Have you checked for Titanic in your backup storage environment?

For IT people around the globe, holiday periods can be very challenging: how does the IT organization ensure IT continuity when key staff on leave for a shorter or longer period? Can the remaining staff test or even execute recovery of mission-critical servers?

Let me draw your attention to a local incident that happened this summer. Most of you can relate to the situation, at least the scary implications following server fall-outs.

A large public organization experiences – without evident warnings – a fatal server break-down. The server plays a key role for caretaking of older people. The server holds schemas for individuals’ home care, cleaning, medicine, dispatching of care takers etc. Evidently, the unavailability of the server means the Caretaking Unit is blindfolded, for instance, how do you administer medicine?

Server break-downs happen quite often and really: nothing to be surprised of. What strikes me is the classic explanation: “We are victims of force majeure: first, the server break downs and then we discover the backup has failed for a period of time.”

An “cruiseline” analogue: “We didn’t spot the iceberg before impact, however we experienced the lifesaving equipment didn’t work”. Failure of recovery is not an option. TESTING SERVER RECOVERY FROM BACKUP IS MANDATORY.

It’s not a matter of “IF” – rather “WHEN” servers break. End of story. So please, test, test, test you can recover complete servers from backup. Not just single files restores…