At my work, backups have a surprisingly low priority. The backup strategy was implemented a while ago, and since then it's just assumed the backups are fine. If you ask the sysadmins, they'll say everything is backed up.
But then, when you ask for a SPECIFIC backup, half the time they are not there:
- The disk got full
- The tape failed
- Looks like someone disabled the backup job
- The network connection had downtime
- We ordered that disk years ago, but finance hasn't approved the purchase order
- The files are corrupt
- File contains wrong database
- Only transaction log backups (useless without a full one)
A few weeks ago, disaster came real close as one of the servers lost one too many raid disks. Luckily one disk was still kind enough to copy the data, if you tried a lot of times.
But even after that near-disaster, I can't seem to convince the sysadmins to improve the situation. So I'm wondering, any tips for opening people's eyes? It seems to me we're walking along the edge of a cliff.