Life of a Sysadmin

The occassional trials and tribulations of a jack of all tr ades sysadmin in a startup in Silicon Valley

archives

October 2008 (2)
September 2008 (3)
June 2008 (1)
April 2008 (1)
March 2008 (6)
December 2007 (6)
October 2007 (1)
September 2007 (1)
August 2007 (2)
July 2007 (1)
June 2007 (5)
May 2007 (5)
April 2007 (3)
March 2007 (7)
February 2007 (2)
January 2007 (3)
December 2006 (4)
November 2006 (3)
October 2006 (3)
August 2006 (3)
July 2006 (1)
June 2006 (2)
May 2006 (4)
April 2006 (2)
March 2006 (5)
February 2006 (5)
January 2006 (7)
December 2005 (2)
November 2005 (6)
October 2005 (4)
September 2005 (4)
August 2005 (1)
July 2005 (2)
June 2005 (3)
May 2005 (4)
April 2005 (1)
March 2005 (2)

September 2008

Sysadmins Law 9, or Backups must be automated

We have a reasonable system to perform backups of laptops that are regularly on our local network. For laptops that live most of their life connected to the office over the internet and through a VPN connection it is much harder. Instead of an automated backup, the user must initiate the backup themselves. Automated messages are sent out when it has been a week without backups. And I talk to them on the phone a few days after that if a backup hasn't been done.

He came into my office complaining that his laptop blue-screened on boot, and it had been crashing regularly for the few days before. Booting off other media quickly showed the disk was failing in a pretty spectacular way. When I inform the user of this, he says, "I guess I should have backed up like you told me to, eh?" Yeah, I guess so.