorry, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:popular usage, but it's still a noun and I'm sticking by that, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So that's why I'm saying there's no such thing as archiving a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, so let me see here.
W. Curtis Preston:I have a formal, let's see here.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay, here is my, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Can you raise your head a little to talk into the mic?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Sorry, you were cutting out there.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, I had to go find it first.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so the, the, um, part, part of the problem here is that both
W. Curtis Preston:the word backup and archive have generic definitions outside of it.
W. Curtis Preston:I am talking about the it definition of backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And when you say backup, you mean one word backup, right?
W. Curtis Preston:As long as we're on grammar, back up.
W. Curtis Preston:One word is a noun.
W. Curtis Preston:Back up.
W. Curtis Preston:Two words is verb.
W. Curtis Preston:It's con.
W. Curtis Preston:It's called a compound verb.
W. Curtis Preston:I back up.
W. Curtis Preston:That's two words.
W. Curtis Preston:Or he backs up.
W. Curtis Preston:She backs up.
W. Curtis Preston:He backed up.
W. Curtis Preston:That's why you have to, you don't say I back up.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:It's I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, that's why it's a compound.
W. Curtis Preston:Ver but backup is a noun is, um, is a word.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so, and, and a lot of times people use the term backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Like, they're like, oh, I'm gonna make a, I'm gonna make a backup, and.
W. Curtis Preston:When, what?
W. Curtis Preston:They're not really, they're making a copy.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And we're gonna talk about the difference between a copy and a backup too, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and so this is really the problem.
W. Curtis Preston:Also, they talk about snapshots as backup.
W. Curtis Preston:And when I say snapshots, I mean virtual snapshots, like what's
W. Curtis Preston:done on a net app, not a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Not unless it's copied, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You know, this reminds me of the fact that like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:do you remember in the early days everyone had a different notion of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:like what cloud meant or cloud meant?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Everything, you know, and it's kind of like this where.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, a lot of people misuse the term backup, and I think this is where you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:getting to Curtis, where you have a very, very, very specific meaning for backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So here is my formal definition.
W. Curtis Preston:A backup is a copy of data stored separately from the original and used to
W. Curtis Preston:restore that data to its former state.
W. Curtis Preston:Usually after the data has been deleted or damaged in some way.
W. Curtis Preston:So, um, that
W. Curtis Preston:is my definition.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, we're going to, we're going to, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So let's talk about what is a copy?
W. Curtis Preston:How would you, in, in it sense, what would you like in the, in the sense
W. Curtis Preston:that we're talking about backups?
W. Curtis Preston:What would you call a copy
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I think in the easiest way to think of it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right, is a copy is something that has its own independent identity.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:From the source,
W. Curtis Preston:Mm-hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So you could do something with the source.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It doesn't affect the b uh, the copy.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You could do something with the copy.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It doesn't affect the source.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Now, the copy may or may not be rewriteable, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Depending on what you're looking for.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:In the case of backups, it's usually read only.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So it, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So I, again, formal definition, I've got a bite for bite reproduction of the original
W. Curtis Preston:that contains the same content, right?
W. Curtis Preston:It, it, and, you know, you, you were sort of differentiating it.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not a snapshot, right?
W. Curtis Preston:A snapshot is, is, and again, not an AWS snapshot.
W. Curtis Preston:An AWS snapshot is actually a backup.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, because it's actually an image copy.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, right.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a, it's, you know, you actually copy it into s3.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, an example of a copy.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, you can use the copy command in Linux.
W. Curtis Preston:You can use the, it's cp, you can use the copy command in Windows.
W. Curtis Preston:That is the first part of the definition is that you're actually
W. Curtis Preston:making a separate entity, I think.
W. Curtis Preston:I think, um, it may or may not change form.
W. Curtis Preston:What do I mean by.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Uh, so it could still be sitting in the same system in
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the exact same way, or like you were mentioning in the AWS case, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Your copy actually exists in some other format, stored in some other type
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of storage, mainly AWS S3 versus EBS
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Or you might put it inside a tar ball.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, there's a number of things.
