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Nov. 21, 2022

What is backup and restore? (Backup to Basics Series)

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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Transcript
W. Curtis Preston:

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.