04 January 2009

Backup, Backup, Backup

Lifehacker is reporting that blogging Service JournalSpace has been completely wiped out. Their database drives were completely overwritten and because they relied solely on a mirrored RAID system they are toast. RAID is fine if one drive gets wiped out, the idea behind a RAID system is that if a primary drive fails, a secondary drive(s) can be used to rebuild the data. But if data gets overwritten, RAID exacerbates the problem by propagating the bad data through all the drives. RAID is a disaster recovery system, not a backup system.

So what does this have to do with Dynamics GP you ask? Are you sure that you are backing up your Dynamics GP system and not just relying on RAID drives? What happens if someone accidentally overwrites your production database with a sample database? Do you have a backup to recover from? Have you actually tested it? If not, is your resume' up to date?

That last question is important because without good backups, an up to date resume' may be your only option and it's a pretty poor one in this economy. You have to actually backup your data. You need to test your backups and you need to have multiple, off site backups.

Testing is critical. If you don't test, you don't have backups. You have crossed fingers. We've seen lots of people who thought that they had backups only to find out that they had empty tapes or disks. You must backup and you must test. Go, do, now!