W. Curtis Preston: There are three types of people in this world.
Those who think you need to back up SaaS services like Microsoft 365.
Those who don't.
And those who still aren't sure.
If, what we talk about in this episode, doesn't persuade you
to back up things like that.
I don't know what will hi.
I'm w Curtis precedent, AKA Mr.
Backup.
If you're not familiar with me, I've been fighting the backup fights since
my first job and it over 30 years ago.
I've also written for O'Reilly books on the topic.
And this episode, you'll hear how Microsoft and Salesforce have both
admitted their services need to be backed up . Then we discuss the all-important
question of whether or not you should use their backup services or a third party.
This is an extremely important episode.
This is backup.
Central's restore it all.
Hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore All podcast.
I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, a k a, Mr.
Backup, and I have with me my used car consultants Prasanna Malaiyandi.
How's it going?
Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I am good, Curtis, how are you doing?
W. Curtis Preston: Well, I can't get rid of my car.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I, I don't know what to say.
I think it's one of those love-hate relationships where you sort of fall in
love with a car and you think it's amazing and everyone else is like, wait, what?
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Well, this is not my first time like buying a new car and then selling
my old car, uh, person to person.
It kills me that my current asking price is lower than what
I sold my wife's Honda Fit at.
Which had a little, a little bit fewer miles, but a Honda Fit and a Toyota
Prius, those are not equivalent cars.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Prius has a loyal following, but the
loyalists will buy a Prius.
I think a fit has a wider audience of people who would potentially buy a fit.
I.
W. Curtis Preston: So you think that I've lowered my tam,
is that what you're saying?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And it also doesn't help that the new
Prius just came out as well.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, well, we'll see.
Um, somebody will buy the dang thing.
This is gonna be, I'm gonna enjoy this episode.
You know why I'm gonna enjoy this episode, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Because it's one of your pet peeves.
W. Curtis Preston: Well, first off, I, I just say like, like an overarching
thing that I have always said.
All my career is back up all the things, right?
And throughout my entire career, things pop up and people say,
this doesn't need to be backed up.
Right.
Can you, can you think of some of those things?
What can you think of, like, over the years people have said that
don't, doesn't need to be backed up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: well, so way back in the day, virtual machines,
W. Curtis Preston: Virtual machines?
Yeah.
Um,
the, I was, yeah, I was thinking like, I was thinking like raid,
that was the first thing I remember.
Like, they're like, oh, well we haven't done in hard drives.
We don't need to back it up, we ever done in hard drives.
Um, how do the redundant hard drives help when you delete a file
or drop a table in a database?
Right.
Um, yeah, you're right though.
It's like different.
There, there are different other, um, I think with VMs, people would
say like there were a lot of VMs that didn't need to be backed up.
Right.
Different types of.
Servers, like you're saying, like file servers.
Well, when you say file servers, do you mean like na,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yes.
W. Curtis Preston: you know, like, like filers?
Yeah.
Uh, yeah.
And, and, and that, that one, you know, that one we can sort of, it's like, the
question is if you have a NetApp right?
And you're using snapshots, you're using Snap Mirror and SnapVault and
all these things, and you've, you've got the data, you've got the history.
You've got it replicated in multiple locations.
Is that backup?
I would kind of say yes.
Um, as long as we've got something to protect from the
rolling code, uh, problem.
The, the rolling code, disaster problem.
Right.
So we got a new version of the new code and it wipes out all the data.
The, the thing that's never happened, but the thing that
I always worry about, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: If you've got a way to deal with that, then
I would say that that's backup.
Um, what, how about, um, like, um, Cassandra and the like,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Oh yeah, those, the databases, the multi-node cluster
databases where it's like, yeah, data is replicated, don't need to worry about it.
But like you said, Curtis, it's you drop a table, what are you gonna do?
Right.
And I think this is where a lot of people can,
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I was gonna say, never underestimate the
ability of people to do stupid stuff.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: well, and this is like we, we always talk about, right?
I think people confuse availability.
W. Curtis Preston: Mm-hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Right.
And resiliency for backup.
W. Curtis Preston: Right, right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Right.
Where you're protecting sort of the system level.
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Yeah.
And, and right next to raid would be like, ha.
We've got Ha.
