W. Curtis Preston: hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore it all podcast.
I'm your host, w Curtis Preston, aka Mr.
Backup.
And I have with me a guy who I hope is coming over to my house this weekend
to help me pull up some vinyl planking Prasanna Malaiyandi, how's it going?
Prasanna,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I'm good, Curtis.
Yeah.
I'm
W. Curtis Preston: you coming over?
You coming over?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: if there's a Turkey or a brisket involved.
W. Curtis Preston: There will be definitely a Turkey.
I don't, I, you know, I didn't, I didn't plan for a brisket.
I sh I really should have, I still got time to go to Costco, but I don't have
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.
You're gonna do a ham, I'm assuming.
W. Curtis Preston: Well with Ham.
Ham we do the, we just get the honey baked, the honey baked
ham, which is way too much money, but you know, it is what it is.
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: that's right.
Last year you stood in a really long line the day
W. Curtis Preston: It was a really long line.
Yeah.
Um, it's stupid.
Um, but, uh, yeah, so, you know, this thing that's going on with my kitchen,
um, it, it really, it's really all about the dishwasher and I don't
know what's up with the dishwasher.
Um, I should probably see if I could fix that or address that before,
because here's the really weird thing.
thought that my daughter redid the, like, started using the dishwasher
after I said, don't use it.
But that actually didn't happen because when I got home last night,
um, uh, from my trip, I went and I looked just, you know, just to, I
was like, I'm gonna take the look.
Or actually, I guess it was the day before it.
But anyway, when I got home, I saw it again that there was water all the floor.
And I'm like, okay, well I'm gonna, I'm.
J just, I'm gonna vacuum out the, basically when I open up the
dishwasher, there's, it's full of water.
So I got the wet vac and I, and I, I sucked out the water.
And I'm like, okay, well that'll, that'll take care of any further problems.
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
hope it is something simple.
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.
So I thought I was done with the kitchen and I'm not done with the kitchen.
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.
I, I should have known better than to try to take someone who loves
barbecue to a barbecue place.
I think I should just,
W. Curtis Preston: been
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I think I should just stick with like,
well, California barbecue.
I think I should just stick with like Indian, Korean.
Thai,
W. Curtis Preston: Hey, speaking of Korean, my book
Prasanna Malaiyandi: yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: got trans, my got translated into Korean.
Um, and at least I think that that's Korean, right?
That looks like Korean.
It's not
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Uh, yeah.
That does look like Korean.
Yeah, that
W. Curtis Preston: like Korean.
Right.
Um, and, um, the, you know, which is kind of cool, uh, they always
send me a copy when they translate the book into another language.
Um, and, uh, they also send me a little bit of money.
They, they, the, the company that does it is actually a different company
and they actually pay a license.
So Yeah.
So whatever.
So I got a little, little bit of money
Prasanna Malaiyandi: so for our Korean listeners, if you
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
For.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: out Curtis' book, it is now available
W. Curtis Preston: what's one funny thing about my name?
So if you look at the name, they didn't translate the W, it's just
W and then, and then my name.
I thought that was kind of funny.
were maybe a little confused by the, the random W Um, and if you
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.
Like, uh, Japanese, the letters, I remember when, um,
or the characters, I'm sorry.
I remember when my book first got translated into Japanese and I had
a copy of it with me cuz I thought it was really cool just like this.
And a friend came up who he was learning to read Japanese.
American learning to read Japanese.
And he looked at the, he looked at the, um, the name of the
book was Backup and Recovery.
So he looked at the, the cover and he's like, BA cool buddy He like, he
like sounded out the sounds that were, I'm like, wait, that's what that says.
Cause it's a, it's a phonetic, uh, it's the phonetic characters.
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.
Um, and, uh, the degree to which to use technology or a hundred percent people.
Donna.
Um, so speaking of the book, we're gonna continue our backup to basic
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: What is backup Curtis?
W. Curtis Preston: what is, what is backup?
And you know, and the thing is, you know, if you're a longtime backup
person and you're like, oh my God, this will be boring, I promise
you, you'll learn one or two things that you might find interesting.