W. Curtis Preston:Tar dump c pio, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you know, there are a number of formats that you can, uh, do.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, even you can put a bunch of files into just a compressed file, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, that would still be a copy because you've created a separate instance.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or you could encrypt the data when it gets sent
Prasanna Malaiyandi:over, and that's still considered a copy because you still have the ability
Prasanna Malaiyandi:to get to those original contents.
W. Curtis Preston:Exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, like I said, it's also just as important to talk about what's not a copy.
W. Curtis Preston:We talked about virtual snapshots, like with NetApps, also vss and Windows, right?
W. Curtis Preston:The virtual snapshot, snapshot system creates a point in time that you can
W. Curtis Preston:access for the purposes of backing up, but it by itself is not a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:And why is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because it still lives in the same system.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's all linked together, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's all there.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like you delete the source and your copy gets gone.
W. Curtis Preston:yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:fact, I think with vss you won't, you can't delete the source
Prasanna Malaiyandi:until you'll delete all your snapshots.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I think there's probably some protection there.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, but essentially the, the snapshot relies on the original.
W. Curtis Preston:It's funny, we use a lot of the terms that mean the same thing, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Like, cause I say, I say, uh, the, you know, the EBS snapshot, well,
W. Curtis Preston:it's not a snapshot, it's an image.
W. Curtis Preston:Copy.
W. Curtis Preston:Image is just another word for Snapchat.
W. Curtis Preston:But anyway,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:We should just start talking about
Prasanna Malaiyandi:everything as like photographs.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, I talked about, you know, I, I used to use the phrase that a snapshot,
W. Curtis Preston:like a NetApp snapshot is as useful as a snapshot of your house when your house
W. Curtis Preston:burns down, um, the . So, uh, and then I have stored separately from the original,
W. Curtis Preston:like we're working through the definition.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and what do I mean by that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I think, I know we haven't gotten to the 3 21 rule,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:which we'll get to at some point, but I think the key with this point is if
Prasanna Malaiyandi:something happens to that source, right, be it the system or that volume or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:that file, it still exists separately.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And could still be recovered for, depending on what type of
Prasanna Malaiyandi:failure you're looking for, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It you might need to handle like a site blows up or that the array dies, or
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the storage system dies, and therefore you want a copy on some completely
Prasanna Malaiyandi:different storage system, maybe a completely separate location, et cetera.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, I, I think you're, you're even going
W. Curtis Preston:farther than what I'm saying.
W. Curtis Preston:So for example, if I go into a Word doc, right, and I copy that Word doc
W. Curtis Preston:right next to it, that is a copy.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not a backup.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Not in, in, in the full definition.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, if I copy it to another hard drive, that is then a backup, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, or well, it could be a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:It
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It
W. Curtis Preston:it meets that, it meets that next definition.
W. Curtis Preston:And then I've got, and this is again, this is a big one for the
W. Curtis Preston:purposes of restoring, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So, Which as opposed to retrieving, which we're gonna talk about
W. Curtis Preston:in, in the archive, um, space.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And what is restoring Curtis
W. Curtis Preston:yeah, so, um, I mean it's essentially bringing
W. Curtis Preston:something back to life, , right?
W. Curtis Preston:So it, it's, it's, it's taking that copy.
W. Curtis Preston:And then bringing it back to, generally speaking, it's, it doesn't have to
W. Curtis Preston:be back to the, to the same place.
W. Curtis Preston:You could do an alternate server or alternate location restore, but generally
W. Curtis Preston:speaking, you're taking the copy that you made and stored somewhere else, and
W. Curtis Preston:then you're bringing that copy back for the purposes of basically resurrecting
W. Curtis Preston:either something that blew up, caught on fire, got deleted, got fat fingered.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, got ransomware.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, by the way, ransomware also a ver also a, no, not a verb, I just made it a verb.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There you go, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston:got ransomware.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah, and I mean that, you know, another, another case
W. Curtis Preston:would be like you got a triple disc failure in a RAID6 array.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a bad day, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and so you need to go and get your backup and restore it back.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and again, this all sounds really pedantic.