Right, that was the thing.
That was the term back in the day.
We've got ha, it's highly available.
It's replicated to multiple locations.
That's the other one.
Right.
Is a replicated system just in general, not necessarily these
multi-node databases, but we've got a, a active, active full replication.
And, and what's the why?
Why is that?
Why do I still wanna back that one up?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Because like you said, even if you drop a table
that gets replicated over because that's what those systems do.
W. Curtis Preston: It, it makes your stupidity more effective.
Right?
Or, or a hack, right?
Or, or, or a cyber attack.
Uh, or, you know, some kind of something that attacks the
data on a logical basis, right?
Logical as opposed to physical, right?
Um, I'm trying to think what else before we get to the topic at
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, so the other one, I think the other thing
that people kind of going along with clustered, uh, databases, Kubernetes,
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, that was gonna be my next one too.
They're
like, oh
it's a, it's ephemeral.
It's um, you know, we don't
Prasanna Malaiyandi: yeah, you probably still need to back that up.
Yeah.
Or yeah, Kubernetes.
The other one I was also thinking is just like public cloud, right?
Infrastructure.
Write your own applications hosted on the public cloud.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Well, let's, well, let's, let's talk about that one next.
Let's talk about the Kubernetes thing.
The thing with Kubernetes, well, well, Docker right containers.
Like if we just look at containers historically, originally they
were meant to be ephemeral.
That they were, they were, they were not meant to, to have data originally.
And I remember being told, When I, you know, whenever I, when when a new
thing comes up, my ears perk up and I'm like, how do we back this thing up?
And I remember asking people that knew Docker, uh, how do I back this thing up?
Right?
And their answer was, you know, I'm like, well, there's gotta be data.
And basically what they said back then was that if your containers had permanent
data in them, you are doing it wrong.
That was, that was what it was back in the day.
That has absolutely changed.
Right?
So now, now we need to know two things.
One, how to back up like doc, the Docker and Kubernetes configuration,
and then also how to back up the, the, the actual data.
Somebody, I, I think it was actually Steven Manley that we had on the
show that that said things like that.
It's a pretty boring application that doesn't have any data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Does that sound like something Steven would
say?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: That would be something Steven would say.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Like, like any, any application that is worth anything is
gonna have data attached to it.
Um, and yes, theoretically, I suppose you could have a database
that's not in, in a container.
Being used by something that's in a container, but,
and, and that way the database, which is fine, and, but that database would then
be protected via whatever mechanisms.
Right.
But
Prasanna Malaiyandi: You still need to back
W. Curtis Preston: need to protect the configurate, you need
to protect the configuration.
Right.
Uh, but the, but the one that you just brought up though, the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Public cloud.
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
The public cloud.
I, I, I've never been able to, do you say ias?
What do you say?
I A A Ss, it's not
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
I a
W. Curtis Preston: and it sounds weird.
Yeah.
Um,
so yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: as a service.
Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: infrastructure as a service, um, and this is one, this is
the one to me that's the easiest to.
To shoot down, if you will, right?
Because if you talk to anyone at a W Ss, they will go, yes, you
absolutely have to back this up.
Right?
It's unequivocal, it's in the documentation.
They're like, make sure you back it up.
Make sure you put it in another region, put it in another account.
This is proper backup configuration.
If you, if you just have an e c two instance, for example, nothing
is happening with that host from a backup and recovery perspective.
Unless you do it on purpose.
There are other things in a w s, such as r d s that has default backups built
into it, but even those who need to do something more than the default.
More than the default, because a hack of the account could
delete everything, right?
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Do you agree with the point that that one's relatively easy
to shoot down People that think that you don't need to back up the public cloud?
I know it happens a lot,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Yes.
I especially, I think, yeah.
And I think people are now realizing that they have to, I think the
challenge becomes how do you do it?
Because there are a variety of, is, uh, ways you could do
it, like you mentioned, right?
Depending on what a w s service or cloud service you use, maybe it has
built-in backup, maybe it has APIs, maybe it doesn't have anything at all.
And so you need to sort of pull data out in other ways and back it up some.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: The other thing I was also thinking like if I think about like
one of the common things I heard is like, hey, with AWS S3, right, object storage,
you don't need to back it up, right?
