W. Curtis Preston: hi, and welcome to Backup Central's Restore It All podcast.
I'm a host w Curtis Preston, aka Mr.
Backup, and I have with me my pedantry prognosticator Prasanna Malaiyandi
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So wait, what am I?
W. Curtis Preston: Pedantry.
It.
It's like, uh, it's like pedantic.
It's like pedantry.
You know, pedantry.
Is it Pedantry?
Pedant.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I
W. Curtis Preston: it's, yeah, it's pedantry.
No, it's pedantry.
Pedantry Prognosticator Prasanna Malaiyandi
Prasanna Malaiyandi: how many more PS can he throw in there?
What's going on, Curtis?
You doing okay?
W. Curtis Preston: cause we're doing, we're doing, we're doing, we're
doing some, some pedantry today.
Uh, we are
Prasanna Malaiyandi: very specific.
W. Curtis Preston: very specific.
Uh, pedantry is defined as the excessive concern with minor details and rules.
And we're arguing over two words that many people consider to be synonyms.
And we're going, no, they're not.
They are not the same.
Last week we talked about backup.
This week we're gonna talk about archive.
This is of course, a continuation of our backup to basic series,
which is, um, referring to my book, modern Data Protection.
Little picture of there.
Um, uh, which you can get for free at ebook version by going to druva.com/ebook.
It is my latest O'Reilly book, although I'm thinking about writing a new one.
Um, the, uh, we'll see, we'll see if I actually pull it off, but, uh, this
last one took 10 years . So , we'll
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Well, well, well, let's be honest though,
Curtis, it took you 10 years from the first time you thought about it
to when it got published, but from when you actually started writing.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it was about what, like three months
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
It was three months for you to write the book.
W. Curtis Preston: It was all in the treadmill.
Remember?
It was, uh, it was a, it was a, uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: of the pandemic.
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, pandemic project.
Um, the, uh, it was a Preston Pandemic project.
Speaking of , the piece, but it, um, I did it on the treadmill, used a dragon,
uh, professional, a big fan of that.
I've used it for many, many years.
And, um, and then immediately put it into Google Docs and then let you look at it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: You are one of my many technical
Prasanna Malaiyandi: reviewers.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Technical reviewers.
What were you gonna say?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, no.
Yeah, I was gonna say that there were quite a few people reviewing, right.
Your work, but.
W. Curtis Preston: some, some people did just like one chapter, right?
Um, I had other people, I did other people that work for competitors.
And by the way, I'll, you know, since I'm talking about that, I'll mention that.
Uh, I work for Druva, uh, Prasanna works for Zoom.
Uh, this is not a podcast of either company.
Uh, the opinions that you hear are ours.
And, um, you know, but because I work for Druva, obviously a competitor in
the space or a vendor in the space, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't,
uh, I was trying really hard not to weight the book on Druva's behalf.
So I had some people that work for, uh, a couple of the vendors,
uh, competitors that we run into.
Um, Uh, do a technical review.
But, uh, also, uh, please rate us at, uh, by, go to your favorite, uh, podcast
or scroll down to the stars and give us all the stars and comments and whatnot.
And if you wanna join a conversation, just reach out to me, w Curtis
Preston gmail, or at WC preston on Twitter and we'll make it happen.
Um, so we're gonna talk about archive.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Actually before you, before we get to that, I think for
people who may not want to come on the podcast because they're unsure or don't
wanna spend the time, I think it's also.
It's important that they could reach out to either of us on
Twitter and start a conversation.
Right.
You don't have to come on the podcast, right?
We wanna engage with our listeners.
If you have questions, if you want us to talk about a topic right, that
you're interested in, let us know.
W. Curtis Preston: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
If you just wanna write me an email and say, Prasanna sucks, um, that is fine.
And, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Uh, sure,
W. Curtis Preston: no one would ever do that.
You're too nice.
Everybody likes you.
Um, so , right?
So last, the last week's episode, we talked about the definition of backup,
and that's really, really important.
One of the reasons why it was really, really important is
because it's not an archive.
Archive is something very closely related to backup and people talk
a lot about it, and archive is actually something a little bit.
Harder to define.
Um, but, and, and also because again, uh, it's used, you know,
as a, as we mentioned, it's used a lot in popular culture, right?
