Blog

While I work with multiple enterprise backup products, the one which I have the longest and most ongoing exposure to is EMC (formerly Legato) NetWorker. Over at The NetWorker Blog you'll find ongoing commentary, tips and analysis of NetWorker.

However, while the site has a NetWorker focus, it still covers backup theory and policies quite regularly, so it's worth checking out even if your company isn't using NetWorker.

Here's some postings that cover theory and policies, irrespective of the backup product in use:

• In "What is a Zero Error Policy?", I expand on the principle of zero error policies discussed in the book, citing what rules a company might have to follow in order to achieve this most important policy. The follow-up article to this is Zero Error Policy Management.
• In "When will tape die?", I give my thoughts on why the periodic exclamations of "tape is dead!" from technology journalists and vendors-with-vested-interests is inherently flawed.
• Does someone you know think that backup isn't a production activity? If so, make sure they read my post on that topic.
• In "Of cascading failures and the need to test", I outline how failures can be particularly unpleasant in environments that do not have formalised backup policies.
• In "The Dual Evils - Malware and Malware Protection", I go somewhat off-topic to discus the sorry state of affairs that is the ongoing war of one-upmanship between malware software developers and the companies that produce malware protection software.
• In "Media, CapEx and OpEx", I give practical examples of why it is very important to plan for media budget in a backup environment out of operational expenditure rather than capital expenditure.
• "In-lab review of the impact of dense filesystems" is a comprehensive example of the impact of filesystem density on filesystem backup. Regardless of which backup product you use, the results will be similar.
• As tape speeds increase, the "Impact of high speed tape on backup" continues to be something that businesses have to take into consideration when planning backup architecture.
• "Backups are not about being miserly" is a comment on ensuring that the need to keep media costs down is intelligently weighed up against the amount of time it takes to reconstruct vs recover.
• In "Ethical obligations of backup administrators", I outline an ethical framework that backup administrators should be obliged to follow, regardless of individual corporate requirements. I followed this up more recently with The 7 Procedural Obligations of Backup Administrators.
• Not all media is created equal, something I cover in "Is your LTO media compatible with your drives?".
• "Expecting a more complete backup" is an extended look at scripting backups of "alternate" software or hardware into an enterprise backup environment.
• Change control is frequently a hot topic; in "Does your backup administrator have a say in change control?", I recommend that any company that doesn't have backup administration staff in the change control process rethink that strategy.
• In "Is your backup server fast enough?", I make some comments on optimising performance of the backup server so that it is not a bottleneck to the backup process.
• "Things not to virtualise", while focused on NetWorker in its examples, is a valid comment regardless of which backup product is being used at a site.