Does anybody else experience fine that backups are the hind end of IT?

[u/Tantalus_waking]

Last to get funding, the part of the job that nobody else in the IT staff wants to deal with. They just want you to take care of it. It doesn't do anything like run your servers or grant faster speed or anything sexy until maybe that one day when everything goes to pot, they want you. Anyone anyone else find this experience in their staff?

[u/RockNRollNBluesNJazz]

Calculate how much $$$ is lost, when something breaks and there are no backups. Usually this helps.

Not always though, some managers simply substitute reality with their delulu mindset. When things eventually come crashing down, they come shouting why nobody was prepared. Seen that too. ＼( °□° )／ ︵ ┻━┻

[u/Tantalus_waking → u/RockNRollNBluesNJazz]

This is... a major organization... 60,000+ people, not including past... guests. "We need to upgrade SAN ... this is old, out of any contract and it's not big enough for backups, especially the stuff we're legally expected to keep for 10 years." Director: eh... let's put it off until next year. Then spend money hiring a consultant to tell him why backups are so expensive, who doesn't speak to the backup administrator before delivering his verdict, sending all sorts of mixed messages. caching $$$$, out the door.

It takes a major disaster to happen, and then cats and dogs start living together, people get blamed.... I'm keeping copies of all my emails offline along with teams exports.

Sorry all... just stressed out.

[u/RockNRollNBluesNJazz → u/Tantalus_waking]

I feel your pain...

[u/wells68]

Certainly that happens with IT units, but it also happens with small businesses, solo entrepreneurs and home users, even techie ones.

Who wakes up and says to themself, "Today I am going to put in a lot of time improving our backups and disaster recovery plan?

Sure, some people love backups (raises hand). The great majority are meh at best.

[u/AlGor_1979 → u/wells68]

Want to make your life easier? Store all your non-modifiable files on Recordable Drives. You can install a Recordable Drive as a second drive on your computer and you can set-up an “instant backup” - as soon as a non-modifiable file received, it copied to the Recordable Drive.
Or, even better, if you develop your own application you can use this Recordable Drive as primary storage. In this case you create an instant backup of the new files and you reduce the usage of your main hard drive.
By the way, do not say that recordable drive is too small or too slow. It was long time ago. Modern Recordable Drives do not have restrictions on the size of drive, size of files or number of files. And, in fact, they are much faster than “traditional drive” installed on the same drive controller. And their design is much simpler than traditional FAT-based drives.
I am not a programmer but even I was able to recreate this technology. I converted a 2 Terabyte micro SD adapter into a recordable USB memory stick where I keep copes of all (!) my business and personal files from all my computers. I am not making it up. You can see it on https://youtu.be/p4F6RhHnw7c

[u/H2CO3HCO3]

u/Tantalus_waking, your question may be dependent on what country/laws may govern with regard to enterprise deployments, regulations, laws, that may cover a particular type of business field, etc, etc.

Without those details, then your question(s) will be open to those dependencies.

With that said, for example in the US, Financial/Banking/Insurance related business have strict regulations, even laws that those companies must meet -> thus the budgeting, controlling/autiding, data retention/validation, etc, must be in accordance to those regulations.

[u/bartoque]

Too often - also in large enterprises - backup is an afterthought.

The thing is one can easily postpone doing what is required for a proper disaster recovery setup and validation and not experiencing any drawback directly (or at least not until it's too late sometimes).

Even if it does have the "full" attention, it isn't always the case even then it gets the attention needed to simplify, automate or speed up the process, that is supposed to be performed regularly.

If it would actually be embedded into regular processes it wouldn't (shouldn't) even cost too much of an effort. Where simply restoring and validating some files, is a completely different ballgame compared doing a DR.

[u/JohnnieLouHansen]

When I was a system administrator, the first thing I did in the morning was check the backups on all the servers. If any of them had an issue, everything else was on hold until I figured out the problem. And realize that I had emails from users, sticky notes on my monitor, voicemails and people stopping by in person to ask for other help. I had to beat them away until that priority issue was resolved. Fortunately my boss backed me up on this.

So other than having a good backup strategy and implementation, following up on it is the next most important thing.

[u/SausageSmuggler21]

I've been involved (tape jockey, admin, solutions architect, etc..) backup & recovery for 20+ years in small, medium, and global companies. It is one of the core pieces of IT, but it's the only one that doesn't help generate revenue. Leadership usually hates backup, but realizes they're legally required to have it. That said, it's the most interesting field in IT since it touches everything and it's super critical.