I think about, when I think about the, the pop culture understanding of the word
archive, I think about the final scene in the original Raiders of the Lost Arc.
Do, do you remember the final scene.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: is this the one where they are
in the
W. Curtis Preston: They, killed all the Nazis.
Remember they killed all the Nazis.
And then they, and so they got the, they got the arc, right?
They got the arc at a covenant.
then what?
You remember the very final scene?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I don't remember the very final scene.
W. Curtis Preston: They're like, well, somebody doing something with this ark.
And they're, oh yeah, yeah, we got, we got our best people on it.
And they show them hammering it shut into a wooden, um, Crate and
then putting that crate into this gigantic warehouse with thousands of
other crates that look just like it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Um, I also think about like cold case.
I dunno if you've ever watched Cold Case, right?
Where they're just combing through the archives, they're combing through these
old cases and they're just boxes of stuff.
But by the way, we're, we're gonna come back to that cold case thing
because I think it's actually the way they archive cases is actually.
Pretty close to what I think of as one of the types of archives.
Um, and people think, and people therefore think of any old data
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: as an archive.
And so they use the phrase, which, you know, makes my spine tingle.
They used the phrase, I'm gonna archive a backup.
Um, that is not a phrase.
Um, You know,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: You know what?
We should print stickers and if you want a sticker, let us know.
archive is not backup.
W. Curtis Preston: Archive is not bag up and you can't archive a backup.
Now let me, here, here.
I like analogies.
Um, grape juice.
Is grape juice.
Everybody knows what grape juice is like Welch is grape juice, right?
I don't know if you're outside of the states that that might not be,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It's a
W. Curtis Preston: you know what grape juice is, right?
Uh, you know what wine is?
Wine is also grape juice,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: yep,
W. Curtis Preston: but it's made for a different purpose and you u and and
it's made with a different process.
Both involves putting grape juice in a bottle and leaving it
there for long periods of time.
One is made slightly different than the other, and as a result,
you get a very different result.
One will get you drunk, one will not, right?
You can't take a bottle of Welch's grape juice, set it on a shelf for, you know,
five years and expect to get drunk on it.
Okay?
Um, and the same result, you can't open a bottle of Chardonnay
and give it to a five year old
Prasanna Malaiyandi: you could, but depending on what country you're in.
W. Curtis Preston: The results will be unpredictable.
Uh, there's a funny, there's a funny, um, ticker that I, I look at, her
name's Miss Sutter Southern and she's this, um, lessons in teaching
that they're never gonna tell you.
She had, it's very, she has all these cute little stories and she had this, this.
This dispute in like kindergarten or first grade or something, and they, they
had a bet and, and the winning bet, what was going to the person that won the bet
or the loser had to bring in the other person, one of his sparkling waters.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Okay.
W. Curtis Preston: So he brought in sparkling water and then the next day
the kid was acting a little goofy and wanting to go pee a lot and everything.
And then, uh, she looked in the can and it was a, it was a truly,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Oh,
W. Curtis Preston: his mom stored her trulys right next to which again,
if you're not in the States, that is a carbonated alcoholic beverage
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: And she, uh, uh, she's like, not my fault.
Um, So, yeah, so old backups don't magically turn into archives.
Uh, they're just really old backups.
So here is my definition of an archive, some of which will sound familiar.
If you listened to last week's episode.
An archive is a copy of data stored in a separate location.
So far we're the same, made to serve as a reference copy and stored with
enough metadata to find the data in question without knowing where it came.
So that's very different sounding than, we'll, we'll cover those
phrases, just like what we did.
Um, the, um, so what differentiates an archive from a backup is why you made it
and, and how you're gonna store it, right?
So, um, and again, I, I, I was trying to come up with a definition.
That would fit many different types of archives.
Um, so, so let's talk about, let's talk about a couple of
different types of archives.
Um, one, the first type of archive I remember having anything to do
with was actually, uh, in my early
legato days.
Remember Lego.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
Yes, I do.
Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: by the way.
You know, I always thought about, by the way, are, I don't know how much
musical, um, you know, training you have, but what does legato mean in music?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Oh,
W. Curtis Preston: It's the opposite of staccato.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Chicago's fast, right?
W. Curtis Preston: Well, staccato is,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: you know, like short, short burst.
