[Klug-general] Backup Solutions Advice

[Mike Evans]

Matthew Macdonald-Wallace wrote:

> 
> They do understand what they are doing, these are our backup tapes  that 
> we use to restore (should we need to) on a day-by-day basis.  We  do 
> have a Disaster recovery plan which has been fully tested and we do  
> have other backups that are kept off-site.
> 
> Hope this reassures you,
> 
> M.

Hope I'm not pitching in where it's not wanted but, given that you have 
a disaster recovery plan and full off-site backups I have to wonder why 
you would want a blast-proof store for your backups.  In the event of 
such an explosion I would have thought that your disaster recovery plan 
would be swinging into full force.  Ditto for a fire of any significance.

Whilst working for a financial institution last year I noticed their 
view was that any backups kept at an office site were purely for the 
convenience of restore in the case of finger trouble with the delete 
key. (Or that well known SQL statement: the delete without a where 
clause - why did they allow that in the syntax?)

So the only thing you really need to worry about is whether, in the 
event of such a fire or explosion, your data remains secure against 
theft.  There is a simple solution to that: store the tapes on top of 
the explosives.  That way your data will be perfectly secure :-)

You can tell we had a strange day at the office today!  On a more 
serious note  - my sister's partner does work with explosives, so I 
could enquire if it would help.

Mike Evans