W. Curtis Preston:I think
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But it's important.
W. Curtis Preston:it, it's when we get into the discussion about backup
W. Curtis Preston:and how different that is from this.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You meant archive,
W. Curtis Preston:what did I say?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you said When we get into backup, how different it is than this
W. Curtis Preston:This is so hard to do this verbally.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, um, the, um, uh, the other thing is this is sort of a general rule.
W. Curtis Preston:Generally speaking, we're going to use a backup to restore to
W. Curtis Preston:either the most recent time.
W. Curtis Preston:The most recent time we have a backup of, or some other relatively
W. Curtis Preston:recent point in time prior to that.
W. Curtis Preston:For example, if you got a, you know, generally speaking file system dies,
W. Curtis Preston:you're gonna restore whatever was on that file system to as most recent,
W. Curtis Preston:you know, the most recent backup that you have, generally speaking,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Cause you'll want the latest data, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:For the most part, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Sometimes you did something stupid and you dropped a
W. Curtis Preston:table in a database and you're like, oh crap, I did that at two o'clock.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna restore to 1:59 PM I, I have a backup until 2 0 5.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't wanna restore to 2 0 5, cuz that's when the bad thing happened.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna restore to 1 59, but still I'm going to, you know, this afternoon.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, even in an extreme case, um, I might need to restore.
W. Curtis Preston:I might have had a ransomware attack that had a dwell time.
W. Curtis Preston:Of a couple of weeks and I might need to restore to dwell time.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, dwell time.
W. Curtis Preston:Thanks.
W. Curtis Preston:The dwell time for a piece of malware is how long it hangs out, uh, before
W. Curtis Preston:it delivers its payload, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So you might have, or before it's discovered, so you might have.
W. Curtis Preston:The, the, the, the, the dwell time, the average or mean dwell time for
W. Curtis Preston:ransomware is actually well over two weeks, so we might have to
W. Curtis Preston:go back and restore something to prior to that from two weeks ago.
W. Curtis Preston:You know, when we don't restore from, generally speaking,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:What?
W. Curtis Preston:guess.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:don't Oh, like a year ago,
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, generally speaking, we don't
W. Curtis Preston:restore stuff from a year ago.
W. Curtis Preston:Again, there are exceptions to every rule.
W. Curtis Preston:Let's say it's the annual accounting report and we can't find it, and we need
W. Curtis Preston:the one from a year ago, that's a restore,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But in that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:case, you're most.
W. Curtis Preston:It was supposed to be here, and yeah, in that case, your
W. Curtis Preston:most recent backup would not have.
W. Curtis Preston:You would have to go back to before someone deleted it.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:It was supposed to be here, but it's not.
W. Curtis Preston:So we're gonna put it back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, and in that case, it's not like you're restoring
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the entire file system, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You're probably just restoring that one report, which you needed, which you
Prasanna Malaiyandi:didn't discover was gone until yesterday.
W. Curtis Preston:That sounds, that sounds correct.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so again, we're speaking like.
W. Curtis Preston:Hypothetically here or whatever.
W. Curtis Preston:So the, the next thing I've got here is about how does a restore work?
W. Curtis Preston:And again, that's gonna sound pedantic, but again, it will make a lot more
W. Curtis Preston:sense in the next episode when we talk about comparing it to archive.
W. Curtis Preston:So what do I need?
W. Curtis Preston:So, so I, so I'm your, I'm your back, your friendly neighborhood backup guy.
W. Curtis Preston:I, and there's, there's a thing.
W. Curtis Preston:Say
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:So I deleted something.
W. Curtis Preston:you deleted something.
W. Curtis Preston:You del,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:you and I'm like, Curtis, can you, yeah, I deleted a file.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm like, Curtis, I need my backup from, or I need my file.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I can't find it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I need this one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Tell me, can you get it back
W. Curtis Preston:what do you need?
W. Curtis Preston:What?
W. Curtis Preston:What do you need to give me?
W. Curtis Preston:For me to help me?
W. Curtis Preston:Help you, help me.
W. Curtis Preston:Help you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I need to tell you potentially what file I'm looking for,
W. Curtis Preston:The file.
W. Curtis Preston:And what does that, what does that mean?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Which may be the exact, like the thing I'm looking
Prasanna Malaiyandi:for, which might be the actual name, or it might be a directory, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It might be on a particular system, or it might be, I don't know which one it's on.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I just know I have a file somewhere that is.