So we'll take the actual, the definition.
Of, you know, my, my, I, I have a formal definition of backup in the book, which
by the way, is meant to distinguish it from archive, which will be the next.
Backup and archive are two very different things.
They're very similar, um, in a lot of ways Right.
But completely different.
Mainly they're similar in that they're a copy of data.
They're completely different in what the copy is for.
Um, and also quite different in how typically quite different
in how the, it's stored,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And before you jump into your definition of backup,
you wanna throw out our disclaimer
W. Curtis Preston: Sure.
Um, I dunno.
I was gonna, I was gonna, no, I was gonna think some sassy way to
do it, but, uh, so yeah, Prasanna and I work for different companies.
He works for Zoom, I work for Druva, and this is not a podcast of either company.
The opinions that you hear are ours and, uh, we'd love for you to rate us.
Um, you know, just go to your favorite pod catcher, you know,
you're listening to us on one.
Most likely you're not listening to this directly on, um, you know,
unless you're watching it on the website, in which case, hi, I see you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: watch the video.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Yeah.
By the way, if you wanna see this on video, just go to backup central.com.
We have it on video there.
And, Uh, but yeah, just click and, and rate us, right, and put a comment.
The comments are great.
Uh, we love to hear it from you.
And then also, uh, if you wanna join the conversation, uh, if you wanna argue,
you know, if you're like, Curtis', definition of backup is bonkers.
Curtis' bonkers, right?
I love Prasanna's beard, and I wanna know more about it.
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: whole episode on Beard
W. Curtis Preston: could, we, we could do a whole episode on beard care.
Uh, by the way, for those of you that were hoping for the, the 25 comments
and the Santa Beard on Curtis, I'm sorry, but the listeners let you down.
There just weren't enough comments to support me continuing to
grow the beard that honestly, I didn't want in the first place.
. So I, so I trimmed it, I trimmed it down to sort of what I feel
is a more manageable size mean.
My friend Prasanna still hasn't cut his beard at all.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
It's still going strong.
W. Curtis Preston: is, it's, when will it be a the,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Uh, in March.
March of 2023.
W. Curtis Preston: We'll hold a, some sort of, I think what we'll
do is we'll come over to your house with some, some tremors.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
I actually have
a
W. Curtis Preston: what your wife wants.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And
a hair trimmer.
I have a beard trimmer and a hair
W. Curtis Preston: Do you though?
Do you though
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I do.
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.
Let's talk about, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Your definition of backup.
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, yeah, exactly.
So this is from chapter three of the book, modern Data Practice.
Modern data protection, which if you wanna get a copy, you can get
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.
There is the Korean version if you want.
Uh, but I don't know where to get that.
I'm assuming What, what's, what's the dot?
What's the.in Korea like dot, you know, amazon.kr.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I don't know.
Actually.
That is a good question.
W. Curtis Preston: I dunno.
You know what?
I'll see if I can find it.
If I can find it.
I'll put it in the show notes for the, for the one Korean listeners that we
have . Um, so, you know, so first off, I, I, I just wanna say this, um, not
everybody agrees with me on, I, I, I, I take a very hard line between the
difference between backup and archive and, uh, and not everybody agrees with me.
Um, but they're, they're wrong.
Um, . So the, what what I wanna say is this is more about the purpose
of these two things and less about.
I don't know less about terminology, I guess, but it, but I don't know.
It is about terminology.
There are products and I can think, I can think of a few.
I know that some of the things that Druva does, some of the things that
combo does, um, different products have parts of their product that
behave as both backup and archive.
I'm fine with that.
Like I'm not that kind of purist.
Backup and archive must be separate.
The reason why I, why I, um, why I take such a hard line on it is that
I think many, many people, in fact, I know many, many people misuse their
backups as archives and they don't have any archive functionality in it.
Right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Or, or a lot of times, and I know we don't, we aren't
talking about this yet, we should probably say this for the archive
discussion, but a lot of times you hear people talk about like long-term
retention, which is when they sort of take their backups and they're
like, Hey, you just keep it forever.