Ligato means like long and slow.
Like I've never understood
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Why you call it that?
W. Curtis Preston: Why they called it Ligado when that means like, slow it down.
I've never quite understood that.
Um, , it's the opposite of staccato.
They should have called it staccato networker anyway.
Um, so yeah, so, so what they had and other backup products had, they
had this concept of an archive.
And what they would do is you would identify a bunch of files.
They would go in this archive.
They would put it in this archive, which meant they sort
of stored them all together.
Generally speaking, this puts it into something like, or akin to like a tarball.
Um, obviously networker didn't use tar, but, but it's akin to that.
And then you had to give it some metadata allow you to find.
Again in the future.
So you would put a bunch of stuff together and you'd say, this is the
Albatross 2023 project, so that when it's.
10 years from now, you all you would need to remember is the name of the project or
whatever it is that you, you put it there.
You'd have to go, well, we need, we need, remember, we need
the Albatross project of 2023.
You would do a retrieve.
By the way, that's what you do with archives is you retrieve
them, you don't restore them.
We defined what a restore was last week, and when you do that retrieve, you get
all of the stuff that was put in that box.
This, I liken it to the cold case
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, I was just thinking about the cold case, right?
You put everything, all evidence associated with the case in a box
and you put it in the shelf, right?
And then when you wanna retrieve it, you go, you find the box, you pull
the box out, you open the box, and it has everything that you needed.
W. Curtis Preston: and the box is named by the name of the case, right?
Probably the name of the, the decedent by the.
the deceased.
Deceased.
You learn so much grammar on this show.
Deceased is a state.
The decedent is a person, the decedent is deceased.
Well, but they, they, it's just in tv.
They often say the deceased and they, they're referring to a
person, and I'm like, deceased is an adjective, decedent is a noun.
Anyway,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: know what?
I bet you, so I watch a lot of N C I S.
I think they wrong on the show.
W. Curtis Preston: Oh, they're wrong.
They're, I don't know.
I don't know if I've ever seen a show that gets that word correct.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Because even the medical examiner, he always says the deceased,
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, it's not the deceased, it's the decedent.
Um, also, what do you do to an animal?
Uh,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: you kill it.
W. Curtis Preston: If an animal, if an animal is dead and you're trying
to figure out why, what do you do?
You perform a
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Autopsy.
W. Curtis Preston: ne.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Autopsy
W. Curtis Preston: auto, you do autopsies on people you do NEPs on,
which is really just Latin for dead,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Hmm.
W. Curtis Preston: Um, but um, yeah, the decedent,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
So
W. Curtis Preston: patan crap that Curtis knows.
Um, by the way, also, uh, when you say, uh, I'm nauseous, that means
that you're sickening to look at it.
Doesn't mean that you're, what you mean to say is you're nauseated.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Hmm.
W. Curtis Preston: Are, are you really ? Are you picking up,
are you
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I'm not gonna remember any of these things.
You're just gonna have
W. Curtis Preston: That's right.
That's right.
All right, so to serve as a reference, right?
So we talked about the stuff in the box.
Can you think about different types of archives?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I was thinking
W. Curtis Preston: talked about one already.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
Well, and, and I think the one I was thinking about was very similar,
so it's, you talked about, okay, you're done with the project.
Another case, maybe you're done with an application or
with an entire infrastructure,
W. Curtis Preston: yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: You're moving from on premises to the cloud, but
you don't wanna get rid of all that on-prem data, but you want to archive.
W. Curtis Preston: Mm-hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And say, okay, all of this is related to the Oracle application
or anything else, and keep it in a box in case later, you need to retrieve it.
W. Curtis Preston: Oracle version X from 2022.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Um, yeah.
Et cetera.
Um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I was also thinking about like projects.
This is very similar projects.
I, I always think about like drug research, right?
Because drug research, you keep that around forever.
But not all the time is it actively being used.
And so typically they end up taking all of their research, archiving it, right?
So it's still available.
And then when they have something that comes up or some issues, they can
always go retrieve it and either do investigations on it, do additional
research on it, et cetera, based on that.
W. Curtis Preston: Exactly.
Um, and so that is, those are all different examples
of one type of an archive.