W. Curtis Preston:Okay, so you, you're saying you might not know.
W. Curtis Preston:I'll say the less you just, the less you give me, the
W. Curtis Preston:harder it is gonna be for me to
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah,
W. Curtis Preston:that file.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Generally speaking, if you come to me and you say, uh, I have a home
W. Curtis Preston:directory on Apollo, it's called Home one Curtis, and there's a file in there.
W. Curtis Preston:There was a file in there called Resume dot doc.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, That's how it's pronounced.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not pronounced any other way.
W. Curtis Preston:Resume dot doc and it's gone.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:I need it.
W. Curtis Preston:Or, or more specifically, let's say I screwed it up.
W. Curtis Preston:I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I need it from, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:I need it from two days ago.
W. Curtis Preston:So what did you just give me if you, if you, what
W. Curtis Preston:information did you just give me?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So I gave you the what I need restored, the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:when I need it restored and where.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:So in different words, you gave me the server, you gave me the directory.
W. Curtis Preston:You gave me the file name, you gave me the timeframe, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You gave me all those things and all those things were one thing,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yep.
W. Curtis Preston:right?
W. Curtis Preston:A server, a directory, a file.
W. Curtis Preston:Now you can leave out one or two of those , right?
W. Curtis Preston:You're like, I don't know what server, that's gonna be hard.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, it's on Apollo, but I'm not sure which directory also gonna be hard.
W. Curtis Preston:It's on Apollo, it's in the home, one file system.
W. Curtis Preston:Not sure which directory, and I'm not sure what its name is.
W. Curtis Preston:That's gonna be really, really, if you don't know the name of the
W. Curtis Preston:thing you're looking for, that it's gonna be, and again, you're
W. Curtis Preston:people that are used to backups, are listening to this and they're.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, this makes all perfect sense.
W. Curtis Preston:Again, this will all make more sense why I'm making such a big deal about
W. Curtis Preston:this when we get to, um, a retrieve, which is very, very different.
W. Curtis Preston:So, so I, I have something that I took the trouble to put in italics
W. Curtis Preston:in the book and it says, A restore returns a single thing to a single point in time.
W. Curtis Preston:That's it.
W. Curtis Preston:Now, you may do multiple restores.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:You may restore multiple things to, to a point in time
W. Curtis Preston:or even, I think less likely multiple things to multiple points in time.
W. Curtis Preston:But generally speaking, a restore restores a single thing to a single point in time.
W. Curtis Preston:That's it.
W. Curtis Preston:You have any problem with that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:No, it makes sense.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I was gonna chime in and say that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There are probably a lot of users though who don't know what their files
Prasanna Malaiyandi:are called or where their files live.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I'm just thinking about like if you think like you create Word
Prasanna Malaiyandi:documents or you create spreadsheets, like you don't know the exact name
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of that file that you're working
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And you don't know exactly.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like maybe it lives in my desktop.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Maybe it was in documents folder.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Or my documents.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like all these things like make it hard as a backup operator.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:To fulfill these requests, and so the more specific you can be as an end
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the easier it is to find exactly what you're looking for and
Prasanna Malaiyandi:restore it back as quickly as possible.
W. Curtis Preston:And, and if, depending on the backup product that you have, a
W. Curtis Preston:very small subset of backup products can do what's called a full text search on.
W. Curtis Preston:Restore, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You're like, I don't know where this file is or what its name is.