And that turns into long-term retention, which satisfies archive needs.
And I think that's where we have issues with those backups being
really used for archive reason.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
The phrase that, the phrase that chaps my hide is I'm going to archive my backup.
That isn't a phrase.
That isn't, you can't say that that isn't a sentence.
What you're saying is, I'm going to store my backup for longer.
Um, and I, you know, I, I can, yeah.
And this, this isn't quite as pointless as my argument that I also make about the
fact that golf is a noun and not a verb.
we talked
about that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: We have talked about it.
I think we've talked about it on the podcast too.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Back is golf is a noun, not a verb.
Let me prove it.
You play golf, like you play football, play tennis.
Play baseball.
You don't go baseball Footballing or Tennis, Inc.
So why in the.
Bleepity bleep, bleep.
Do you go golfing?
You don't.
It's wrong.
It's a noun.
It always was a noun.
It's only become a verb through, you know, proper, or, I'm sorry, uh,
popular usage, but it's still a noun and I'm sticking by that, right?
So that's why I'm saying there's no such thing as archiving a backup.
Uh, so let me see here.
I have a formal, let's see here.
Okay, here is my, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Can you raise your head a little to talk into the mic?
Sorry, you were cutting out there.
W. Curtis Preston: Well, I had to go find it first.
Um, so the, the, um, part, part of the problem here is that both
the word backup and archive have generic definitions outside of it.
I am talking about the it definition of backup.
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.
One word is a noun.
Back up.
Two words is verb.
It's con.
It's called a compound verb.
I back up.
That's two words.
Or he backs up.
She backs up.
He backed up.
That's why you have to, you don't say I back up.
Right?
It's I
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Um, that's why it's a compound.
Ver but backup is a noun is, um, is a word.
Um, so, and, and a lot of times people use the term backup.
Like, they're like, oh, I'm gonna make a, I'm gonna make a backup, and.
When, what?
They're not really, they're making a copy.
Right.
And we're gonna talk about the difference between a copy and a backup too, right?
Um, and so this is really the problem.
Also, they talk about snapshots as backup.
And when I say snapshots, I mean virtual snapshots, like what's
done on a net app, not a backup.
Not unless it's copied, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: You know, this reminds me of the fact that like,
do you remember in the early days everyone had a different notion of
like what cloud meant or cloud meant?
Everything, you know, and it's kind of like this where.
Yeah, a lot of people misuse the term backup, and I think this is where you're
getting to Curtis, where you have a very, very, very specific meaning for backup.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
So here is my formal definition.
A backup is a copy of data stored separately from the original and used to
restore that data to its former state.
Usually after the data has been deleted or damaged in some way.
So, um, that
is my definition.
Well, we're going to, we're going to, right?
So let's talk about what is a copy?
How would you, in, in it sense, what would you like in the, in the sense
that we're talking about backups?
What would you call a copy
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So I think in the easiest way to think of it
right, is a copy is something that has its own independent identity.
From the source,
W. Curtis Preston: Mm-hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So you could do something with the source.
It doesn't affect the b uh, the copy.
You could do something with the copy.
It doesn't affect the source.
Now, the copy may or may not be rewriteable, right?
Depending on what you're looking for.
In the case of backups, it's usually read only.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Yeah.
So it, yeah.
So I, again, formal definition, I've got a bite for bite reproduction of the original
that contains the same content, right?
It, it, and, you know, you, you were sort of differentiating it.
It's not a snapshot, right?
A snapshot is, is, and again, not an AWS snapshot.
An AWS snapshot is actually a backup.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Uh, because it's actually an image copy.
Um, right.
It's a, it's, you know, you actually copy it into s3.
Um, you know, an example of a copy.
You know, you can use the copy command in Linux.
You can use the, it's cp, you can use the copy command in Windows.
That is the first part of the definition is that you're actually
making a separate entity, I think.
I think, um, it may or may not change form.
What do I mean by.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Uh, so it could still be sitting in the same system in
the exact same way, or like you were mentioning in the AWS case, right?