There's another, there's, there's two others that they're closely related,
but, um, I actually, I think one is type of the other, but the other
phrase, and you said it already in the podcast, Is what do you remember?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: I don't remember what I say on these things.
I don't even remember what I said 30 seconds ago.
W. Curtis Preston: minutes
ago.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: did.
What did I say?
I, my memory's really bad.
Oh, email archives.
There we
W. Curtis Preston: Email archive.
Right?
So what's an email archive now?
This one.
This one really sort of bridges like it's.
But, but I'm gonna accept the term email archive, cuz generally speaking, archives
for old stuff that isn't used anymore, email archive is a little bit different.
This is why, this is why the, the serve is a reference copy,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: right?
So email archive might have e Well, if it's a proper sort
of normal email archive, it'll have emails that came in today,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: right?
It will also have emails that came in seven years ago, depending
on what our retention is.
Right.
Um, and why are we storing those emails,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: This is mainly for compliance, legal, issues, such
as you get an eDiscovery case, or you want to go back and figure out was
Curtis really stealing money from the company and who was he communicating
with and all the rest, right?
So
W. Curtis Preston: Those are all correct answers, not the answer I was looking for.
Do you know what the answer I was looking for was to serve as a reference?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Hmm.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
We, it's the reason we, you know, we're still backing up that email server, right?
If you have an email server, or if you had 365, you're still backing up 365, but,
but you also might have an email archive of 365 or Gmail or you know, inbox,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And I think one of the cases, just going back
to that for reference, right, it's with the case of a backup.
If you're doing a once a day backup during the day, someone might have
gotten an email, deleted the email.
When you back it up, it's not in the backup.
Right.
W. Curtis Preston: in a backup, but it will be in a proper email archive.
Every email that comes in and every email that goes out, will, goes,
goes in that email archive, right?
So it's much better for compliance purposes.
Um, so again, going with examples, so Google Workspace has Google Vault.
It is an email archive for Google for Gmail.
Okay.
Guess what?
It's not.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Now back up for Gmail.
W. Curtis Preston: It's not a backup or Gmail.
It's got all the same stuff, right?
It's got every email.
In fact, it's got more based on your thing.
Just a minute ago, it's got more than a backup would have,
assuming that, you know, somebody actually cleared out their, um,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Inbox.
W. Curtis Preston: recycle.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah, but I guess the question is walking through this, right?
So you have your archive, you have the retrieve,
W. Curtis Preston: Mm-hmm.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: right?
Could I not use the retrieve even though it has more than what may
have ever existed at a point in time, been a plausible point in
time, if that's what I'm looking for.
I not satisfy bringing data back.
I know it's not a restore because it was never to a valid point in
time that existed, but could I still use that to get back data?
W. Curtis Preston: I would shorten your answer to, can I
use an archive to do a restore?
Yeah.
So, um, let me ask, let me ask you this question.
Can I use your Tesla to haul fertilizer?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yes, but I wouldn't recommend it or I
wouldn't want that to happen.
W. Curtis Preston: And it, and it would be highly inefficient, right?
I could only put like, you know, a certain number of bags.
Hopefully we did it in bags.
God forbid I have raw you know, and, you know, I gotta, I got a
front end loader with fertilizer and we're gonna use your Tesla.
Um, but you gotta like, it's like, no, you don't have a hatchback.
You gotta, you have a, yeah.
Um, so the answer is kind of,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It can be, but not intended.
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: with a giant butt.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: reminds me of, uh, Peewee Herman's big adventure.
Everybody I know has a big, but anyway, it was the, it was the, the
naughtiest line in that G-rated movie.
Um, the, um, and I'm five years old, so I still remember
that line from 40 years ago.
Anyway, um, he, um, Sorry, I totally, I totally
Prasanna Malaiyandi: So you can use an archive for a
W. Curtis Preston: will be really, really difficult to accomplish
the same function, right?
So here's, and, and you, you, you alluded to it earlier, the, the
number one problem is, well, sort of two problems, is it's not designed
to do that, which means you can't say, you can't say to a pure archive.
Give me all the emails that were in my inbox yesterday.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: You can't do that.
You can say, give me all the emails that were sent to me in the last
five years or in the last year.