W. Curtis Preston:I know that the file I'm looking for has the phrase work experience,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Can you find me any file that I own that
W. Curtis Preston:has the phrase work experience?
W. Curtis Preston:Well, we have this one file, it's called resume.
W. Curtis Preston:No, no, no.
W. Curtis Preston:It's not Resume.
W. Curtis Preston:Not resume.
W. Curtis Preston:It's resume dot.
W. Curtis Preston:Can you, yeah, that's the one.
W. Curtis Preston:I think that's the one.
W. Curtis Preston:Please restore that.
W. Curtis Preston:There are a few products.
W. Curtis Preston:I know Comal, for example, has full tech search against, um, I don't
W. Curtis Preston:know others that do that against sort of normal, regular files,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think, uh, Dell has a capability as well as an
W. Curtis Preston:in Dell?
W. Curtis Preston:In what?
W. Curtis Preston:In what product?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of their data protection search product, I believe,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:which allows it to index, uh, backups.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, yeah, so there's a few products out there that do that.
W. Curtis Preston:Generally speaking, most backup products do not.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, so there's this little thing here called the 3 21 rule, which
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Curtis' favorite topic?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:Oh my gosh.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:You know what?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:
Speaker:I don't think we've talked about the 3, 2, 1 rule in many, many episodes.
W. Curtis Preston:Really cause it, it used to come up every, it
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know.
W. Curtis Preston:episode.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I, I just, I just recorded an episode with a, with a, I was a guest
W. Curtis Preston:on another podcast this morning.
W. Curtis Preston:I talked about the 3, 2, 1 rule.
W. Curtis Preston:So to me, the 3, 2, 1 rule is sort of the most, so that was sort of
W. Curtis Preston:the classic definition of a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Another way to decide if something, A copy as I make quotes in the air,
W. Curtis Preston:or, well, if you have a backup, it's to see if you have something that
W. Curtis Preston:complies with the three to one rule.
W. Curtis Preston:And we had the, the guy who coined the 3 21 rule, uh, Peter Krogh.
W. Curtis Preston:We had him on the podcast.
W. Curtis Preston:I should put a link in the show description was a fascinating
W. Curtis Preston:discussion right back in 1991.
W. Curtis Preston:Little did he know he was coining a term that would be.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Well, and he's a photographer,
W. Curtis Preston:he was a photographer.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:And, um, here it is, we're, you know, we're in the next
W. Curtis Preston:century, cuz he did it in 1991.
W. Curtis Preston:We're in the next century.
W. Curtis Preston:30, 32 years later.
W. Curtis Preston:And we're using this definition that he wrote in some book about
W. Curtis Preston:digital photography to argue whether or not something is or is not a
W. Curtis Preston:backup, but I think it's solid.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:So 3, 2, 1, 3 copies of the data on two different media, one of
W. Curtis Preston:which is somewhere else, right?
W. Curtis Preston:That that's a somewhat modified version of the original.
W. Curtis Preston:But I think that's, that keeps the spirit of the original three copies.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Y three.
W. Curtis Preston:wanna have different versions.
W. Curtis Preston:You know?
W. Curtis Preston:He's like, again, go to where, go to where he was originally talking about
W. Curtis Preston:you just don't want one copy of your.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And by the way, he did include the original in his copy, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So he's like, you just don't want you, you took a really important picture.
W. Curtis Preston:You don't want this really important picture.
W. Curtis Preston:You have there to be only one copy of it on, you know, only one piece of media.
W. Curtis Preston:So he is like, let's have three of those, right on at least two different media.
W. Curtis Preston:What he was concerned about, there was risk types, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and so
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And especially back then with the hard discs.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Not being very reliable.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:At the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:time and consumer devices.
W. Curtis Preston:it was early digital photography days, right?
W. Curtis Preston:So they didn't have as much solid state media was not as prevalent.
W. Curtis Preston:It is today.
W. Curtis Preston:But even, even now, like we don't want, what he's saying is he, he
W. Curtis Preston:doesn't want you to use the same.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, you don't want to copy to the exact same thing.