Your copy actually exists in some other format, stored in some other type
of storage, mainly AWS S3 versus EBS
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Or you might put it inside a tar ball.
Right.
Um, you know, there's a number of things.
Tar dump c pio, right?
Um, you know, there are a number of formats that you can, uh, do.
Uh, even you can put a bunch of files into just a compressed file, right?
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
over, and that's still considered a copy because you still have the ability
to get to those original contents.
W. Curtis Preston: Exactly.
Um, like I said, it's also just as important to talk about what's not a copy.
We talked about virtual snapshots, like with NetApps, also vss and Windows, right?
The virtual snapshot, snapshot system creates a point in time that you can
access for the purposes of backing up, but it by itself is not a backup.
And why is.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Because it still lives in the same system.
It's all linked together, right?
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It's all there.
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
until you'll delete all your snapshots.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I think there's probably some protection there.
Yeah.
Um, but essentially the, the snapshot relies on the original.
It's funny, we use a lot of the terms that mean the same thing, right?
Like, cause I say, I say, uh, the, you know, the EBS snapshot, well,
it's not a snapshot, it's an image.
Copy.
Image is just another word for Snapchat.
But anyway,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: We should just start talking about
everything as like photographs.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Well, I talked about, you know, I, I used to use the phrase that a snapshot,
like a NetApp snapshot is as useful as a snapshot of your house when your house
burns down, um, the . So, uh, and then I have stored separately from the original,
like we're working through the definition.
Um, and what do I mean by that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So I think, I know we haven't gotten to the 3 21 rule,
which we'll get to at some point, but I think the key with this point is if
something happens to that source, right, be it the system or that volume or
that file, it still exists separately.
And could still be recovered for, depending on what type of
failure you're looking for, right?
It you might need to handle like a site blows up or that the array dies, or
the storage system dies, and therefore you want a copy on some completely
different storage system, maybe a completely separate location, et cetera.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, I, I think you're, you're even going
farther than what I'm saying.
So for example, if I go into a Word doc, right, and I copy that Word doc
right next to it, that is a copy.
It's not a backup.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Not in, in, in the full definition.
Right.
Um, if I copy it to another hard drive, that is then a backup, right?
Um, or well, it could be a backup.
It
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It
W. Curtis Preston: it meets that, it meets that next definition.
And then I've got, and this is again, this is a big one for the
purposes of restoring, right?
So, Which as opposed to retrieving, which we're gonna talk about
in, in the archive, um, space.
Right.
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And what is restoring Curtis
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, so, um, I mean it's essentially bringing
something back to life, , right?
So it, it's, it's, it's taking that copy.
And then bringing it back to, generally speaking, it's, it doesn't have to
be back to the, to the same place.
You could do an alternate server or alternate location restore, but generally
speaking, you're taking the copy that you made and stored somewhere else, and
then you're bringing that copy back for the purposes of basically resurrecting
either something that blew up, caught on fire, got deleted, got fat fingered.
Uh, got ransomware.
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.
Um, yeah, and I mean that, you know, another, another case
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?
Um, and so you need to go and get your backup and restore it back.
And, and again, this all sounds really pedantic.
I think
Prasanna Malaiyandi: But it's important.
W. Curtis Preston: it, it's when we get into the discussion about backup
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.
Um, and, um, the, um, uh, the other thing is this is sort of a general rule.
Generally speaking, we're going to use a backup to restore to
either the most recent time.
The most recent time we have a backup of, or some other relatively
recent point in time prior to that.
For example, if you got a, you know, generally speaking file system dies,
you're gonna restore whatever was on that file system to as most recent,
you know, the most recent backup that you have, generally speaking,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Cause you'll want the latest data, right?
For the most part, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Sometimes you did something stupid and you dropped a
table in a database and you're like, oh crap, I did that at two o'clock.
I'm gonna restore to 1:59 PM I, I have a backup until 2 0 5.
I don't wanna restore to 2 0 5, cuz that's when the bad thing happened.
I'm gonna restore to 1 59, but still I'm going to, you know, this afternoon.