Now, if you've got emails in your inbox that are from six months ago and you
say, give me all the emails from the last month, you're gonna get all the
emails from the last month, including all the ones that you've deleted.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: Um, and if, if you do it, you know, for the last,
and, and if you've got emails that are in your inbox that you're keeping
around, you know, a lot of people keep mail emails from forever, right?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Not.
I'm an
W. Curtis Preston: And if you owe your inbox zero, you know, whatever,
uh, I'm like inbox 4k, but whatever.
So, um, the um, You, you can, you, you, again, assuming it's a pure
archive product, you cannot restore, you cannot do a point in time restore
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
W. Curtis Preston: of your inbox.
And also many archive systems can't put the folders back, right?
Because again, it's not worried about that.
It's not it's purpose.
It's purpose is to be able to find the one email where Prasanna said naughty words,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
I, I, I think we should highlight, I think we should drill a little bit
deeper for folks point in time, right?
I think that's sometimes not understood.
Do you wanna sort of walk through
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Well, it's last week we talked about backup.
Backup is to restore something.
Two, a single point in time.
That's all we're saying.
When you do a restore, remember I said you do the, let me just, uh, what did I say?
I, I've got it here.
Let's see here.
It's right at the end of my.
Here it is a restore.
Returns a single thing to a single point in time.
That's it.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Yes, you can do multiple restores, but each
restore restores a single thing, a single database, a single file,
a single file system, a single server to a single point in time.
I want this server to the way it looked yesterday.
You cannot do a point in time restore, as it's called, to
using a pure archive system.
Okay?
Again, I am well aware that there are products like that
do both with a single copy.
I'm fine with that.
Okay.
, um, it's just a pure archive.
Cannot do a point in time restore, right?
It messes up all the folders.
Um, and more than likely what you will get is way too much stuff to be useful.
Okay.
Um, it also doesn't understand the concept of red and not red, right?
It, it is just gonna put all the, all the emails.
Right.
It doesn't care.
Right.
Um, so that's what I was talking about to serve.
Oh, so there's a third.
A third type of archive is um, uh, an active archive, which is really just,
uh, and we've had guys from the active archive on the podcast where basically
this is the idea that I'm going to keep.
Actively use data in the primary file system.
And I'm gonna keep lesser used data out in this other secondary file system.
Maybe object storage.
Maybe tape, maybe object storage on tape, right?
Maybe S3 or act or um, glacier or whatever.
Um, it's sort of this two tiered
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It's like a tiered file system
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah, it's like a tiered file system.
And the idea is that why would you do that?
And cost is really the only.
Um, reason for that.
Um, by moving the, the lesser used data out of the primary file system,
we reduced the size of the file system.
We also reduced the pain it takes to back it up,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Well, I think another benefit too with those
types of active archive systems is.
Sometimes people don't know what needs to be archived, right?
We all like to think, oh, it's just gonna be based on files or what's most
frequently used, but a lot of times people don't know, and that's been the challenge
with storage systems, which is why primary storage is always like continuously grown.
But now with these techniques, right?
Where to an end user, it's seamless.
The fact that data is moving off to archive storage,
lower cost storage, right?
That's seamless to the end user, but helps the storage admin
save significantly on costs.
W. Curtis Preston: Exactly.
Yeah.
So when they go, when they go to retrieve, again, there's that word when
they go to retrieve a file that hasn't been archived, it just automatically
comes back and it, you know, it just creates, you know, you just get a
little, little hourglass for, you know, a few seconds depending on the size.
You just make sure you train
Prasanna Malaiyandi: The people.
W. Curtis Preston: educate your users so that they know that when
they get that little hourglass, they don't just start rebooting
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah,
W. Curtis Preston: Or if they do, they reboot and they're like, oh, I fixed it.
Because now it's restored.
Right.
Or retrieved.
We wanna talk about the phrase in the definition stored with
additional metadata, a backup.
Typically doesn't have a lot of metadata associated with, other than
name a file, date and directory.
Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: the stuff we talked about in the backup episode.
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, exactly.
Um, typically an archive is going to have more metadata.
We talked about some of it already, like project name.
If it's an email archive, it's gonna have a ton of metadata.
It's gonna have the, the, you know, all the metadata associated with the email,
which is like the from and the two and the subject and all of those things.
. Um, and it may have the full text content of the actual, uh, thing, whatever
it is, the email or the document.
Um, and why do you do that with an archive?