W. Curtis Preston:This, by the way, is why I've always historically had a problem with, again,
W. Curtis Preston:big fan of Net app, big fan of net app snapshots, but why I always had difficulty
W. Curtis Preston:with an all NetApp solution, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Even
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Nice app and replicate is awesome.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Come on,
W. Curtis Preston:Snap and replicate is awesome, right?
W. Curtis Preston:There's just this little part of me that goes, yeah, but it is all the
W. Curtis Preston:same stuff if there's some sort of rolling code, you know what I mean?
W. Curtis Preston:So it that what, that doesn't really stick it, that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Having,
W. Curtis Preston:the two aspect.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:having developed that product, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi:totally understand your concerns.
W. Curtis Preston:And then the last part is, uh, one of which is somewhere else.
W. Curtis Preston:This is really, really important.
W. Curtis Preston:And that is that you, that you store a copy of it somewhere else,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:What does somewhere else mean?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like, is it I'm at home, so I have my laptop and I have a disk drive
Prasanna Malaiyandi:sitting on the shelf right next to me plugged in all the time.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Like, what is that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Because I think that's what people struggle with is what's the one.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah, well, the it, the original definition just set offsite.
W. Curtis Preston:I changed it to somewhere else because there's no longer an offsite
W. Curtis Preston:when we talk about the cloud.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:And somewhere else is, it's relative, depending on what we're talking about.
W. Curtis Preston:So if you're talking about a laptop in your house, I mean a
W. Curtis Preston:copy that is not in your house.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, if you're talking a data center somewhere else is not a server over in
W. Curtis Preston:the corner of the data center, uh, O H V Cloud, I'm talk, or o vh, o VH cloud.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm talking to you, right?
W. Curtis Preston:This is from that disaster back in the beginning of 2021.
W. Curtis Preston:Where we discovered the PE people that had paid for the commercial backup
W. Curtis Preston:service had their backup stored in another server in the same data center.
W. Curtis Preston:That was never, that did not conform to the 3 21 rule, um, because it
W. Curtis Preston:wasn't, the one was not offsite.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:The other thing I wanna add for the one is, even if you're
Prasanna Malaiyandi:using a cloud, I think it's important, and maybe this bleeds more into like
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the ransomware side, is you almost want that one to be an isolated copy, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's kind of what the one somewhere else means.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So even if you're in the cloud, if you're storing in a different, say a
Prasanna Malaiyandi:region, you probably want that in a separate account as well to make sure.
W. Curtis Preston:at you on the video.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That it's not all accessible, you know,
W. Curtis Preston:exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:It it, well, the, the idea, again, we look at the idea behind the one
W. Curtis Preston:and, and the, and behind the two.
W. Curtis Preston:It's to, it's to, to.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:reduce risk.
W. Curtis Preston:Well, it's reduce risk to make sure that the, um, the, the
W. Curtis Preston:copy of the data is not, if something bad happens to the primary, that bad
W. Curtis Preston:thing won't also happen and when, and so you have to look at the things that
W. Curtis Preston:can happen to your primary when you're in the cloud, when you're in AWS or
W. Curtis Preston:Azure or, or GCP or wherever you, um,
W. Curtis Preston:if someone deletes your account.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I said O vh.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Cloud
W. Curtis Preston:Oh, I, I don't they went public after that.
W. Curtis Preston:Do you know that?
W. Curtis Preston:Oh, I, I'm sorry.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I, I hope somebody listens to this and I, I would love to be a,
W. Curtis Preston:an expert witness on that case on behalf of the, of the plaintiffs.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, there is a big class action lawsuit.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:still
W. Curtis Preston:customers anyway.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and I'm with, I'm with them because this isn't like, this isn't
