Comment by gilrain
2 days ago
> To use your own words, I fear its you who doesn't know what a backup is
Feel free to use my reputation, instead: when I say a system is backed up, data cannot be lost by that system being destroyed, because an independent copy always exists. This satisfies those whom it concerns, who put their money where their mouth is, whereas your more generous but insufficient definition would absolutely not be good enough.
When you assure a client that a system is backed up, which definition do they expect from you?
> When you assure a client that a system is backed up, which definition do they expect from you?
the one in the contract (and the various EU laws)
that is not a satisfying answer, I know
e.g. in some past projects the customers explicitly did _not_ want year long backups and outright forbid them, redundant storage systems + daily backups kept for ~1-2 weeks (I don't remember) had been pretty close to the legal limit of what we are allowed to have for that project (1)
the point I'm making was never that a good general purpose backup solutions shouldn't have versioning and years of backups
it's that
1. the word backup just doesn't mean much, so you have to be very explicit about what is needed, and sometimes that is the opposite of the "generic best solution"
2. If data is explicitly handled by another backup solution, even if it's a very bad one, it's understandable that the default is not to handle it yourself. (Through only the default, you should always have an overwrite option, be warned if defaults change, etc.).
Insisting a word means something it doesn't in a way where most non-tech people tend to use it in the definition you say isn't right just isn't helpful at all. Telling them that this is a very bad form of backup which they probably shouldn't use is much more likely to be taken serious.
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(1): Side note: It's because all data we had is backed up else where, by a different solution, and sometimes can be a bit sensitive. So the customers preferred data loss (on our side, not on theirs) over any data being kept longer then needed (and as such there being more data at any point of time if there is some hacker succeeding or similar). And from what I have heard that project is still around working the same way.
But ironically that is similar to the case here, the data is owned/handled by a different system and as such we should not handle the backup.