And you don't do it with the backup, and that's because of
the way retrieves work, right?
Um, we don't necessarily know what, when or how the thing.
We just know that, you know, there was an email.
I remember seeing an.
Right.
You know, I, I, I, uh, I, I worked in Twitter back in that crazy year
of 2022, and I remember getting an email from the boss at that time.
That said that I had to work long hours and uh, stuff and you know, or click
here by five o'clock or I'm gonna get fired with three months severance.
I remember that email.
I don't remember, I don't remember when it was sent or I don't know
the name of the e It's now 2030.
Right.
And I'm filing a lawsuit about what happened back in 2022.
Uh, but I.
A couple of key phrases in that email, and so I'm gonna search on the full body
of that email, and I very much remember the name of the guy that sent that email.
I don't know what I'm talking about.
I'm just making stuff up here.
Um, so you store a lot of metadata with an archive that you wouldn't
typically store in a backup system.
You don't typically go to a backup person and say, I want you to
restore all the, all the documents that have the word, blah, blah in
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: You don't do, that's not how backups typically work, right?
Uh, again, there are some backups that go both ways, but generally
speaking, backups, you need the name of the server, the name of the
directory, the name of the file.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And I think that's a key with archives just
because of how long the data may be sitting in the system, right?
Or it may exist that you need to be able to retrieve from.
Those servers might have come and gone, right?
That initially had that data.
You may not even know what the name of that server was,
W. Curtis Preston: Exactly.
Uh, yeah,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: to find that based on other metadata becomes
critical because you don't care, oh, it was stored on Apollo versus
whatever other server name, right?
You only care, Hey, this is a project I care about, or this
is the information I care.
W. Curtis Preston: ask yourself if you know the name of the exchange
server from seven years ago.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yeah.
No
W. Curtis Preston: No.
Right.
Yeah, so I, I have this from, you know, under what is a retrieve, right?
As mentioned previously, a restore needs the name of a server directory,
database, file system, file name, table name, and actual date that
you want to restore the system too.
When doing a retrieve, you typically have none of that information, right?
You, you, it's so much more vague.
The other thing is quite often a retrieve is for a period of time,
not a single point in time, right?
It is like, gimme all the emails from Elon dot musk
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
For 2022.
W. Curtis Preston: for 2022, uh, period, right?
Give all the emails from the tumultuous time period of October and November.
This has gotta be over.
Like, you can't keep, I don't think he could be this tumultuous for that long.
But anyway, whatever the phrase is, give me all the emails that, that, uh, elon
dot musk twitter.com sent, you know, from October, 2022 until November of
2023, when he sold it for $15 billion.
Right.
Uh, because I'm an investor or something and I'm going to, you know, sue 'em.
Right.
A retrieve looks like that.
Right?
That's a very specific, you know, gimme a single person to emails.
All the emails they ever sent for three years.
Um, I,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: right?
You have
W. Curtis Preston: it it is e.
Yeah.
That is the number one reason that archives are used is e-discovery.
And I'll give you a a perfect example.
I worked as a consultant on a project where we had a bank.
It was a, it was a, not a bank, but a, like a financial institution,
like an invest investment type place.
And they got sued and they wanted the, the, um, the plaintiff was requesting an
e-discovery request of all the emails in the last three years, and they didn't have
an archive system, so what they had to do was they had to, they had a weekly full
backup of exchange, and so they had to do a restorative exchange to January 1st.
Right?
Alternate server.
Alternate server exchange, restore, which for the record
is not the easiest thing to do.
And you have to make sure that that exchange server doesn't come to life.
And start sending mail, right?
Uh, and start deleting mail cuz you know Right.
Retention periods and all that.
Uh, so you, you do an alternate server, alternate time, restore of exchange.
You do the search, you create a PST file, and then you do a restore for January 8th,
and then you do all that all over again.
Then you do a restore for January 15th, and you do that all over again cuz they
had every for 52 weeks, times three years.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: oh my gosh,
W. Curtis Preston: So a hundred and what is that?
It's 156 restores.
This was a huge project.
We had a team of like 15 expensive consultants doing restores around
the clock for like three months.
Right.
Because you also have limited resort.
This was, this is pre-cloud, so we couldn't do, we couldn't do this.
Well, it was also limited tape, right?
