RE: Accidentally Lost Data

Microsoft and Dell were involved - it's Windows.

Justin C. Haase
Solution Manager - Technical Services
Kingland Systems Corporation


-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Tom Liotta
Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 4:28 PM
To: midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Accidentally Lost Data

Jerry Adams wrote:

  My hypothesis is that there's no witch hunt because it 
leads (straight line) to the top.

Good point. And when it's a public agency, "the top" is the public. 
Funding for such critical elements as a sufficient number of tape 
cartridges can be hard to come by. You'd be surprised at how limited 
budgets can be.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were no budget for DR testing for 
example. There's no time made available, no approval for off-hours 
work to do the testing, no approval for extra cartridges to allow 
for a rotation, no schedule for the system to be unavailable.

Why not? Because it comes from public funds and no one wants to pay 
for it. Ever been to a speak to a legislative committee over a 
budget request? It can be ugly when trying to explain that 
something's going to cost money.

How do you pin something to "the top" in a public agency?

In this case, though, there were multiple backups. The initial 
problem was that (1) a backup drive got reformatted accidentally in 
addition to the production drive. Then (2) backup tapes were 
unreadable. (And there was the reasonably complete paper backup.)

There's not much detail on the "backup tapes". Plural "tapes" adds 
some confusion. Perhaps it was just confusion from the article 
author, perhaps each backup run takes multiple cartridges, or 
perhaps there were rotating backups and _none_ could be read.

No info was given on the meaning of "unreadable" either. Media 
problems? Storage problems such as excessive heat/moisture in the 
facility? Had the problem always existed or was this something 
introduced since that last test for readability was done (if ever)?

The AK DoR did have an AS/400 up until at least a few years ago, 
IIRC. But this sounds more like Windows -- "backup drive". If 
Windows, then DR testing _should_ have been much more possible on a 
regular basis. A spare test server could be available and DR tests 
done in normal hours without disruption. Or the Department of 
Administration could supply DR test equipment on a rotating basis 
around other Departments. (AK DoA used to hold significant control 
over general IT. That might have changed in recent years.)

But it still comes down to budgets. If nothing else, is it more cost 
effective simply to re-enter a database once in a while or to have 
on-going multiple backups and significant DR testing for every major 
database throughout the government?

Actually, for $220,000, it wouldn't surprise me if this was not 
outrageously more expensive than funding all the various Departments 
and their agencies doing significant redundant backups and recovery 
testing year after year. (It seems strange that $220,000 doesn't 
seem out of bounds to me for such a monumental project.)

But it's guesswork without knowing a lot more details.

Tom Liotta