Um, even in an extreme case, um, I might need to restore.
I might have had a ransomware attack that had a dwell time.
Of a couple of weeks and I might need to restore to dwell time.
Uh, dwell time.
Thanks.
The dwell time for a piece of malware is how long it hangs out, uh, before
it delivers its payload, right?
So you might have, or before it's discovered, so you might have.
The, the, the, the, the dwell time, the average or mean dwell time for
ransomware is actually well over two weeks, so we might have to
go back and restore something to prior to that from two weeks ago.
You know, when we don't restore from, generally speaking,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: What?
W. Curtis Preston: guess.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: don't Oh, like a year ago,
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, generally speaking, we don't
restore stuff from a year ago.
Again, there are exceptions to every rule.
Let's say it's the annual accounting report and we can't find it, and we need
the one from a year ago, that's a restore,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
But in that
case, you're most.
W. Curtis Preston: It was supposed to be here, and yeah, in that case, your
most recent backup would not have.
You would have to go back to before someone deleted it.
Right?
It was supposed to be here, but it's not.
So we're gonna put it back.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, and in that case, it's not like you're restoring
the entire file system, right?
You're probably just restoring that one report, which you needed, which you
didn't discover was gone until yesterday.
W. Curtis Preston: That sounds, that sounds correct.
Um, so again, we're speaking like.
Hypothetically here or whatever.
So the, the next thing I've got here is about how does a restore work?
And again, that's gonna sound pedantic, but again, it will make a lot more
sense in the next episode when we talk about comparing it to archive.
So what do I need?
So, so I, so I'm your, I'm your back, your friendly neighborhood backup guy.
I, and there's, there's a thing.
Say
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So I deleted something.
W. Curtis Preston: you deleted something.
You del,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: you and I'm like, Curtis, can you, yeah, I deleted a file.
I'm like, Curtis, I need my backup from, or I need my file.
I can't find it.
I need this one.
Tell me, can you get it back
W. Curtis Preston: what do you need?
What?
What do you need to give me?
For me to help me?
Help you, help me.
Help you.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So I need to tell you potentially what file I'm looking for,
W. Curtis Preston: The file.
And what does that, what does that mean?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Which may be the exact, like the thing I'm looking
for, which might be the actual name, or it might be a directory, right?
It might be on a particular system, or it might be, I don't know which one it's on.
I just know I have a file somewhere that is.
W. Curtis Preston: Okay, so you, you're saying you might not know.
I'll say the less you just, the less you give me, the
harder it is gonna be for me to
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah,
W. Curtis Preston: that file.
Right.
Generally speaking, if you come to me and you say, uh, I have a home
directory on Apollo, it's called Home one Curtis, and there's a file in there.
There was a file in there called Resume dot doc.
Um, That's how it's pronounced.
It's not pronounced any other way.
Resume dot doc and it's gone.
Right?
I need it.
Or, or more specifically, let's say I screwed it up.
I
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I need it from, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Right?
I need it from two days ago.
So what did you just give me if you, if you, what
information did you just give me?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So I gave you the what I need restored, the
when I need it restored and where.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
So in different words, you gave me the server, you gave me the directory.
You gave me the file name, you gave me the timeframe, right?
You gave me all those things and all those things were one thing,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: yep.
W. Curtis Preston: right?
A server, a directory, a file.
Now you can leave out one or two of those , right?
You're like, I don't know what server, that's gonna be hard.
Uh, it's on Apollo, but I'm not sure which directory also gonna be hard.
It's on Apollo, it's in the home, one file system.
Not sure which directory, and I'm not sure what its name is.
That's gonna be really, really, if you don't know the name of the
thing you're looking for, that it's gonna be, and again, you're
people that are used to backups, are listening to this and they're.
Yeah, this makes all perfect sense.
Again, this will all make more sense why I'm making such a big deal about
this when we get to, um, a retrieve, which is very, very different.
So, so I, I have something that I took the trouble to put in italics
in the book and it says, A restore returns a single thing to a single point in time.
That's it.
