RE: Hey Guys - people actually think that I know what I'm talking about... -- WEB400

My system is hardly static.  then again, your definition of static and mine
may be different, and we are probably on different pages anyway.  

Also, if you tell someone...

"If we do not take the machine down for 1 hour a month to do backups, there
could be BIG problems.  If the system goes down and you don't allow for
these backups, you'll be down for good."

And they say

"I don't care.  No backups!!"

You have 2 choices.  

1.  Don't do them, and at the first sign of fire, run.
2.  Do the backups anyways, and see if they notice.  Then when a crash
happens tell them "I told you so", but don't tell them you did backups.
Then say "I can get your system back up in 1 hour for 500k or in 3 weeks for
100k" and see which option they take.  They take option 1, you retire and
look like a hero.  Because, those backups never existed.

If you simply give up after hearing project requirement of "24/7" and don't
discuss the pros and cons of doing backups, then you as a project
manager/solution provider have failed.   I don't see what is so hard about
understanding that.   

When someone asks me to jump, I don't so "how high".  I say "what is the
benefit of jumping?"  and I get more respect (and self-respect) in the
longrun for that than licking boots.

Brad

Brad

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Evan Harris [mailto:spanner@ihug.co.nz]
> Sent: Friday, May 04, 2001 2:42 PM
> To: WEB400@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: Hey Guys - people actually think that I know what I'm
> talking about...
> 
> 
> Brad
> 
> Yes I was talking about more than just the data. User profiles, Hosts 
> tables, the whole shebang.
> 
> Agreed you have to decide which is the lesser of two evils - 
> but sometimes 
> it is not your decision. It seems you are in the fortunate 
> position of 
> deciding at the moment
> 
> It sound like the system is fairly static and not a lot 
> happens on it, 
> otherwise your approach would be somewhat more problematic.
> 
> Regards
> Evan Harris
> 
> >Evan,
> >
> >You'll have to explain more what you are talking about.  I'm 
> talking data,
> >it sounds like you're talking system settings, etc.
> >
> >Again, you need to decide which is the lesser of two evils.  
> Being down for
> >an hour to do a system save once a month, or not being able 
> to restore if
> >your machine crashes.  I choose the first.  No amount of 
> reasoning will be
> >able to convince me that doing that one hour a month to do 
> backups is more
> >important than the customer wanting 24/7 no matter what, 
> even if it means
> >total disaster and the inability to get anything back.
> >
> >Of course, if the customer was so blind that they didn't 
> think of that, I
> >would specifically put in my contract that they declined the 
> backup option
> >and that any rebuilding of the system as a result of a crash would be
> >charged triple time rates.
> >
> >Brad
> >
> >
> > > Brad
> > >
> > > To be honest I meant a system rebuild :) If anyone still does
> > > these these
> > > days. I take it from your comments that the webserver is
> > > easily rebuilt
> > > somehow, and from that point of view, a recovery could be
> > > accomplished
> > > using scripts that rebuild things rather than restoring. 
> Recovery and
> > > restore are not necessarily the same thing even though the
> > > point is often
> > > missed
> >+---
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