W. Curtis Preston:like it was AWS customers and.
W. Curtis Preston:And they had backup available to them and they didn't use it.
W. Curtis Preston:They paid for a separate backup service, which OVH provided and charged them for.
W. Curtis Preston:And O VH stored the data, allegedly in servers, in the data center.
W. Curtis Preston:And when they lost it, uh, their actual, I saw one quote from
W. Curtis Preston:somebody at OVH and said that they never, they never represented
W. Curtis Preston:that it was stored anywhere else.
W. Curtis Preston:And I, you may recall when we, when we
W. Curtis Preston:interviewed somebody from there, they, they said that
W. Curtis Preston:there was a phrase in there.
W. Curtis Preston:It said something about it stored, it had some weird name.
W. Curtis Preston:It stored like physically separate or something.
W. Curtis Preston:Some, some weird name, but it didn't, it didn't specify offsite anyway.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:But, but I think also for the one.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:This is where I think when it was initially intended, right, that
Prasanna Malaiyandi:somewhere else or offsite, it's about having that air gap, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:That's, I think, another
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:right, that people talk about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:And now with the cloud and everything being connected, it's truly hard to have
Prasanna Malaiyandi:an actual physical air gap, which is where you have like virtual air gaps.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So, sorry, go ahead, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston:No, no.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That's all, that's all correct, right?
W. Curtis Preston:You, you, you, you can't.
W. Curtis Preston:At least not easily.
W. Curtis Preston:You can't create the physical, the actual physical air gap that we used to where
W. Curtis Preston:you'd put it on a tape, put that tape in a box, and you hand that box to a man in
W. Curtis Preston:a van and he takes it to somewhere and you, you need guns to go get it right.
W. Curtis Preston:That doesn't really exist in most cases, but you can separate it as much
W. Curtis Preston:as possible, have it in a different account, have it in a different region.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, whatever you do, don't have it in the same account, in the same region.
W. Curtis Preston:That's just, that's what happened to, uh,
W. Curtis Preston:what
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Code spaces.
W. Curtis Preston:Spaces.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:That's what happened to Code Spaces.
W. Curtis Preston:They had all their backups in the same account in the same region.
W. Curtis Preston:They got hacked and the hacker just deleted their company along
W. Curtis Preston:and the backups along with it.
W. Curtis Preston:So, um, um, Yeah, so we talked about that.
W. Curtis Preston:Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:the one thing I was also around the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:three is that's a minimum, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Not saying that that's
W. Curtis Preston:a bare
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, that's a bare minimum.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:You should have.
W. Curtis Preston:That, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Again, that came from back in the day.
W. Curtis Preston:Right Now there are some companies, um, you know, Veeam for example,
W. Curtis Preston:that they have like 3,210, like, um, Do I disagree with that?
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, no.
W. Curtis Preston:But I think that I'm like, one is air gaps.
W. Curtis Preston:Like if one is air gaped, if the one, if one of your copies is, that's what
W. Curtis Preston:we meant, that's what we always meant.
W. Curtis Preston:Making sure that that other copy.
W. Curtis Preston:Is, you know, is air gap.
W. Curtis Preston:They, they add like immutable.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I I do think that, you know, your backup should be immutable.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I think that's a separate concept, but I, I don't disagree with them on that.
W. Curtis Preston:I just, my main purpose of the 3 21 rule is to, to use it against
W. Curtis Preston:things that are clearly not backups.
W. Curtis Preston:And I'll give the most obvious case, and that is, um, a SAS provider, right?
W. Curtis Preston:And again, I'll pick on my.
W. Curtis Preston:You know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I wonder who it's gonna
W. Curtis Preston:to pick on Microsoft, right?
W. Curtis Preston:and, and again, it's, I don't have anything against Microsoft per se.
W. Curtis Preston:It, it does seem odd.
W. Curtis Preston:So many sort of proponents of Microsoft 365 try to tell us that
W. Curtis Preston:what Microsoft has is a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:Guess what, not a separate copy.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:It's the stuff that, the stuff that's inside 365 where they, you know, in the,
W. Curtis Preston:in the manual where they say, like, to restore, restore means you pull it out of
W. Curtis Preston:a backup stored in a separate location.
W. Curtis Preston:That that is not what they're doing.
W. Curtis Preston:They're undeleting a flag.
W. Curtis Preston:They're set, they're.
W. Curtis Preston:Unchecking a a, a deletion flag and a record in a database, right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and they are not storing a copy of your data on a second server in an
W. Curtis Preston:additional location that would protect it against the worst possible stuff.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:well, I wanna correct you there, Curtis.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:They are storing a second copy somewhere else, but that's for their own internal
Prasanna Malaiyandi:purposes to deal with disaster recovery.