Because it's sort of, depending on what you pick, it's replicated between multiple
availability zones within a region.
You could replicate it out to a separate region as well.
But then that's not good enough, like you said, because you can delete it.
The deletions propagate, right?
But that's where a W s introduced like versioning.
So you can have versions of objects that you can keep track of, so
that kind of becomes your backup.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it, it's basically the cloud version of the NetApp
thing that we talked about earlier, right?
Like, so a lot of people due to both the versioning and the multi-zone
replication, um, and also features like, um, right locking are, are, what's the
actual term that, yeah, object lock.
Thank you.
Um, that you can.
You can protect yourself against an awful lot with built in S three.
That's why a lot of people, um, don't, most people don't back up the SS three
s three doesn't make it easy to back up.
Right.
Um, I, I know 'cause I used to work at a company that was trying to do
that and it wasn't, it wasn't easy.
Um, the, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Do you wanna throw out our disclaimer?
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
Throughout our disclaimer.
Yeah.
Uh, so this is an independent podcast.
This is, uh, Prasanna and I bloviating about backup and
recovery and related topics and, uh, the opinions that you hear.
Ours, not our employers.
I mean, they may be not necessarily our employers, I
think would be the official term.
And, um, you know, if, if you like us, rate us.
If you hate us.
I need something that rhymes.
Uh, you know, if you like us, go to, go to your favorite, you know, pod catcher
and, uh, give us some stars and comets.
We love the comets.
Uh, you know, oh, if you hate us, don't rate us.
That's what it is.
If you hate us, don't rate us.
Um, and, um, if you, uh, would like to join the conversation,
we'd love to hear from you.
I am at WC Preston on Twitter.
I am now w Curtis Preston on threads, uh, linkedin.com/in/mr backup.
So, um, or, or w Curtis Preston gmail.
You can reach me any one of those ways and I will, uh, be happy to
get you, get you on the podcast.
Uh, but what about the topic at hand that's gonna allow
us to say, I told you so?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Yeah.
The one thing that we did not talk about so far is SaaS applications,
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So like, Google Workspaces or Microsoft 365.
Or Salesforce.
All of these applications, which you are putting your data into your, they
provide all the infrastructure, the application, and you just use a service.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
And.
Unlike the previous things that we talked about, there seems to be, again,
me, based on having argued the same exact point for the last 30 years,
but just against different things.
It seems to me that, um, in the case of SaaS, I get much
stronger arguments against.
Have you, have you seen that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
It's like, oh, they're providing everything.
Why should I care about this?
And I know Curtis, you and I just even looking at consumer.
SaaS, right?
We, you did your experiment right with iCloud Apple's iCloud, right?
And how do you back it up?
I would say that's a SaaS service, right?
And yet there weren't many good ways to back it up.
And as we talked about, right, there are issues with keeping all that
data there being locked out of your account or just losing the data and
how do you actually take a backup
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, and, and, and with the iCloud, if you
have a phone, you have an iPhone.
Oh, you're, hang on.
I didn't hear anything you just said.
I got, I got, um, what, what, what did you just say?
I.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Oh, I was just saying about how with
iCloud, right, you basically.
You're responsible for backing it up, right?
That there, if you get locked out of your account right, you basically
lose access to the data and they don't make it easy to back it up.
W. Curtis Preston: A lot of people are moving to SaaS because they don't want to
administer, let's say, exchange anymore.
They don't want the hassle of everything that came with administering
exchange, one of which was backup.
And so, and they may have been sold a bill of goods somewhere along the way
by somebody that said, well, if you, if you go to 365 or whatever, then you
don't have to worry about backup either.
We handle backup, right.
Except they don't.
There's nothing in the, in the, um, terms of service that say backup and restore.
Um, there are actually occasional parts in the documentation
that use the word restore.
You can restore files that you've deleted.
You can restore emails that you've deleted, but it's not really a
restore, it's really just pulling it out of essentially a recycle bin.
Um, there there is a slightly fancier recycle bin.
They, they do have this concept of retention lo uh, retention.
Uh, features, right?
But as we've previously talked in previous episodes, the retention, uh,
policies, Can actually be as harmful as, uh, you know, not having 'em,
because there is a story about K P M G accidentally deleting a whole
bunch of data using retention policy.
