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Comment by tbyehl

6 years ago

So?

Intelligent people can argue all day about whether a snapshot should be considered a backup or not, but it won't change the fact that a snapshot doesn't provide any protection from a failure in the underlying storage and it's ridiculously foolish for the owner of data to solely rely on snapshots as their backup strategy.

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tbyehl

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LaGrange  6 years ago

They literally use the word "backup." I wouldn't _normally_ expect snapshots to function as backups, but once they market them as such, I do. Yeah, sure, it's probably yet another case of a sales team getting over eager and taking over the company, but that's why if you value your ethics _at all_ you keep tabs on WTF the sales are doing.

  • tbyehl  6 years ago

    So you're saying, against your admission of knowing better, that you can be literally swayed that a snapshot is a proper backup in the independent-of-the-original-storage sense, because their documentation equated the two?

    • LaGrange  6 years ago

      The difference between a snapshot being a backup and not being a backup is literally the guarantees made by the provider. If the snapshot feature is documented as a backup, it is DOCUMENTED AS A BACKUP. Unless, of course, I suspect the provider of using the words as a way of confusing me, BUT THAT'S BAD. Like go read yourself a few times, you're literally defending them by claiming it's reasonable to treat them like scammers.

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marcinzm  6 years ago

>snapshot doesn't provide any protection from a failure in the underlying storage

That depends on how snapshot storage is implemented by the hosting provider. They can use different storage for it, or tapes or whatever. On AWS I can easily have my snapshots on Glacier or copy them to a different data center.