Now, you may do multiple restores.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: You may restore multiple things to, to a point in time
or even, I think less likely multiple things to multiple points in time.
But generally speaking, a restore restores a single thing to a single point in time.
That's it.
You have any problem with that?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: No, it makes sense.
I was gonna chime in and say that.
There are probably a lot of users though who don't know what their files
are called or where their files live.
I'm just thinking about like if you think like you create Word
documents or you create spreadsheets, like you don't know the exact name
of that file that you're working
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Right.
And you don't know exactly.
Like maybe it lives in my desktop.
Maybe it was in documents folder.
Right.
Or my documents.
Like all these things like make it hard as a backup operator.
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
restore it back as quickly as possible.
W. Curtis Preston: And, and if, depending on the backup product that you have, a
very small subset of backup products can do what's called a full text search on.
Restore, right?
You're like, I don't know where this file is or what its name is.
I know that the file I'm looking for has the phrase work experience,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Can you find me any file that I own that
has the phrase work experience?
Well, we have this one file, it's called resume.
No, no, no.
It's not Resume.
Not resume.
It's resume dot.
Can you, yeah, that's the one.
I think that's the one.
Please restore that.
There are a few products.
I know Comal, for example, has full tech search against, um, I don't
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?
In what?
In what product?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: of their data protection search product, I believe,
which allows it to index, uh, backups.
W. Curtis Preston: Um, yeah, so there's a few products out there that do that.
Generally speaking, most backup products do not.
Um, so there's this little thing here called the 3 21 rule, which
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Curtis' favorite topic?
Oh my gosh.
You know what?
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.
Um, I, I just, I just recorded an episode with a, with a, I was a guest
on another podcast this morning.
I talked about the 3, 2, 1 rule.
So to me, the 3, 2, 1 rule is sort of the most, so that was sort of
the classic definition of a backup.
Another way to decide if something, A copy as I make quotes in the air,
or, well, if you have a backup, it's to see if you have something that
complies with the three to one rule.
And we had the, the guy who coined the 3 21 rule, uh, Peter Krogh.
We had him on the podcast.
I should put a link in the show description was a fascinating
discussion right back in 1991.
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.
Yeah.
And, um, here it is, we're, you know, we're in the next
century, cuz he did it in 1991.
We're in the next century.
30, 32 years later.
And we're using this definition that he wrote in some book about
digital photography to argue whether or not something is or is not a
backup, but I think it's solid.
Right?
So 3, 2, 1, 3 copies of the data on two different media, one of
which is somewhere else, right?
That that's a somewhat modified version of the original.
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.
You know?
He's like, again, go to where, go to where he was originally talking about
you just don't want one copy of your.
Right.
And by the way, he did include the original in his copy, right?
So he's like, you just don't want you, you took a really important picture.
You don't want this really important picture.
You have there to be only one copy of it on, you know, only one piece of media.
So he is like, let's have three of those, right on at least two different media.
What he was concerned about, there was risk types, right?
Um, and so
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And especially back then with the hard discs.
Right.
Not being very reliable.
At the
time and consumer devices.
W. Curtis Preston: it was early digital photography days, right?
So they didn't have as much solid state media was not as prevalent.
It is today.
But even, even now, like we don't want, what he's saying is he, he
doesn't want you to use the same.
Um, you don't want to copy to the exact same thing.
This, by the way, is why I've always historically had a problem with, again,
big fan of Net app, big fan of net app snapshots, but why I always had difficulty
with an all NetApp solution, right?
Even
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Nice app and replicate is awesome.
Come on,
W. Curtis Preston: Snap and replicate is awesome, right?
There's just this little part of me that goes, yeah, but it is all the
same stuff if there's some sort of rolling code, you know what I mean?
So it that what, that doesn't really stick it, that
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Having,
W. Curtis Preston: the two aspect.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: having developed that product, I
totally understand your concerns.
W. Curtis Preston: And then the last part is, uh, one of which is somewhere else.
This is really, really important.
And that is that you, that you store a copy of it somewhere else,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: What does somewhere else mean?