So they're trying to use retention policies to retain data and they actually
accidentally deleted data on 150,000 employees and there is no back button.
Right.
Uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And I think they were under regulatory.
Yeah.
But I think it was under regulatory obligations as well.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, and so given all of that, what Prasanna, what Pray, tell happened
in the last week or so that would allow me to say, I told you so?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So I ran across an article by Chris Miller on the
register called Microsoft User Content Backup for Microsoft 365.
So it looks like Microsoft has finally come around and they are now
doing native user content backups.
W. Curtis Preston: My question would be, Prasanna: why does something that
doesn't need backup ...need backup?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
They've had a change of heart.
W. Curtis Preston: Here's what I think happened.
The Microsoft 365 backup market got big enough
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: and they said, in a meeting someday, " did
you know that currently there are a hundred million people?"
'cause they will have the data, right?
They will know exactly how many users are using third party backup and recovery.
And they're like, we have a hundred million users that
are using third party backup.
At an average of, let's say $3 a user that's $300 million a
month, that should be ours.
And so they said let's bring the service out.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I think the other thing, and I don't know if
this is true or not, but I know that with how Microsoft does their
APIs, right, that there's usually limitations placed when you're doing.
Backups, right?
Because you're basically calling the same set of APIs to pull the
data out as a backup vendor, right?
And so there are certain limitations in terms of the number you could do and
how quickly, and so maybe they've also decided to sort of centralize a lot of
that into a single place to make it more efficient for these backup operations.
I kind of go back and think about VM VMware, right?
When they're like, Hey, backup teams, why don't you guys just
use whatever APIs are out there?
And then they sort of were like, okay, no.
We need to create the right backup specific APIs for VMware so it can be
more optimized and targeted for backup use cases, which is very different
than your standard, normal use case.
Right?
So maybe Microsoft came around.
W. Curtis Preston: that's a really good point, Prasanna.
I actually hadn't thought about that.
That this release of this, or impending release of backup for Microsoft 365
perfectly coincides with the release of the backup APIs, which are now, um, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Available to other
vendors, right?
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: right?
Because for those that didn't know this, Microsoft didn't have backup APIs.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Basically in order to back up 365, you had to basically pretend to be
a person accessing 365 via the O w A, the Outlook web, uh, access.
Right.
And a lot of people don't realize that, right?
'cause there were no APIs, so the only a p I they had was
the one that,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: there was no backup specific APIs.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
No backup specific APIs.
The APIs that were available were accessing, uh, outlook
and whatnot via the web.
It was called o w a.
And so backup vendors, basically, I don't think reverse engineer
might be a strong term,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: were available, but they just weren't optimized.
Right.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Yeah.
And so, uh, but within the last year or so, Microsoft has come out
with these specific APIs that are designed for backup, and then lo and
behold, they said, we think we're gonna get into the backup game.
I can think of a better parallel to this than VMware.
Can you,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Oracle.
W. Curtis Preston: you think of a No?
No.
Can you think of another cloud vendor that decided to get into the backup business?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: A w s.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Yep.
A w s and their a w s backup
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Now that one's a little bit different in that they don't charge for a w s backup,
they just charge for what it does, right.
But they decided to just sort of make it easier for people to create backups
of their services without necessarily having to go to a third party backup.
In this case, it looks like 365 will be charging for this service.
And I just wanna say I told you so.
That's all I'm saying.
I just wanna say that Microsoft has validated all of us screaming out
here in the rain going, Hey, why isn't anybody backing this stuff up?
Now microsoft's "Oh!
we can make money at this.
We're gonna back this stuff up."
the other parallel to this is what happened with Salesforce.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Um, and, and this, this story's a lot weirder though, right?
So Salesforce used to have their, um, their, I forgot what they called it,
but they had this service that you didn't pay for where they were backing
up Salesforce and you only paid for it if you needed to do a restore.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah,
W. Curtis Preston: It was $10,000.
It took like four to six weeks to get your data back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: there was no
guarantee.
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
No guarantee.
And they gave you a bunch of CSS fees and at one point they came out
and they said, um, you know what?
This service, this is my, this is my paraphrasing.
Of course, we decided this service is so horrible, we're
not gonna offer it anymore.