It was tape.
So you, you there was only so many tape drives.
So we could only do as many restores as we had tape drives and um, you
know, and we're all goo gooing it.
There you go.
There's another verb.
Me, verbing.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Eh, using the
W. Curtis Preston: this in a, in a, in using a gooey, by the way that that phrase
dates me, no one calls it a gooey anymore.
And long story short, I remember that that thing cost a client
a couple of million bucks.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
Oh, I could imagine with that many people, yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Where they could have probably bought an email archive solution
W. Curtis Preston: If they had had
Prasanna Malaiyandi: less.
W. Curtis Preston: they could have done a single retrieve.
Give me all emails with these phrases in it.
For the last three years.
Go.
There's your
Prasanna Malaiyandi: they purchase an email archive solution after that?
W. Curtis Preston: Yes, they did.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Okay,
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: so people learn, which is good.
W. Curtis Preston: yeah, exactly.
Um, so, um, there, there's a, see if I was looking forward in the chapter
here, but here, here's another way I like, this is a phrase that I coin.
Uh, no one uses it, but , this is a phrase that I coined.
A backup is the secondary copy of primary data, and an archive is
the primary copy of secondary data.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It's typically the only copy,
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: right?
W. Curtis Preston: Don't mess with my sentence, man.
Um, . But so backup is the secondary copy of primary data, meaning
it's the other copy of the really important actively used data.
And then archive is the primary copy.
Often the only.
Of sec of data that has secondary value.
Right?
So another copy of the email.
But in most ca so email archive is probably the most used type of archive.
The other type, the active archive and the sort of old school archive.
Uh, in fact, I remember with, with with Networker that if you selected
a bunch of files and then you said archive them, once the archive was
successful and it made two copies, it would actually delete the primary.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Yep.
Yeah.
Because at that point, that's the purpose, right?
Because you're archiving for some reason,
W. Curtis Preston: right.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: it's no longer needed on the primary.
W. Curtis Preston: Right.
Um, we, um, we actually had, you know, there's actually chapter 10 in the book
where we actually go into more detail into different types of archives.
That was the chapter that, uh, Mr.
Fri wrote who, um, is a fan of the pod and, and a guest of
the pod we might have him on.
When we get,
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Would we talk about that chapter?
Yeah.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, but I, so I, I just, again, going back to the backup and the archive, um,
can I use a backup to do eDiscovery?
I, I, I just gave you a story of, the answer is yes, but it will
be one of the most painful and expensive processes you've ever done.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: It wasn't built for that purpose.
W. Curtis Preston: It wasn't built for that purpose, you know, a.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: like apo.
It's like
W. Curtis Preston: It's like . It's like a.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Aor, right?
A fork is good for one thing.
A spoon is good for different purposes.
Apo not really great for either purpose.
It gets by, but
W. Curtis Preston: it's like the, one of the most worthless things on the
planet, I have to say, is the sports.
Whoever invented, I hope you got millions of dollars, but I hate sports.
You know, the only time I see sports, you know, who does sports?
Sports?
Kfc.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Hmm,
W. Curtis Preston: puts sports in their, um, in their food.
I don't know why I would know that.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: for like mac and cheese and mashed potatoes and stuff.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, anyway, the, the, yeah.
Ex exactly.
It's, it's, it's just, um, like if you've never tried to do any,
because the thing is with an e-discovery request, I don't know the
server, I don't know the directory.
I don't know the name of the file.
I know that it's files owned.
This person files or emails with this content in them, right?
The company's been accused of, uh, an un what's it called?
The, a hostile work environment.
There, there was a, there was a person in, in Department X
that, um, used a particular word.
He used it every other.
Every other word.
And even though he was asked to not use that word, he used that
word all the time, and he used it in emails and, and his bosses knew
it, and they, they wouldn't stop.
And so you prove that with an email archive, with a e-discovery request.
You ask for all the emails from that person containing that word, right?
And then you look and, and then you look at that and you're like, look,
look at all these emails where, hi, hi.
His boss was, His boss never once let's also search the boss's email to, you know?
Right.
You could basically, that's the purpose of what a discovery request
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And you can't say I,
W. Curtis Preston: world you would do that with a backup system.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: And you can't say, I'm not gonna do this because
we don't have the technical ability.