Like, is it I'm at home, so I have my laptop and I have a disk drive
sitting on the shelf right next to me plugged in all the time.
Like, what is that?
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.
I changed it to somewhere else because there's no longer an offsite
when we talk about the cloud.
Right.
And somewhere else is, it's relative, depending on what we're talking about.
So if you're talking about a laptop in your house, I mean a
copy that is not in your house.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Um, if you're talking a data center somewhere else is not a server over in
the corner of the data center, uh, O H V Cloud, I'm talk, or o vh, o VH cloud.
I'm talking to you, right?
This is from that disaster back in the beginning of 2021.
Where we discovered the PE people that had paid for the commercial backup
service had their backup stored in another server in the same data center.
That was never, that did not conform to the 3 21 rule, um, because it
wasn't, the one was not offsite.
Right.
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: The other thing I wanna add for the one is, even if you're
using a cloud, I think it's important, and maybe this bleeds more into like
the ransomware side, is you almost want that one to be an isolated copy, right?
That's kind of what the one somewhere else means.
So even if you're in the cloud, if you're storing in a different, say a
region, you probably want that in a separate account as well to make sure.
W. Curtis Preston: at you on the video.
Yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: That it's not all accessible, you know,
W. Curtis Preston: exactly.
It it, well, the, the idea, again, we look at the idea behind the one
and, and the, and behind the two.
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
copy of the data is not, if something bad happens to the primary, that bad
thing won't also happen and when, and so you have to look at the things that
can happen to your primary when you're in the cloud, when you're in AWS or
Azure or, or GCP or wherever you, um,
if someone deletes your account.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I said O vh.
Cloud
W. Curtis Preston: Oh, I, I don't they went public after that.
Do you know that?
Oh, I, I'm sorry.
I, I, I hope somebody listens to this and I, I would love to be a,
an expert witness on that case on behalf of the, of the plaintiffs.
Anyway, there is a big class action lawsuit.
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: still
W. Curtis Preston: customers anyway.
Um, and I'm with, I'm with them because this isn't like, this isn't
like it was AWS customers and.
And they had backup available to them and they didn't use it.
They paid for a separate backup service, which OVH provided and charged them for.
And O VH stored the data, allegedly in servers, in the data center.
And when they lost it, uh, their actual, I saw one quote from
somebody at OVH and said that they never, they never represented
that it was stored anywhere else.
And I, you may recall when we, when we
interviewed somebody from there, they, they said that
there was a phrase in there.
It said something about it stored, it had some weird name.
It stored like physically separate or something.
Some, some weird name, but it didn't, it didn't specify offsite anyway.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
But, but I think also for the one.
This is where I think when it was initially intended, right, that
somewhere else or offsite, it's about having that air gap, right?
That's, I think, another
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: right, that people talk about.
And now with the cloud and everything being connected, it's truly hard to have
an actual physical air gap, which is where you have like virtual air gaps.
So, sorry, go ahead, Curtis.
W. Curtis Preston: No, no.
Yeah.
That's all, that's all correct, right?
You, you, you, you can't.
At least not easily.
You can't create the physical, the actual physical air gap that we used to where
you'd put it on a tape, put that tape in a box, and you hand that box to a man in
a van and he takes it to somewhere and you, you need guns to go get it right.
That doesn't really exist in most cases, but you can separate it as much
as possible, have it in a different account, have it in a different region.
Um, whatever you do, don't have it in the same account, in the same region.
That's just, that's what happened to, uh,
what
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Code spaces.
W. Curtis Preston: Spaces.
Yeah.
That's what happened to Code Spaces.
They had all their backups in the same account in the same region.
They got hacked and the hacker just deleted their company along
and the backups along with it.
So, um, um, Yeah, so we talked about that.
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: the one thing I was also around the
three is that's a minimum, right?
Not saying that that's
W. Curtis Preston: a bare
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, that's a bare minimum.
You should have.
W. Curtis Preston: That, yeah.
Again, that came from back in the day.
Right Now there are some companies, um, you know, Veeam for example,
that they have like 3,210, like, um, Do I disagree with that?