Right.
Like, who would want to pay for that?
The, the, the service level was so low.
It just doesn't match the needs for our customers.
And then what happened was there were a whole bunch of customers that were
counting on that they were hoping they never needed it, but they were counting
on it and they were telling vendors like, you know, uh, my previous employer
to, uh, they say, we don't need, you know, we don't need you because if
the, you know, feces hits the rotary oscillator, we will just pay this $10,000.
And, um, We know it'll suck, but at least we don't have to pay for something.
We don't need.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And then they came back and they were like, yep, we're
gonna bring it back into business.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
They, yes, they brought that back because so many people.
Yeah.
But, but then, but then they actually came out with a service like
Microsoft 365 is doing with backup.
My understanding is they release it.
It wasn't very good.
This is, this is a total paraphrase based on.
Random stuff that I read, and I don't really know how true to life is, but
my understanding is they, they came out with it, they unreleased it.
The commercial product that you actually pay for, they released it,
they unreleased it, and I believe they've released it again so that now
there's a service that you can pay Salesforce and Salesforce back up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Let me ask you a question, Prasanna.
What do you think from a generic perspective, this isn't Microsoft or
Salesforce, what do you think about paying vendor A to back up vendor a.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So I go back and forth on this, right?
So on the one hand, I'd rather not have all my eggs in one basket.
W. Curtis Preston: Right,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It depends on how vendor A is doing the backup.
Like if it's like, okay, you're gonna pull the data out and you'll let me
put it into, say, like I could pull it out of Microsoft and write it to
an AWS S3 bucket, like that would be a little less concerning, right?
Rather than, okay, as Microsoft, I'm gonna pull your data out and I'm
gonna throw it into Azure Blob and you don't get any control of anything.
Right.
So that's where I get a little queasy because it's like, how
can you verify, validate that they're not screwing things up?
And at the same time though, the other part of me from a technology side says
they're the best people to build this because they can actually work with
the internal developers, know the secret sauce, optimize it better than
anyone else who's trying to reverse engineer things from the outside.
W. Curtis Preston: I'm pretty sure you know that I'm much more the former than
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, I know.
W. Curtis Preston: right?
I'm just gonna say OVH Cloud.
Just keep saying that over, over and over.
And if you don't know what I'm talking about, They were the, this happened
a couple years ago and they were, uh, they, they still are, uh, the largest
cloud provider headquartered in Europe.
And they had a giant data center fire, and it turns out that the backup
system, which people were paying for was stored in the same place
as the data that it was protecting.
And so people lost backups and there's a big class action lawsuit.
I don't know what happened to it.
I'm generally not a fan.
I understand.
I understand what you're saying.
Uh, because, so on one hand I'd say, yes, they are the, the best
at, let's say, Microsoft 365.
They will know it better than anybody else.
What they don't necessarily know, and clearly history has proven this right.
They don't necessarily know anything about backup, and that's
the only thing I care about.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So here's another argument I have too, right?
It's for people who aren't backing up today, they now get back up, right?
Which is better than nothing.
W. Curtis Preston: Something is better than nothing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
And I would also say the way that they're doing things, because it
looks like they're still allowing you to bring your own third party
to back up that data as well.
W. Curtis Preston: Mm-hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Right.
And so I think if you do want that safety, like I think they
have the best of both worlds.
They've provided an API layer.
So if you do wanna bring your own third party backup, you could do that for people
who aren't backing things up, now you have a solution that is built into the product.
You don't need to go procure something separately and manage and worry about it.
But I think the one thing we should talk about though, Curtis, is what do you think
are the questions that customers should be asking Microsoft to really figure out,
is this going to meet their needs or not?
W. Curtis Preston: 3, 2, 1, rule man.
3, 2, 1 rule.
That's all I gotta throw out.
I mean, I, you know, it's been a while since we've said that phrase.
I think the, the question is, uh, you know, how is this data being stored?
How is it being protected against?
Something that would take out whatever data center is hosting
my particular, uh, what would you
call it, instance of 365.
Right.
Um, how is it protected against a ransomware attack that would
directly target my account?
If somebody gains, I, I think about one worry that I would have is
whether or not the backup system is administered by the same.