W. Curtis Preston:There is a delayed replication archive.
W. Curtis Preston:I, I, I probably used the wrong term there, but it's a, it's
W. Curtis Preston:a, it's a delayed replicated.
W. Curtis Preston:Replicated, delayed.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't know which word to use that, that does exist, but I have
W. Curtis Preston:specifically asked Microsoft as a customer of Microsoft and said, can
W. Curtis Preston:we use that delayed replicated copy as a backup if the worst were to happen?
W. Curtis Preston:And they said no.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and.
W. Curtis Preston:I would argue that they see it as a protection against if all hell broke
W. Curtis Preston:loose at Microsoft that like if the entire, if like in the OVH case, right,
W. Curtis Preston:they get a data center fire and it takes out all of Microsoft, they might might
W. Curtis Preston:be able to bring all your data back.
W. Curtis Preston:I say might because it isn't in the contract.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:yep.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:There's no
W. Curtis Preston:the only, the only thing they have in their contract is
W. Curtis Preston:that the service will be available.
W. Curtis Preston:It, it's not, it's not, your data will be available.
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:But the, but, but yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:So they don't have it stored in a separate.
W. Curtis Preston:In an offsite location.
W. Curtis Preston:They do have a delayed replicated copy, but it isn't available to you.
W. Curtis Preston:So as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yep, exactly.
W. Curtis Preston:it's dead to me.
W. Curtis Preston:Just like, just like the company formerly known as San Diego Charters, um, or
W. Curtis Preston:as I call them, the, um, for those of you that aren't locals, they moved up
W. Curtis Preston:to Los Angeles and they're dead to me.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, alright, well there you go.
W. Curtis Preston:That is what is backup.
W. Curtis Preston:I think we talked about it enough.
W. Curtis Preston:Do you have any final thoughts on the
Prasanna Malaiyandi:No.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I think the only thing is stay tuned for our next podcast
Prasanna Malaiyandi:episode on what is Archive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:I know Curtis has dropped a lot of hints about
W. Curtis Preston:A lot of hints.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:important to
W. Curtis Preston:gonna be a three minute episode.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm gonna go everything that last week wasn't.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Yeah, . Well, I think it's important because a lot
Prasanna Malaiyandi:of folks, even in the industry get confused between backup and archives.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:So listen to this episode.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Stay tuned for the next one, and yeah, let's go from there.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:It goes back to that the fact that backup and archive are
W. Curtis Preston:such common terms outside of it.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Um, let's go to the archives.
W. Curtis Preston:Right?
W. Curtis Preston:Right.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, let's go to, you know, I need a, I need a backup, right?
W. Curtis Preston:I need a backup.
W. Curtis Preston:And what that means is like, I need another cop,
W. Curtis Preston:right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Even in TV shows and movies, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi:It's like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi:oh, let's pull for a book.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm currently watching the manifest.
W. Curtis Preston:I'm currently bing.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a great show, by the way.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a really good show.
W. Curtis Preston:And yeah, they're, they're like a call for backup.
W. Curtis Preston:I don't think they're, nobody's pulling out any tapes, um, But, um, yeah, archive
W. Curtis Preston:is actually a lot more complicated than backup because there are, there
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Okay.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Save it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Same.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Wait, wait, wait.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Save it.
W. Curtis Preston:archives.
W. Curtis Preston:I know now I'm just, it's a teaser.
W. Curtis Preston:It's a teaser, you know.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, and, uh, Spoiler alert, uh, to Cha's, not in Wakanda forever.
Prasanna Malaiyandi:Oh, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston:that's a good movie.
W. Curtis Preston:I watched it, it was a good movie.
W. Curtis Preston:Um, I was little surprised that, you know, no.
W. Curtis Preston:Anyway, all right, well that is what is back.
W. Curtis Preston:Uh, remember, um, hope you enjoyed this episode.
W. Curtis Preston:Remember to subscribe so that you can restore it all.
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