Uh, no.
But I think that I'm like, one is air gaps.
Like if one is air gaped, if the one, if one of your copies is, that's what
we meant, that's what we always meant.
Making sure that that other copy.
Is, you know, is air gap.
They, they add like immutable.
I, I I do think that, you know, your backup should be immutable.
Um, I think that's a separate concept, but I, I don't disagree with them on that.
I just, my main purpose of the 3 21 rule is to, to use it against
things that are clearly not backups.
And I'll give the most obvious case, and that is, um, a SAS provider, right?
And again, I'll pick on my.
You know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I wonder who it's gonna
W. Curtis Preston: to pick on Microsoft, right?
and, and again, it's, I don't have anything against Microsoft per se.
It, it does seem odd.
So many sort of proponents of Microsoft 365 try to tell us that
what Microsoft has is a backup.
Guess what, not a separate copy.
Right?
It's the stuff that, the stuff that's inside 365 where they, you know, in the,
in the manual where they say, like, to restore, restore means you pull it out of
a backup stored in a separate location.
That that is not what they're doing.
They're undeleting a flag.
They're set, they're.
Unchecking a a, a deletion flag and a record in a database, right?
Um, and they are not storing a copy of your data on a second server in an
additional location that would protect it against the worst possible stuff.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: well, I wanna correct you there, Curtis.
They are storing a second copy somewhere else, but that's for their own internal
purposes to deal with disaster recovery.
W. Curtis Preston: There is a delayed replication archive.
I, I, I probably used the wrong term there, but it's a, it's
a, it's a delayed replicated.
Replicated, delayed.
I don't know which word to use that, that does exist, but I have
specifically asked Microsoft as a customer of Microsoft and said, can
we use that delayed replicated copy as a backup if the worst were to happen?
And they said no.
Right.
Um, and.
I would argue that they see it as a protection against if all hell broke
loose at Microsoft that like if the entire, if like in the OVH case, right,
they get a data center fire and it takes out all of Microsoft, they might might
be able to bring all your data back.
I say might because it isn't in the contract.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: yep.
There's no
W. Curtis Preston: the only, the only thing they have in their contract is
that the service will be available.
It, it's not, it's not, your data will be available.
Right.
But the, but, but yeah.
So they don't have it stored in a separate.
In an offsite location.
They do have a delayed replicated copy, but it isn't available to you.
So as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep, exactly.
W. Curtis Preston: it's dead to me.
Just like, just like the company formerly known as San Diego Charters, um, or
as I call them, the, um, for those of you that aren't locals, they moved up
to Los Angeles and they're dead to me.
Um, alright, well there you go.
That is what is backup.
I think we talked about it enough.
Do you have any final thoughts on the
Prasanna Malaiyandi: No.
I think the only thing is stay tuned for our next podcast
episode on what is Archive.
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.
I'm gonna go everything that last week wasn't.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, . Well, I think it's important because a lot
of folks, even in the industry get confused between backup and archives.
So listen to this episode.
Stay tuned for the next one, and yeah, let's go from there.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
It goes back to that the fact that backup and archive are
such common terms outside of it.
Right?
Um, let's go to the archives.
Right?
Right.
Uh, let's go to, you know, I need a, I need a backup, right?
I need a backup.
And what that means is like, I need another cop,
right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Even in TV shows and movies, right?
It's like,
oh, let's pull for a book.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm currently watching the manifest.
I'm currently bing.
It's a great show, by the way.
It's a really good show.
And yeah, they're, they're like a call for backup.
I don't think they're, nobody's pulling out any tapes, um, But, um, yeah, archive
is actually a lot more complicated than backup because there are, there
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Okay.
Save it.
Same.
Wait, wait, wait.
Save it.
W. Curtis Preston: archives.
I know now I'm just, it's a teaser.
It's a teaser, you know.
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.
I watched it, it was a good movie.
Um, I was little surprised that, you know, no.
Anyway, all right, well that is what is back.
Uh, remember, um, hope you enjoyed this episode.
Remember to subscribe so that you can restore it all.