W. Curtis Preston: You can't do that.
Right.
Yeah.
That, that is, that is a surefire way to have What, so we talked about this
with the interview of the, um, um, with Joseph Dehner, the, the lawyer.
Uh, we talked about this concept of adverse inference.
So it, it, it means that the judge in charge of a case will infer from your
behavior, something adverse to your case.
The judge will say, they say they don't have it or that they can't get it.
Um, nobody could be that incompetent, et cetera.
They're trying to hide something.
So whatever the plaintiff says they were doing, just assumed that they were doing
it and, and, and move forward accordingly.
Uh, the, the, the famous case and I talked about it on that podcast.
There was a famous case, a well known.
Uh, financial trading firm, and they were sued and they had
used their backups as archives.
Let this be a lesson to you kids.
They had used their backups as their archives, and they had changed
email systems multiple times.
They had changed backup systems multiple times.
They had changed tape system multiple times, and so the restore was like a much
more complicated version of the one that I, that I talked about a few minutes.
And they also, you know, their, their tape storage system wasn't the best either.
And so they had taken an inordinately amount of, an inordinate amount of time
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Mm-hmm.
W. Curtis Preston: do the retrieve, and then they eventually, there's
a process that you certify that the retrieve is finished.
They did that process and then they came back and they said,
crap, we found another box of tape.
, right?
The judge was like, you know what, you know I'm done with you people.
Nobody can be this bad at it, and backups and archives and stuff.
And so he's like, I'm issuing an adverse inference instruction to the
jury, which basically said, you know, you whatever, whatever the plaintiff
said is on the tapes it's on the tapes because I, we got, we gotta move on.
And so they lost.
It was like a 2 billion lawsuit.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Oh my gosh.
W. Curtis Preston: um, because they, because they
use their backups as archives.
This is why I make such a big deal over the difference
between backups and archives.
It's not just cause I am, you know, a pedantic individual, which I am.
Right.
Uh, you know, we've, I've given you some other examples like golf
and, and nauseous and nauseated.
Uh, what was it?
Deceased and
decedent.
These are all really important words.
Words mean things.
Um, and, um, but it, it, you know, it's sort of like the
joke of like, let's eat grandma.
Let's eat grandma, right?
Commas, you know, comma saves commas, save lives, right?
Um, words matter, and it's important to understand the difference
between backup and archive.
And I'm fine if you produce a product that does both things.
Just make sure you do both things.
Just don't use that phrase.
We're gonna archive a backup.
It hurts my ears.
Right?
Just like it hurts my ears when you say you're going golfing.
But that one I, I
Prasanna Malaiyandi: You can't do anything
W. Curtis Preston: gave that argument of Yeah, I can't do anything about it.
I don't have a golfing podcast.
Oh, I'm sorry.
A golf podcast.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: Oh, Curtis
W. Curtis Preston: podcast.
You got any final thoughts, Mr.
P?
Prasanna Malaiyandi: duh.
No, just.
Like you said, just be aware that they are different.
Archive and backup.
Know the right context.
And I think the other question is also, I know we talked about this
in organizations chapter, right?
But understand what the requirements are to help you decide.
Do you need an archive system or a backup system, or both?
W. Curtis Preston: Well, if you live in America, I would
argue strongly that you need.
, right?
Because we live in the most litigious society in the history.
I don't know what it's like over there, you know, in other countries.
I know Joe talked a little bit about the differences in eDiscovery that we have
sort of the strongest e-discovery laws.
Um, you know, you're gonna get sued for something.
And the cost of a, the cost of doing a retrieve from a backup, uh, is, is.
Ridiculous.
So, um, don't use your backup system as an archive and honestly, don't use
your archive system as a backup, right?
Like Google Vault is an archive, not a backup.
You're gonna be very unhappy if you lose your whole inbox because of a
ransomware attack, and then you go to Google Vault and they can give you all the
emails you had for the last five years.
That is not what you're looking for.
Prasanna Malaiyandi: exactly.
W. Curtis Preston: Yeah.
All right.
Hopefully you learned a thing or two.
And again, you know what?
If you wanna argue with me, reach out to me w Curtis Preston gmail,
or at WC preston on Twitter.
I'll tell you why you're wrong.
Um, , remember to subscribe so that you can restore it all.