Administrative console as the 365?
I would hope not because of, you know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It probably is though.
Maybe and, but maybe it's based, but maybe it's based on roles.
Right?
So maybe they are providing an RBAC system.
W. Curtis Preston: Well, I hope they're providing an RBAC system, but you know, at
the top of the RBAC system is, at the top of that is gonna be like cloud admin or
whatever, and you know, if somebody gains access, they can do whatever they want.
Uh, I hope that it's a separate system.
This is why I go back to how good are they at, you know, backup design.
How good are they at, at, at compartmentalization?
Um, Separation of powers and all
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And how good are they gonna be in an ongoing fashion, right?
Because features are gonna change.
Backup landscape and the threat actors are gonna change as well.
So are they gonna be focused on investing into keeping up with their backup
offering, or are they gonna be like, Hey, we have something out there that
kind of checks the box, if you will.
And really we're gonna go build out the rest of Microsoft 365.
W. Curtis Preston: I, I hope, um, and we should, we should look into
this once it actually comes out.
I hope that it's essentially a completely separate service.
Like, you know, pick your favorite way to back up 365, that it has a separate
authentication and authorization system.
You know, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I doubt that
though.
I doubt that.
I doubt that it'll have a completely separate uh,
W. Curtis Preston: know what?
It's gonna be all, it's gonna be all administered by Azure
Prasanna Malaiyandi: No, not called Azure AD anymore.
W. Curtis Preston: What's it called now?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Entra.
W. Curtis Preston: You know what?
I'm gonna log into X and talk about how stupid, I think renaming things are x.
My, my man, my man, Elon can make nice car, but I don't know what he is doing
over there with that, with that company.
Um, sorry, I digress,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: But hopefully, like you said, when they do, when
we do find out more information about what the service offers,
we will do an updated episode.
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
I think we should do that for that and also for the Salesforce thing.
But the summary statement is, I told you so Microsoft 365, Google Workspace,
Salesforce, pick your favorite product, uh, you know, JIRA, that if, if it's,
if it is a service that is creating and storing data that your company needs,
that stuff needs to be backed up.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: The, the only question is how is it being backed up?
In most cases, there's either no backup at all, like none.
Or um, like in the case of 365, they do have a delayed replicated copy
of exchange that will be used if like the O V H fire happens, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Microsoft purposes.
W. Curtis Preston: For Microsoft's purposes.
And I have verified with them as a Microsoft customer, I have verified
with them that we cannot get access to that delayed replicated copy.
So there may be some backups like that that are used.
If the entire data center is, it goes up in a, you know, conflagration.
But there's nothing that you can use for, let's say, a ransomware attack,
which is probably much more likely.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: yeah,
W. Curtis Preston: or there's no backup whatsoever.
Like they just back up the configuration, but not your data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Because the shared responsibility model says
that the data's your responsibility anyway.
Yeah.
Um, so just, you know, I'll just, I'll, and I think we'll end here
with saying, talk to your vendors.
Right?
Talk to them and ask them, how is the data being backed up?
How would you respond after, let's say a ransomware attack, somebody
gains administrative control over your account and deletes all your data.
How would you get that data back?
That's that, that, that one question.
And, you know, a, a rogue admin gains administrative control over
my account and deletes the account.
How do I get it back?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: The answer to that question should
determine what you do next.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Any debate there?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: No,
W. Curtis Preston: Okay.
Sometimes you, sometimes you like to argue with me.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I know I've gotten better.
Have you noticed?
W. Curtis Preston: At, at arguing, but yeah.
Yeah, sometimes it's annoying.
Just, just, just, you know, just admit I'm right with everything.
And, uh, basically the same thing I tell my wife.
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: our listeners want to hear, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston: I, you know, if you're out there and you think
that, that I am off my rocker, uh, I quite possibly may be.
But, um, you know, reach out to me and, um, we'll get you, we'll get
you on the thing, but all I wanna say is I was right and I told you so.
But anyway, well, thanks for, uh, thanks for hanging out again, Prasanna.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: As always, and good luck with the car.
W. Curtis Preston: Thanks.
And uh, yeah, good luck getting rid of that thing.
Um, and uh, again, thanks to our listeners, be sure to subscribe
so that you can restore it all.